The Chicago Cubs had declared a front-of-rotation starter as their top priority very early into the offseason. But, for whatever reason, they were never able to pull the trigger on a high-profile trade or big ticket free agent acquisition.
Instead, they made a pair of calculated budget-minded acquisitions, working around the peripheral of their rotation.
The Cubs would sign rehabbed, rebuilt lefty Matthew Boyd to a 2-year, $29 million deal and veteran swing man Colin Rea for one year at $5 million.
So far, both pickups have proven to be smart, savvy acquisitions. However, not picking up a true ace-level starter meant that the Cubs would be headed into the 2025 season with almost no margin for error in the area of starting pitching.
And now, with the season-ending injury suffered to ace Justin Steele, that inability and/or unwillingness to add an impact starter seems to have come back to bite them on the proverbial rear end.
Offseason Decisions Have Come Back To Bite The Chicago Cubs
Former New York Mets GM Steve Phillips recently commented on the Cubs’ predicament in an interview on MLB Network Radio.
“He was 5th in Cy Young voting in 2023,” Phillips pointed out. “He’s an underrated ace of this staff. Now they’re going to have to find a way to navigate their way through it without him…This is a big blow for a team where there’s pressure to win.”
“You can have a much depth as you want, you can build depth to replace the numbers of pitchers but not the impact of pitcher,” Phillips continued. “You don’t have a number one starter to replace your number one starter. You’ll have to piece it together and everyone is going to have to give it a little bit more right now.”
There Was No Margin For Error
The Cubs’ “no margin for error” predicament wasn’t exactly a secret headed into the 2025 campaign. Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, himself, touched on this reality in a late March Q & A with The Athletic.
Per Hoyer:
“The National League is really challenging and when I look at our team, we have to play to our projections or better. … That’s always the concern. We have to stay healthy. We have to have guys outperform expectations…I feel like for us, we don’t have a lot of margin for error. We need guys to improve, we need to stay healthy, we need to play clean baseball. I think that the way this team is built…postseason. We have to have a really good season to do that.”
Vulnerabilities Exposed, Realities Faced
That minuscule margin for error was especially present when looking at the starting rotation.
Coming into this season, the Cubs’ rotation was topped by Steele, who had shown some physical frailties at the end of 2024 and Shota Imanaga, who was heading into his sophomore season. Behind the front two, there was Jameson Taillon, who has been inconsistent in his first two years as a Cub, and the oft-injured free agent signee, Boyd, a starter who hadn’t pitched more than 78.2 innings in a single season since 2019. Competing for the fifth starter slot was sophomore Ben Brown, Javier Assad, the demoted Jordan Wicks, and swing man Rea.
There was certainly some degree of depth in the back-end of the rotation, but zero answers for what might happen if Steele or Imanaga went down.
Now, the Cubs have to face a worst case scenario and they’ll have to overpay in trade capital if they make the move to bring in a true replacement for Steele.
Rumors abound as to who they may target in a trade, but it’s most likely that such a deal would have to wait until around the trade deadline.
Until then, a minor free agent pickup, internal options, and a hefty dose of overachieving from the rest of the starters will have to suffice for the next three-and-a-half months or so.