Cubs sign reliever Mychal Givens to one-year, $5M deal

Givens has been a bullpen workhorse since debuting with the Orioles in 2015. He’s tied for fourth in relief innings pitched over the past six seasons, working 366 1/3 frames over 338 appearances. Givens hasn’t spent any time on the injured list since his rookie year, and he’s consistently provided his managers with an effective arm they can frequently call upon in the middle innings.

Part of an elite back-end group alongside Zack Britton and Brad Brach in his early days with the Orioles, Givens has settled in as “merely” a solid middle relief arm over the past few seasons. He hasn’t posted a sub-3.00 ERA since his 2017 campaign in Baltimore, but he has a mark below 4.00 in three of the last four years. That includes a 3.35 mark in 51 innings last year with the Rockies and Reds, for whom he combined to accrue eight saves.

Givens’ peripherals didn’t quite align with that ERA, though, no doubt contributing to his settling for a one-year pact. The former second-round pick struck out a marginally above-average 25% of batters faced, but his 12.5% walk percentage was a career-high. That’s a couple points north of the league average, and it marked Givens’ third consecutive season issuing free passes at greater than a 10% clip.

Spotty control notwithstanding, Givens adds a durable live arm to the mix for manager David Ross. He averaged 95 MPH on his fastball last season, and the high-spin offering generated plenty of swinging strikes. The low-slot righty has also been a nightmare for opposing right-handed hitters throughout his career, holding them to a .194/.271/.330 slash line. He wasn’t nearly that dominant against same-handed batters last year (.250/.306/.470) but Cubs brass presumably believes the 31-year-old can bounce back in that regard.

The Cubs have overhauled a good portion of the roster in the past few months, but they’ve regrouped and at least made the team much more competitive than it had been towards the end of last season. 

Chicago has added Seiya Suzuki, Jonathan Villar, Yan Gomes and Andrelton Simmons on the position player side. They’ve acquired Marcus Stroman and Wade Miley to strengthen the rotation and, as mentioned, have completely reshaped the bullpen. They’re still nowhere near the franchise-record $203M payroll with which they opened the 2019 season with, but the Givens pickup bumps them to around $152M in projected player expenditures, in the estimation of Jason Martinez of Roster Resource. That’s a touch above last season’s $148M season-opening mark.