How Cubs senior vice president Craig Breslow’s journeyman playing career is still paying dividends

MESA, Ariz. — Left-hander Ryan Borucki and his 2018 Buffalo Bisons teammates knew then that Craig Breslow would end up in some team’s front office.

“He was always known as the smartest man on our team, by far,” Borucki said. “I think he still can do crossword puzzles in, like, five minutes. He always was somebody that young guys like myself when I was in Triple-A would go and talk to.”

Breslow, now a Cubs assistant general manager and the senior vice president of pitching, was in the last year of his playing career and trying to extend it as long as possible. But his efforts late in his career to reinvent himself had him overlapping with Tyler Duffey, Julian Merryweather and Borucki, all pitchers the Cubs added this offseason.

They signed Duffey and Borucki to non-roster invite deals and claimed Merryweather off waivers from the Blue Jays.

“We’ve had the running joke in the office where it’s like, ‘Hey, what about this guy, what about that guy, Bres? Where did you play with him?” Breslow said.

Breslow played for 10 organizations before hanging up his spikes.

Those last two years of his career — when he played with Duffey on the Twins, Merryweather on Cleveland’s Triple-A affiliate and Borucki on Toronto’s Triple-A affiliate — extended the life of that joke and laid the groundwork for his future in a front-office role.

“I always knew that there was at least a chance that this would be the path that I’d pursue,” said Breslow, who would pose questions to the various general managers he played for — Billy Beane, Mike Hazen, Theo Epstein. “And then as my baseball career lasted and lasted, it also just became clearer and clearer that at [almost] 40, having devoted 20 years of my professional life to one thing, it was going to be really difficult to think that I could jump into a completely new industry and compete with 22-year-olds.”

Luckily for Breslow, his interests and expertise aligned. That much was clear as he overhauled his mechanics after the 2016 season, at the same time serving as a mentor for the young pitchers he played with from Double-A to the majors.

Rapsodo, originally a golf company, released its baseball tracking technology that year, and Breslow said it lent him a unit in the offseason. (He repaid the company with feedback.) In addition to dropping his arm slot, Breslow was trying to recreate some of the best pitches in baseball using pitch data.

Duffey still remembers the first time Breslow threw a “sinker” to him that “went up.”

“I was like, ‘I don’t want to play catch with you anymore if you’re going to do that,’ ” Duffey said.

In Breslow’s conversations with younger pitchers, he wanted to make analytics accessible to help them realize that a lot of the concepts were already intuitive for them.

“There was a real opportunity to have conversations with guys that were not rooted in, ‘If you don’t understand this, you’ll become a dinosaur,’ ” he said.

For example, a pitcher might not know what “seam-shifted wake” means.

“But you knew that your fastball played differently than somebody else’s who had similar velocity,” Breslow said. “And [for] all of these things, there’s a way to tell this to you where you’re not going to reject it, you’re not going to feel like it’s people at a desk in an office who are dictating the rules of the game. You’re going to be like, ‘Oh, that makes quite a bit of sense.’ And I really relish the opportunity to be that conduit.”

Reflecting on 2017 and 2018, Breslow described Duffey, Merryweather and Borucki as “bright guys.”

“On the leading edge of this analytical revolution, they all had unique abilities to do things and were looking at data to help explain what gave them their success,” he said. “And, actually, it would have been a lot of fun to stay with those guys for probably another two or three years — for a bunch of different reasons, but because each of those guys was on the cusp of their breakout.”

For Duffey, that breakout came in 2019, when he cut down on his sinker usage and relied on his four-seamer and curveball. He had career-best ERAs in back-to-back seasons. His velocity slowly declined, and the Twins released him last August, ending his run with the only organization he’d known.

When he heard the Cubs were interested this offseason, Duffey sent Breslow a text.

“There was a comfort in knowing that there’s someone here that I knew,” Duffey said.

Borucki, the youngest of the trio, debuted in 2018 as a Blue Jays starter. He converted to the bullpen in 2020 and had his best season (2.70 ERA). Toronto traded Borucki to the Mariners midway through last season, and a forearm strain sidelined him for the last two months of the season. In November, the lefty cleared waivers and elected free agency.

A conversation with Breslow helped him make his decision.

“Getting off the phone with him, I was really excited with the opportunity and what their goals were here,” Borucki said. “And I just felt like it was the best fit for me.”

Merryweather underwent Tommy John surgery and missed the 2018 season, delaying his major-league debut until 2020 with the Blue Jays. The hard-throwing right-hander had a 5.64 ERA in 47 major-league games over three seasons. Toronto designated him for assignment in January.

Breslow called Merryweather to deliver the news that the Cubs had claimed him.

“It’s cool to come full circle,” Merryweather said. “He’s still helping me out with pitching. Here we go.”

NOTE: Right fielder Seiya Suzuki (strained left oblique) played light catch Wednesday, starting baseball activities. Manager David Ross told reporters Suzuki was scheduled to take non-contact swings Thursday.

Suzuki, who suffered the injury before the Cubs’ spring-training opener, is expected to begin the season on the injured list.

Diamondbacks 3, Cubs 1

• Left-hander Drew Smyly allowed two runs in 4„ innings Thursday. Both runs scored on Caleb Roberts’ home run in the fourth inning.

• Outfielder Cody Bellinger responded with his second home run of the spring and first in Cactus League play. He also homered against Team Canada.

• Patrick Wisdom had his first multihit game of the spring. He was the only Cub with two hits.

• Right-hander Jameson Taillon, whose simulated game was rained out Wednesday, threw in a minor-league game against the Giants. In five innings, he allowed four runs and seven hits.

• On deck (split squad): Dodgers at Cubs, 3:05 p.m. Friday, Mesa, Marquee, Ryan Pepiot vs. Hayden Wesneski.

Cubs at White Sox, 3:05 p.m. Friday, Glendale, Nick Neidert vs. Mike Clevinger.