While sorting out their arbitration situation today, the Cubs made a separate move, picking up reliever Matt Festa from the Texas Rangers in a trade for cash. Festa, a 31-year-old righty, had been DFA’d a couple days ago, so the Cubs must’ve paid a little more than the waiver price to get him.
To make room on the 40-man, the Cubs designated Miles Mastrobuoni for assignment. The utility man hasn’t quite hit in the big leagues, even as he’s shown the ability to play solid defense all over. With the Cubs loading up on similar players this offseason (and seemingly still wanting more), you could see the squeeze happening for Mastrobuoni. I suspect the Cubs will try to sneak him through waivers to outright him to Iowa as additional depth, but otherwise, this may be the end of their time together.
As for Festa, he’s got a 4.60 career ERA over 117.1 big league innings in parts of five seasons, but with slightly better peripherals (4.49 FIP, 25.0% K, 10.3% BB, 7.8% barrel). He has absolutely DOMINATED in recent years at Triple-A, so you can tell he’s one of those guys on the borderline of big league success. Sometimes it just takes a while, and landing in the right organization. And hey, Festa has trained at Tread Athletics in the past, where new Cubs pitching whisperer Tyler Zombro came from. I am sure there’s some familiarity there.
@Mariners RHP – @mfesta33 displaying some of the nastiest sliders in the bigs yesterday. A coach’s post coming from @TurnerGivens It averaged 83.4 mph with 0.5 VB and -18 HB ?Out of the 23 sliders thrown:•11 swings•7 whiffs•5 called strikes pic.twitter.com/9CSescAcpG
— Tread Athletics (@TreadHQ) April 12, 2022More on Festa soon.
For now, Festa goes on the 40-man roster, but does not have any options remaining. So he’d either have to make the big league team on Opening Day or hit the waiver wire. It’s possible something sorts out sooner than that, as the Cubs have a WHOLE lot of reliever options to work with in roughly his tier of projection (some with options, some on minor league deals). I think they still need to add a true impact reliever, though. Festa feels more like a guy whom the Cubs believe they could coax league average performance out of, and it’s good to have depth.
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