BCB After Dark: Who should close for the Cubs?

The Cubs will head to Japan on Wednesday

Welcome to your late week, late night indie coffee shop where we are listening to some easy going tunes while we serve up all your favorite beverages. If you’re looking for a local craft beer we’ve got you covered. If a cup of tea or decaf coffee is your pleasure, we’ve got you covered for that too. Either way, come on in, take off your coats and shake off whatever cobwebs Daylight Savings Time may have created for you as this weekend comes to a close and we discuss all things Cubs.

We’re in the last few days of Spring Training in Mesa before the Cubs head to Japan for the Tokyo Series. There were a slew of roster moves today, including news that Rule 5 pick Gage Workman and offseason trade acquisition Vidal Bruján will be making the trip to Japan:

But there are still some big question marks about the 2025 Cubs and one that has been looming is who the closer will be when the Cubs open their regular season in Japan. We’ll tackle that after some tunes.

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I considered being overly literal for this one and going with a song like Closing Time but figured I’d save that one for another day because this Josh Ritter song has been on my mind all day:

Romero got married on the fifth of July
In our Lady of Immaculate Dawn
Could have got married in the revival man’s tent
But there ain’t no reviving what’s gone
Slipped like a shadow from the family he made
In a little white house by the woods
Dropped the kids at the mission, with a rose for the virgin
She knew he was gone for good

It’s a long way to Heaven, it’s closer to Harrisburg
And that’s still a long way from the place where we are
And if evil exists its a pair of train tracks
And the devil is a railroad car

Harrisburg is a Josh Ritter tune that he says was inspired by his childhood view of the state capitol as a vast metropolis relative to his hometown. That’s a sentiment that hit close to home for me as a kid who grew up a couple of hours away from Salt Lake City:

When he was little, singer-songwriter Josh Ritter had never seen many big cities. That’s why Harrisburg made such an impression on him.

Ritter grew up in Moscow, a “beautiful little town in the middle of wheat fields in the northern part of Idaho.” His father, however, grew up in Allentown and, on family trips back to Pennsylvania, they passed through the state capital. The image of its dome had “always been in my head,” Ritter said.

Harrisburg has always struck me as a distant cousin of some of Bruce Springsteen’s tunes about the working class, looking for a better future and the lackluster nature of that future when it finally comes to pass:

Rose at the altar withered and wilted
Romero sank into a dream
He didn’t make Heaven, he didn’t make Harrisburg
He died in a hole in between
Some say that man is the root of all evil
Others say God’s a drunkard for pain
Me I believe that the Garden of Eden
Was burned to make way for a train

In 2010 Ritter and his band performed a particularly fun live version of the song live from Iveagh Gardens with an Easter egg solo in the middle:

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Back here in Cubslandia I doubt any of the candidates to close for the Cubs are walking out to Harrisburg. To be clear, that doesn’t take anything away from the song, it’s just that not all songs are meant to be walkout music for closers.

And let’s be honest, not all pitchers are meant to be closers. It’s a role the Cubs have struggled to fill in recent years, and one many have speculated the Cubs finally filled by trading for former Astros closer Ryan Pressly this offseason. Many have assumed that Pressly waived his no trade clause on the condition he’d be the Cubs closer, and therefor accepted his role as the Cubs closer is a fait accompli. This nugget from Maddie Lee at the Sun Times shortly after the signing throws some doubt on that notion:

Pressly will be entering the last year of his contract. His $14 million option vested because he surpassed a combined 110 appearances in 2023 and 2024 combined.

‘‘Closing experience means you’re a good pitcher,’’ manager Craig Counsell said last weekend at the Cubs Convention. ‘‘It means you’ve earned that.’’

Pressly is a strong candidate to be the Cubs’ closer this season, but he’ll have to compete for the role. A source threw cold water on rumors that suggested Pressly only would approve the trade if he was guaranteed to be the closer, saying no such promises were made.

The Chicago Tribune’s Megan Montemurro also reported that Pressly would compete for the closer role, while adding the nugget that Pressly was told he would close “some” games for the Cubs this season:

And to be clear, the Cubs have options here beyond Pressly. Porter Hodge landed in the role at the end of last season and as I wrote at the time of the signing, has better underlying numbers than Pressly:

Pressly brings big game experience and maybe an extra year for the Cubs to settle on a long-term option at the end of games. While he did not close much for the Astros last year with Josh Hader on the roster, he did accumulate over 100 regular season saves with an excellent Houston team since 2019. However, when digging under the hood a little bit, there’s been a considerable falloff in his swing and miss stuff during that time. He boasted strikeout rates above 30 percent between 2019 and 2022. Those numbers fell off a bit at 27.6% in 2023 and 23.8 percent in 2024.

For comparison, Hodge had a strikeout rate of 31.7 percent during his rookie season in 2024.

In addition to competition from Hodge, Julian Merryweather, Nate Pearson and Caleb Thielbar all have a smattering of saves and the type of swing and miss stuff that has led to higher leverage relief roles and speculations about their ability to save games in the past.

Generally spring training stats don’t mean anything, Especially for pitchers who may be working on new pitches or the like. And to be clear, all the small sample size caveats apply, however, for the purposes of this conversation it does seem worth noting none of the above pitchers have an ERA over two this spring, so Counsell has some tough decisions ahead of him.

So I ask you as we head into the work week, who should close for the Cubs?