Cubs Sign Jorge De La Rosa, Option Randy Rosario, Place Yu Darvish on 60-Day DL

The Cubs announced that they have signed lefty reliever Jorge De La Rosa, who had been DFA’d by the Diamondbacks on July 31 and released on August 4. In order to make room on the active roster, they optioned Randy Rosario. They also moved Yu Darvish to the 60-day DL, which is merely a procedural move to free up a spot on the 40-man roster and not at all indicative of Darvish’s availability in the next few weeks.

The 37-year-old De La Rosa wasn’t putting up very good numbers in Arizona, but the Cubs are counting on a bounceback from him in Chicago. His 4.89 walks and 1.54 homers per nine innings are both scary numbers, they’d better be hoping the Midwest humidity impacts things in a big way. Then again, he’s posted an 8.27 ERA and 7.50 FIP away from Chase Field this season.

What’s really kind of wild about the elevated home run numbers is that De La Rosa is a pretty big groundball pitcher, keeping roughly 51 percent of balls in play out of the air. We’ll see how this plays out, but it feels sorta like one of those flyers on a veteran who could act as a LOOGY for a little while.

There’s very little risk here, but I’m having a hard time seeing much reward either.