Chicago Cubs: A look at the other pitcher picked up yesterday

The Chicago Cubs hammered the New York Mets on Wednesday in a double-header sweep that saw their bats come alive and Dansby Swanson explode with 2 home runs and 11 RBIs on the day.

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Then, they made headlines with a Mets trade that brought pitcher David Peterson to Chicago.

Before all that, though, the Cubs made another move that ended up going under the radar.

On Wednesday, they picked up pitcher Bryse Wilson off waivers from the Philadelphia Phillies.

New Cub Bryse Wilson

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The 28-year-old right-hander had been signed to a minor league contract by the Phillies in the offseason and ended up exercising the upward mobility clause in his contract, demanding a promotion to the majors. Philadelphia obliged on June 18, allowing him to pitch two scoreless innings against the Mets, before being DFA’d.

Wilson has spent parts of nine seasons in the majors—working for the Braves, Pirates, Brewers, White Sox, and Phillies—and has posted a 4.80 ERA over 164 games and 463 total innings pitched.

In 2023, he pitcher for the Brewers under then-manager Craig Counsell and had his greatest single-season success as a bullpen asset with a 6-0 record and 2.58 ERA through 53 appearances. He would later be named Brewers Unsung Hero for the 2023 season by the Milwaukee chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Wilson, however, hasn’t been able to deliver any degree of sustained, consistent big league success beyond that one magical season. The Cubs are obviously hoping a reunion with Counsell can bring back some of that positive 2023 mojo.

Ground ball specialist

Like the other new Cubs hurler Peterson, Wilson is a ground ball pitcher—and arguably a more extreme ground ball generator overall than Peterson. When right, his sinker/cutter/four-seam fastball mix has hitters pounding the ball into the ground—something that should play well with the Cubs and their elite infield defense.

Unfortunately, he’s not “right” anywhere near as often as he’d like to be.

Wilson’s minor league stats this year are pretty awful on the surface with a 6.29 ERA over 12 appearances (11 starts) with Triple-A Lehigh Valley. But those numbers may be a touch deceiving, as Bleacher Nation’s Michael Cerami points out:

“For one, his strikeout (23.5%) and walk (8.5%) rates are both fine. And he really hadn’t been allowing a lot of hard contact (38%) or barrels (5.5%) either. Most encouragingly, he’s pretty much always been a high groundball rate guy, with his 2026 (Triple-A) rate up tom 52%. In front of this Cubs defense, that could play.”

In a lot of ways, Wilson and Peterson come to Chicago as righty-lefty bookends, both with promising ground ball-generating upsides as rotation fill-ins, but also with an overwhelming history of major league fails behind them.

But at this point, given the recent injuries to Edward Cabrera and Ben Brown, tacked on after the injuries to Cade Horton, Matthew Boyd, and Jameson Taillon, the Cubs have no choice but to roll the dice on castoffs seeking redemption.

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