This is another solid backend starter or bullpen piece
Welcome late week late night Cubs fans and thank God it’s Friday here at BCB After Dark. We made it through the first full week of 2025. It feels like it’s been a month in a handful of days, but we are here, on Friday with every drink you can imagine to welcome in the weekend.
As always, we’re gracious to Josh for lending us this space. Be sure you bus your own tables and don’t leave a mess for Josh and Co. on Monday when we turn this back into a blues, movies and Cubs spot.
Earlier today the big news on the Cubs front was a reunion of sorts with Colin Rea. Look I totally understand if you blanked out during the 2020 pandemic shortened season. That is understandable. But Rea was a Cub that season. He pitched 14 innings for the Cubs in 2020. He appeared in nine games and started two. He wound up with a 1-1 record, a 5.79 ERA and a 4.98 FIP, not exactly a lot to write home about, but who among us wants to be held to the standard of anything we did in 2020?
More on Rea after some tunes.
We’re going to stay in California for a bit with tonight’s entry from a band in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
Hotel California is a classic that throws you into the California environment, and then explains why it haunts you forever:
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim, I had to stop for the night
There she stood in the doorway, I heard the mission bell
And I was thinkin’ to myself, “This could be heaven or this could be hell”
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor, I thought I heard them say“Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year (any time of year)
You can find it here”
Listen to one of the writers of the song, Don Felder, explain its prominence below:
The song was composed in a house on Malibu Beach and has been interpreted over and over again as the years passed. That’s as much a tribute to the melody Felder worked on as it is to the perfect lyrics that Don Henley and Glenn Frey compiled:
Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice
And she said, “We are all just prisoners here of our own device”
And in the master’s chambers, they gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast
Last thing I remember, I was running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before”
Relax, “ said the night man, “We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”
It’s an intoxicating song about an intoxicating place. I hope we all live to see it revived someday.
Speaking of players who can never leave, what is the reasoning behind the Cubs reunion with Colin Rea? I can think of a couple.
First, in the interim period between his use as a swingman in the pandemic shortened season and now, Rea has become a pretty useful pitcher for the Brewers. He threw 124.2 innings to the tune of a 4.55 ERA off a 4.90 FIP in 2023, he threw 167.2 innings to the tune of a 4.29 ERA off a 4.75 FIP in 2024. For reference the league average ERA and FIP was 4.08 last season, so honestly, Rea pencils is as a steady back of the rotation type.
The thing is, the Cubs have better options at the back of their rotation. Javier Assad had a 3.74 ERA and a 4.64 FIP in 2024, Matthew Boyd had a 2.72 ERA off a 3.29 FIP in 2024. Rea fits somewhere between or after Boyd and Assad.
And look, you can never have too much starting pitching, so a one-year $5 million deal for Rea is probably fine. The question is, is this a signing for a reliever, a starter or a swing man?