Chicago Cubs: Surprise dark horse emerging for key roster spot?

The Chicago Cubs made a lot of pitching movement this past offseason. It really hasn’t been pointed out enough just how much the front office has actually focused on pitching.

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The big headline, of course, was the addition of emerging powerhouse starter Edward Cabrera, acquired in a trade with the Miami Marlins.

But the Cubs also essentially rebuilt a depleted bullpen that, at one point, looked like it might be down to just one or two holdovers from the NLDS roster bullpen. They added Phil Maton, Hoby Milner, Jacob Webb, and Hunter Harvey via a free agency (while also re-signing Caleb Thielbar) and spent an uncharacteristic sum of money to do so.

On the projected 26-man roster, Chicago could likely come into the 2026 season with nearly a 40% turnover from the end of last season.

The Cubs’ stockpiling of arms

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And there was even more movement right underneath the big league roster level as they went on an offseason buying spree to snatch up viable arms and reclamation projects on minor league deals.

Over the course of the winter, the Cubs signed a number of pitchers to minor league deals. The most notable were Collin Snider, Kyle Wright, Trent Thornton, Vince Velasquez, Yacksel Rios, Charlie Barnes, Ryan Rolison, Tyler Beede, Jeff Brigham, Tyler Ras, Corbin Martin, and Gabe Klobosits– all pitchers who have shown flashes of success at (or near) the major league level in their careers.

All of this is a clear effort to try and replicate (again) the success the team has had in refurbishing struggling pitchers into quality bullpen assets. Last season, the success of Brad Keller and Drew Pomeranz, who were both almost out of baseball at the time they came to Chicago, helped carry a bullpen that hit some real rough patches early on.

Collin Snider: Low-risk, high-yield?

Of all the pitchers signed to minor league contracts this past offseason, arguably the most intriguing and most likely for a breakthrough is the 30-year-old Collin Snider.

In 2024, the Seattle Mariners made just the right tweaks in the righty after coming over from the Kansas City Royals, turning him from a 5.93 ERA pitcher to a shutdown 1.94 ERA bullpen asset. Injury, however, robbed Snider of two full miles-per-hour on his fastball during a disastrous 2025 which saw him demoted to Triple-A and then allowed to drift away via free agency.

The Cubs brought him aboard as a low-risk flier, believing that some minor mechanical changes could keep his arm healthy and get his velocity back up. So far, it appears to be working. According to Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic, Snider has remarked that the first bullpen he threw, using the Cubs’ tweaks, was the “hardest he’s thrown in an offseason bullpen session.”

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“The main thing was health,” Snider told Sharma. “Then, paired with health, I got into some bad mechanical habits. One thing kind of fed into the other. But health is probably the overall issue.

“It honestly was something very simple. I was throwing in like an east-west rotation instead of a little bit more north-south thought to it — my shoulder plane. I was coming on the side of the baseball instead of getting behind it a little more. I was cutting a lot of stuff. Too much, a little cut would be fine. Cutting things too much, which (put) stress on the forearm, and my velo was down.”

A product of Tread Athletics and Tyler Zombro, the Cubs’ new vice president of pitching, Snider was a beast in his stellar, healthy 2024 season. He more than doubled his strikeout rate from 2023 to 2024, halved his walk rate, and, with certain pitches, produced a 30% whiff rate.

There appears to be the firm belief that all of Snider’s 2025 struggles were due to his lower-arm issues. And, if that’s the case, this pickup will be an absolute steal for the Cubs.

He’ll have a tough road to a roster spot coming out of spring training. However, as we are constantly reminded, bullpens are volatile, unpredictable beasts where there will always be need for fresh arms over the course of a long, grueling season.

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Source: https://www.chicitysports.com/chicago-cubs-roster-bullpen-collin-snider-spring-training/