The Cubs are signing right-hander Jake Woodford to a minor league deal, reports MLBTR’s Steve Adams. Woodford, a client of Excel Sports Management, is heading to Triple-A Iowa and will start for that club tomorrow night.
Woodford, 28, just opted out of a minor league deal with the Yankees a few days ago. Prior to opting out, he had logged 39 2/2 innings for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre over seven starts and three long relief appearances. He allowed 4.54 earned runs per nine with a 21.5% strikeout rate, 9.4% walk rate and 42.4% ground ball rate.
That wasn’t enough to get called up to the Yankees. They had suffered injuries to starters Gerrit Cole, Luis Gil and Marcus Stroman but guys like Will Warren and Ryan Yarbrough have stepped up to stabilize the group.
The Cubs have their own slate of rotation injuries at the moment. Justin Steele, Shota Imanaga and Javier Assad are all on the injured list at the moment. Steele required UCL surgery in April and won’t come back this year. That leaves them with a rotation of Matthew Boyd, Jameson Taillon, Colin Rea, Ben Brown and Cade Horton. Boyd is having a good year but is up to 68 2/3 innings. The last time he hit 79 in a season was in 2019. Rea is a swingman who has been thrust into the rotation by the injuries. Horton is a big prospect but has only five big league appearances thus far.
In terms of depth, Chris Flexen was previously in the Triple-A rotation but is now in the big league bullpen. Jordan Wicks is on the 40-man but has a 4.86 for Iowa this year. The Cubs will likely be looking for starting pitching prior to the deadline but adding Woodford gives them an experienced arm to call upon if their rotation suffers another injury in the coming weeks.
He has had some major league success as a swingman in the past, mostly by keeping the ball on the ground. With the Cardinals in 2021 and 2022, he logged 116 innings with a 3.26 ERA. He only punched out 15.4% of opponents but got opponents to hit the ball into the dirt at a 45.6% clip.
His ERA spiked to 6.23 in 2023, which pushed him towards journeyman mode. He posted a 7.97 ERA last year between the White Sox and Pirates. Here in 2025, he signed a minor league deal with the Rockies but opted out at the end of spring. That led to his Yankee deal, which he also opted out of.