After an incredible season in Triple-A Iowa, Chicago has decided to bring back the lefty swing man Kyle Ryan for the 2019 season. With that deal, Ryan becomes the first Major League signing for the Cubs in this dreadfully slow offseason.

Ryan signed a Minor League deal with the Cubs last offseason after spending the previous eight seasons in the Detroit Tigers organization. Now this season he has decided to re-sign with the Cubs, this time on a Major League deal.

The big 6’5″ lefty put up terrific numbers across the board in Iowa in 22 games (8 starts). He sported a 2.86 ERA and a 3.76 xFIP to go along with very adequate strikeout and walk rates at 23.7% and 7.0% respectively.

In addition, he was one of the best in all of Minor League Baseball last year at generating ground balls with an insane 61% ground ball rate.

So what does all of this mean? Well, Ryan is a spitting image (albeit possibly a poor mans version) of Mike Montgomery in the fact that he is big, lefty swing man who rolls a ton of ground balls. That kind of arm is incredibly valuable no matter how you shake it.

Ryan still has one option year available which means we may see him riding the shuttle between Iowa and Chicago several times throughout the year, but he will be playing a significant role for the Cubs in the year 2019.