Early in 2011, the Chicago Cubs completed a trade that sent five minor league prospects to the Tampa Bay Rays in exchange for starting pitcher Matt Garza and two prospects. The deal gives the Cubs a really good young pitcher with some great experience pitching in baseball’s toughest division.
While the deal was designed to improve the major league club in 2011, it will be interesting to see how this deal affects Jeff Samardzija, the Valparaiso-native entering the final year of the 5-year, $10 million contract he signed before the 2007 season. Samardzija has alternated between both starting and relieving and the majors and minors throughout his tenure with the Cubs, making harder to get into any sort of routine or rhythm between appearances.
This trade solidifies one more spot in the Cubs’ 5-man starting rotation, which certainly will include Garza, Ryan Dempster, and Carlos Zambrano in 2011. In fact, ESPN sees the Cubs’ rotation as Dempster, Garza, Zambrano, Randy Wells, and Tom Gorzelanny according to their depth chart, but rumors have surfaced regarding Gorzelanny and perhaps a desire to deal him to a team looking for a left-hander for their rotation.
In order to drill down as to where Samardzija fits into the Cubs’ plans for 2011, you’ll need to do a little process-of-elimination in looking at the Cubs’ pitching situation. A major league roster typically has 11-12 of its 25 roster spots designated for pitchers. With the Garza trade, you can all but guarantee that he will join Zambrano and Dempster as definite starters. Randy Wells should be penciled in to the rotation as well, given his performance the last season-and-a-half. Carlos Marmol can be locked down as the team's closer, and both Sean Marshall and Kerry Wood have pretty well locked down the set-up roles. The Cubs will likely also keep major league roster spots open for Gorzelanny (assuming he isn't traded), John Grabow (and his relatively large contract), and Andrew Cashner, who has impressively and quickly risen through the organization.
That leaves just one or two spots on the major league roster for a pitcher like Samardzija and others, likely the long-relief role or fifth starter, to compete for during spring training. He’ll compete with Carlos Silva (and all that comes with his contract), Justin Berg (who played in 41 games in 2010), James Russell (57 games), Bob Howry (24 games), Thomas Diamond (16 games), and many of the other fringe-major-leaguers in the Cubs’ organization.
The Cubs, and I’ve written about this before, haven’t put Samardzija in a position to succeed with his back-and-forth movement from starter to reliever, and from the majors to the minors. He’s expressed his desire to be a starter on the major league level and his performance for the AAA Iowa Cubs shows that, once he’s been given the routine of starting every five days, he can be successful.
Clearly this will be an important spring training for Samardzija to showcase what he can bring to the table for the organization. He’s entering the last year of his guaranteed contract, although the Cubs hold team options in both 2012 and 2013. You would have to expect they would exercise those options if they think he’s going to contribute to their long-term success.
The Garza trade solidified more of the Cubs’ pitching rotation, making it that much harder for Samardzija, or any of the other players, to make the major league roster.
With all of the uncertainty going into the 2011 season, one thing is for sure: there are plenty of people in Northwest Indiana rooting for him.