Last season, the Chicago Cubs reunited with Tyson Miller, snatching him off the scrap heap early in the year to bolster a bullpen in free-fall. From there, the veteran reliever quickly established himself as one of Craig Counsell’s go-to arms out of the pen, making 49 appearances and working to a 2.15 ERA.
Miller ranked in the top five percent of the league in WOBA and walk rate in 2024, overcoming a bottom-of-the-league groundball rate to turn in arguably the best year of his career. With that in mind, we can probably expect some sort of regression to the mean this season (his 3.62 FIP last year suggests as much) – but he’s shown that he can be a very effective reliever.
This year, he’s yet to make a regular-season appearance due to a left hip impingement that’s sidelined him since late March. However, there’s cause for hope. Miller has been lights-out in his rehab assignment with Triple-A Iowa and could be nearing a return to the big-league club.
Once again, the Cubs’ bullpen is struggling in the early-going
Getting Miller back could be a huge shot in the arm for a Cubs bullpen that’s looked like one of the team’s biggest weaknesses in the season’s first month. With a starting rotation built on a bubble that feels destined to burst (nothing against Colin Rea, but he’s pitched out of his mind and Matthew Boyd comes with major health questions given his track record), shoring up the bullpen sooner rather than later needs to be a priority.
The pitching staff already gained a new face in reclamation project Chris Flexen, who changed his arm slot and immediately started dominating at Iowa, and the pen is coming off four shutout frames in relief of Shota Imanaga’s injury-abbreviated start on Tuesday night. There’s no sign Miller’s return is imminent, but I’d be surprised if he’s stashed away at Triple-A for too much longer.
As we look ahead to May, hopefully the pen starts to level out a bit and the ‘circle of trust’ for Counsell becomes more concrete. A healthy and effective Miller could go a long way toward that happening.