The Cubs made quite possibly their biggest move of the offseason Thursday afternoon. That’s not saying a whole lot, as the front office has been pretty quiet for the entirety of the offseason months.

The team signed reliever Brad Brach to a one year deal worth $4.35 million to fill what was very clearly the biggest gap in the Major League roster. According to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, the deal also includes both player and team options for a second year that could see the contract top out at $9.5 million.

Losing Jesse Chavez to the Rangers and Brandon Morrow dealing with injuries has left the bullpen group pretty depleted going into 2019 and while there is plenty of depth available down in Iowa, the team lacked back end of the bullpen arms.

Brach put together an impressive 2018 season between his time in Baltimore and Atlanta, throwing a nice 69 innings with a 3.59 ERA. He was especially tough on righty batters, allowing just a .692 OPS all year long.

While the season-long ERA isn’t exactly a thing of beauty, something to focus on is his 1.52 ERA with the Braves after the mid-season trade. The first half seemed to be just a blip on the radar from a very good looking righty reliever.

He has been one of the more underrated relievers in all of baseball over the last several years, too. A 33 year old righty, he has an ERA of 2.89 over the last 5 years including a 1.22 WHIP and 9.4 K/9.

He will immediately slot in for the latter innings, and probably even be given a chance to compete for the closers just come Opening Day until Morrow comes back.