The Cubs made an interesting deal today before the trade deadline, getting left-hander Braxton Garrett from the Marlins.
We now have the return for Garrett as well.
The left-handed Garrett, who turns 29 on Wednesday, is still under team control until 2029 and still has one minor league option left, although that only applies to this year. That’s important because after a breakout in 2022 and 2023, Garrett underwent Tommy John surgery in 2024. He missed most of that year and all of 2025. He’s healthy now, but after two poor starts in the majors in May, he’s been pitching in Triple-A Jacksonville since then.
Garrett’s major league numbers this year are ugly—0-1 with a 14.54 ERA over two starts. But his minor league numbers have been good with a 2.90 ERA and more than a strikeout an inning, although the walks are a bit up and his underlying numbers in Triple-A aren’t quite that good. (They’re not bad, though!) If you assume it takes a while for a pitcher’s control to return after Tommy John, then maybe his walk totals aren’t that bad.
Garrett was the seventh-overall pick of the 2016 draft out of high school in Alabama. He’s mostly a sinker/slider guy who gets the kinds of ground balls the Cubs want.
So Garrett serves as starting pitching depth for this year and an upside play for the next two years afterwards. He can report to Iowa for now and be ready to step in if the Cubs still have even more injuries to their pitching staff for the rest of 2026.
Jonathon Long is a promising bat who got off to a bad start to start this season but has lately been turning things around. He’s a good right-handed hitter with above-average power. But he’s also pretty much limited to first base (Long can play left field in a pinch) and he’s pretty much blocked by Michael Busch with the Cubs. But the Marlins could use a first baseman and he could make his major league debut immediately
Baseball America had Long as the Cubs’ 16th-best prospect. MLB Pipeline ranked him tenth. I ranked him 11th in my mid-season update.
The Cubs signed the right-handed Beck as a minor league free agent after the Mets released him this offseason. He dominated Double-A for the Cubs, posting a record of 6-2 with a 2.87 ERA over 20 games and six starts. He struck out 102 batters over 59.2 innings. That got him promoted to Triple-A Iowa, where he has struggled in five appearances and a 6.60 ERA. But Beck was starting to show up on some prospect lists, with Baseball America and MLB Pipeline both listing him as the Cubs’ 28th-best prospect .
