Jose Veras officially named Cubs’ closer

Perhaps by shortening games to eight innings, the Cubs can climb higher in the ranks.

Nobody is expecting them to win the division, but the Cubs have one piece of their roster ready for the season. New manager Rick Renteria named free agent acquisition Jose Veras the club’s closer on Thursday. The rest of the bullpen, however, is yet to be determined, as Renteria says in this piece for the Sun Times.

"These guys are capable of falling into any role. These are discussions that we still continue to have. As we get closer to breaking camp, I’m sure those questions will be answered. We just went over all the pen arms that we have in camp here, and there’s no comparison between the quality of power arms that are in camp now and candidates to make the pen – the depth we’ll have at Iowa behind them – and where we were two years ago."

Last year, under Dale Sveum, the Cubs finished in last in the NL Central at 66-96. Much of that can be attributed to the fact that their bullpen had one of the highest totals in blown saves last seasons with 26.

Veras hopes to anchor down the back end of that bullpen. Last season, in his first season as a closer with the Astros before being traded to Detroit to be a set-up man, Veras posted a 3.02 ERA and earned 21 saves while putting up an 8.6 K/9 and 2.73 K/BB.