Cubs and left hand Charlie Barnes agreed to a minor league deal, according to the trade tracker on Barnes’ MLB.com profile page. Tread Athletics reported the deal earlier this month.
Barnes, 30, was a fourth-round pick by the Twins back in 2017 who makes his MLB debut back in 2021. He worked mostly out of the rotation during his time with Minnesota but posted a 5.92 ERA along with a 5.06 FIP in 38 innings in nine appearances (eight starts). During that time in the majors, Barnes walked (16) almost as many players as he struck out (20). He was pressed off the team’s 40-man roster in November before the Rule 5 defense deadline, but after being assigned to active duty he was able to rise to a contract to play overseas with the Lotte Giants of the KBO.
That time in South Korea served Barnes very well. In his first three seasons with the Giants, Barnes started 86 games and posted a 3.42 ERA. He got his strikeout rate to 22.4% while keeping his walks to just 6.9%, and was the hero of Lotte’s staff in his three full seasons with the club. Unfortunately, however, Barnes struggled to return to the team for a fourth season in 2025. He made just eight starts with a 5.32 ERA as his strikeout rate dropped to 18.6% while his walk rate increased to 8.3%. He was released by the Giants in May and returned to the country to get a minor league deal with the Reds. He started six games at Triple-A Louisville but struggled badly with a 7.13 ERA in 24 innings of work.
Five dominant starts (2.84 ERA) in the Dominican Winter League offer some level of hope that a comeback could be on the way for Barnes, but the southpaw has yet to find significant national results in his career with a Triple-A ERA approaching 5.00 and an MLB ERA to run above that. That being said, he will enter 2026 coming off a successful run overseas and the Cubs will look for ways to translate that success into stateside football. Assuming Barnes remains the starter with Chicago, he’s buried deep on the team’s depth chart on paper. Late Horton, Shota Imanaga, Matthew Boyd, Jameson Taillonagain Colin Rea they are all holdovers from last year’s rotation, and that’s before mentioning the newly acquired right Edward Cabrera.
Cabrera figures to push Rea into a deeper role near the pitchers Javier Assad, Ben Brownagain Jordan Wicks. Justin Steele won’t be ready for Opening Day but is expected to return from elbow surgery sometime in the first half, while senior Jaxon Wiggins it could be a factor before the end of the year and depending on how you develop. That leaves Barnes competing with infielders like himself Connor Noland 12th spot on the team’s depth chart, but almost every player the Cubs have in their rotation mix has a significant, recent injury in their history.
That could lead to an opportunity even for someone as low on the depth chart as Barnes, especially if a player like Brown or Wicks is moved to a full-time bullpen role as a way to use the team’s deep cache of rotation options to improve the relief corps. It’s also possible that the Cubs will try Barnes himself in a relief role, but the southpaw has started 228 of his 241 professional games and was last relieved back in 2021. Even that relief outing lasted 4 2/3 innings, so it goes without saying that going to the shortstop would be good outside of Barnes’ normal career boundaries.
