Cubs latest roster move is the opposite of what the team should be doing

The Chicago Cubs have a bullpen problem. That's one of the worst-kept secrets in all of baseball. Hector Neris blew yet another save on Monday to drop the Cubs to a season-worst five games under .500. They're in last place in the NL Central and only trending further in the wrong direction.

Simply put, if the Cubs don't make moves to fix this bullpen sometime in the not-too-distant future, their season might be over. They're in the NL Wild Card hunt right now, but that has more to do with the National League only having four good teams.

While it's probably unrealistic to see the Cubs go out and pull off a blockbuster in mid-June, they could, at the very least, see what they have in their organization. Instead, the Cubs opted to take a pitcher who was pitching well in the minors, Carl Edwards Jr., and not grant him a promotion to the majors leading to the 32-year-old opting out of the minor league contract he signed with Chicago.

Cubs inexplicably release a MLB-caliber reliever in latest roster move

If the name Carl Edwards Jr. sounds familiar to Cubs fans, that's because he played parts of the first five seasons of his career with Chicago and was an important piece of their bullpen. He even made 36 appearances in their World Series year of 2016. He hasn't had much success since leaving the Cubs, pitching for five different MLB teams, but he was pitching well in AAA this season.

The right-hander had a 1.85 ERA in 20 appearances and 24.1 innings of work for AAA Iowa. His walks were inflated, but he allowed just one home run and had a respectable 22 strikeouts. What's even crazier is Edwards threw 11 consecutive scoreless innings spanning his last ten appearances before his release.

Obviously, it'd be unreasonable to expect Edwards to maintain a sub-2.00 ERA at the MLB level, but how in the world did a team like the Cubs not even give him a chance? Virtually the entire bullpen with the exception of Tyson Miller has struggled mightily. Why not see what you have?

Even if Edwards didn't pitch well, he can't be much worse than what Chicago already has in their bullpen. If he did pitch well, then the Cubs finally had someone Craig Counsell would be able to rely on. To not even give him a chance is malpractice. The Cubs could very well see this come back to bite them if Edwards signs elsewhere and has MLB success, especially if that comes in the National League.