The Cubs are adding some starting pitching depth:<\/p>\n
Kyle Wright was the Braves\u2019 first-round pick (seventh overall) in 2017 out of Vanderbilt and was a Top 100 prospect three years in a row (2018, 2019, 2020). He made his MLB debut with the Braves in 2019 and joined their rotation full-time in 2022, when he had an outstanding season: 21-5, 3.19 ERA, 1.159 WHIP, 174 strikeouts in 180.1 innings, 3.7 bWAR and 10th place in Cy Young voting.<\/p>\n
A serious shoulder injury cost Wright most of the 2023 season and he had surgery on the shoulder in October 2023. A month later the Braves traded him to the Royals. Wright missed the entire 2024 season and made eight rehab starts in the Royals system with a 6.97 ERA and 1.565 WHIP in 23 innings. He became a free agent at the end of the 2024 season.<\/p>\n
Wright turned 30 in October. There\u2019s really no way of knowing whether he could get back to his 2022 form after that shoulder surgery, but this is a depth signing. Wright most likely starts the year at Triple-A Iowa (perhaps with an opt out) and will see some time during Spring Training. Seems a worthwhile NRI signing.<\/p>\n
As noted by Jon Heyman, Wright is MLB\u2019s most recent 20-game winner. Also, Wright and Dansby Swanson were Vanderbilt teammates in 2015. Here\u2019s some video of Wright from a game April 28, 2022 against the Cubs:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cubs are adding some starting pitching depth: Kyle Wright was the Braves\u2019 first-round pick (seventh overall) in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,7407,4245,161,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-565442","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-cubs","11":"tag-chicago-cubs-news","12":"tag-chicagocubs","13":"tag-cubs","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116049873759998834","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}