The Cubs need to strengthen their bullpen, and while Cody Bellinger is one of the few free agents on MLB Trade Rumours’ Top 50 list who is still unsigned, there aren’t many. One could legitimately argue that the Cubs, whose Pythagorean prediction placed them as a 90-win team, could have won up to 90 games and advanced to the postseason in 2023 if they had a stronger bullpen.
The Cubs need to get better in the pen’s setup area because they already have Adbert Alzolay as a closer.
And Robert Stephenson, a righthander, might be the man to accomplish that. After being traded by the Pirates to the Rays in June 2023, MLBTR noted that he had made tremendous progress. Here is what MLBTR reported about him:
His go-to breaking pitch, a mid-80s slider, was replaced by an upper-80s cutter after he arrived in Tampa Bay. Stephenson was relying roughly three-quarters of the time on the cutter by September, having given up on the slider entirely. It is easy to understand why. Only 41.1% of the time that batters attempted to make contact with the pitch, they succeeded. As a Ray, Stephenson struck out almost 43% of batters he faced, putting opponents through a miserable inning.hitting line of 138/.187/.300 in 140 at-bats.
Stephenson, a previous first-round selection, has always had fascinating talent. During four months, he was virtually unhittable when he combined his cutter with a fastball that reaches 96–97 mph. In Tampa Bay, Stephenson received swinging strikes on 28.7% of his throws. That was not just the best in the majors, but it’s also approximately eight percentage points better than Felix Bautista in second place and nearly three times the MLB average. While it’s unrealistic to expect him to maintain that level of domination, Stephenson is currently regarded as one of the best few relievers in the game.
Okay. All of that sounds fairly good. In addition to the peripheral statistics mentioned before, Stephenson had a great walk rate following the trade, allowing only eight walks out of 140 batters faced.
This is the 2023 pitch selection chart for Stephenson:
