Chicago Cubs Signing Righty Reliever Phil Maton
Fresh off the tender deadline, with 10 open 40-man spots and lots of need in the bullpen, the Chicago Cubs are finally jumping into the free agent fray (non-Shota Imanaga edition). According to BN’s own Michael Cerami, the Cubs are signing reliever Phil Maton: Source is telling me the Cubs have signed right-handed reliever Phil Maton.— Michael Cerami (@Michael_Cerami) November 22, 2025 Phil Maton, 32, was a “pretty good” reliever for a number of years, but then suddenly put up a relative monster season in 2025: 2.79 ERA over 61.1 IP, 32.7% K, 9.3% BB, 44.4% GB, 3.6% barrel. By many measures, he was a top-25 reliever in all of baseball. (via FanGraphs) In other words, if the Cubs just signed THAT guy, yo, that’s a huge add to the bullpen. The question, of course, is whether that was a one-year fluke, or if something fundamental changed that Maton can carry into 2026. His base-cutter added two MPH in 2025, though, so I’m thinking that has a pretty good bit to do with the performance leap. He was not only an elite contact manager in 2025, he was also getting a lot of chase and missing bats: (via Statcast) You can kinda ignore that fastball one, by the way, because he’s throwing a base-cutter (and 90 mph for your cutter is just fine). We’ll have much more on this soon, but this is looking like a very good addition to the Cubs’ bullpen group. And I’m guessing it was not cheap.
