Phil Maton Is Why The Cubs Usually Avoid Long-Term Bullpen Investments

The Chicago Cubs have always been firm believers in signing relievers to only one-year deals. 

It’s something that president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer has lived by since taking over this role all the way back in November of 2020. In his first five offseasons in the lead chair, Hoyer had not signed one reliever to a multi-year deal. 

But Hoyer changed his ways this past offseason and finally signed a reliever to a multi-year deal. 

The Cubs signed Phil Maton to a two-year, $14.5 million deal in free agency. This two-year contract marked the first time that the organization has given out a multi-year deal to a reliever since Craig Kimbrel in 2019 (three-year, $43 million).

Kimbrel's first two years on that deal didn’t quite work out. He posted a 6.53 ERA in 23 appearances in 2019 and a 5.28 ERA in 18 appearances in 2020 before finally living up to his contract during the 2021 season with a 0.49 ERA in 39 games. 

There’s a reason why Hoyer never wanted to commit long-term money to relievers in free agency. This position is extremely volatile, and there are cases like Maton where things go off the rails very quickly. 

Maton was one of the most consistent relievers in the league last year. He had a 2.79 ERA, a 1.060 WHIP, and 81 strikeouts across 61 ⅓ innings pitched with the St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers. 

One season later, things look completely different for Maton. 

The veteran has a whopping 9.49 ERA, 1.784 WHIP, and 16 strikeouts across 12 ⅓ innings pitched, and he was at the forefront of another Cubs loss on Sunday against the Chicago White Sox. 

Maton entered a tie ballgame in the bottom of the eighth inning. He got Chase Meidroth to ground out before walking Andrew Benintendi, allowing a single to Edgar Quero, and serving up a three-run home run to Tristan Peters. 

Here’s the pitch that Maton threw to Peters on that three-run go-ahead homer. 

Maton hung an 85 mph sweeper in the heart of the zone. The walk to Benintendi with two outs can’t happen, and the 0-1 sweeper in the middle part of the plate can’t happen. 

Although the Cubs did eventually rally back in the ninth inning before losing in extras, Maton has been the biggest disappointment in Chicago’s bullpen to start the year. His -5 Pitching Run Value and -0.8 WAR sum that up perfectly. 

Maton went from being a dominant reliever with two different teams last year to becoming a major liability with the Cubs. He’s allowing a lot of hard contact (43.8% hard-hit rate), and his barrel rate (15.6%) is up 12% from last season. 

It’s hard to really understand what has gone wrong with Maton this season. He’s still striking out batters at a solid rate (28.8%), both his whiff rate (27%) and chase rate (31.5%) rank in the upper half of the league, and his pull AIR rate (9.4%) is the lowest it has ever been in his career.

However, adjustments to his arsenal could explain his poor numbers. Maton is throwing his cutter 45.4% of the time, a massive 9.4% increase from last year (36%). His cutter also had a 32.9% whiff rate and a 20.5% putaway rate in 2025. This season, those numbers are at 22.2% and 17.5% respectively. 

The reason Maton could be relying more on his cutter this season is because of the ineffectiveness of his curveball. His curveball was easily his best pitch last year. Opposing hitters batted just .136 with one home run and a .227 slugging percentage. 

That hasn’t quite been the case this season. He’s leaving too many curveballs up in the zone, which is why hitters are batting .350 with two home runs, one triple, and a .750 slugging percentage against it. 

It has really been a poor all-around season for Maton. He was supposed to be that high-leverage reliever who would lock down the later innings, similar to Brad Keller. Instead, he’s become a liability in the Cubs’ bullpen. 

It’s clear that Maton is not fully there right now. He should only be deployed in lower-leverage situations for the time being as he continues to work through some things and rebuilds his confidence. 

There is still time for Maton to turn things around, but this signing looks like a major miss by the Cubs' front office.