As playoffs show importance of pitching depth, Cubs will continue search for more arms

Every team in baseball is searching for pitching. Whether their team is stacked with it or not, finding more depth is a near obsession for front offices across the game.

There will be many who continue to criticize Cubs team president Jed Hoyer for not adding another starting pitcher at the deadline. And Hoyer has admitted it bit them by the time the playoffs came around.

“Obviously, at the end, with some injuries and the nature of the series we played, I think there was probably some depth that we could have used on the pitching staff,” Hoyer said. “That’s an area that we’ll always continue to try to focus on.”

Cade Horton’s injury and Shota Imanaga’s struggles forced manager Craig Counsell to piece things together in a way that likely led his team to run out of gas at the very end. One could argue that the offense didn’t do enough. That was certainly the case in their final game of the season, a 3-1 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers.

But in the first two games of that series, Cubs pitchers gave up a combined 16 runs. The starters in those games combined for 3⅓ innings and 10 runs (six earned) allowed.

Hoyer certainly learned a lesson. But it may not be the one for which some are hammering him. Hoyer seems adamant that the prices at the deadline were unreasonable. A move would have cost him either Horton or Matt Shaw, two key contributors at times over the season’s second half.

“It is really difficult to do that midseason now,” Hoyer said of adding starting pitching. “And I think it’s becoming even more difficult with the new playoff format. There’s fewer sellers, there’s just many more teams that are in the race that have a chance and then even some teams that weren’t in the race made decisions to not trade.”

Hoyer knows there are two ways to solve this problem. It’s either through the draft — where the Cubs found Horton, Justin Steele and top prospect Jaxon Wiggins — or through free agency and trades in the off-season. The team nearly took care of the issue last winter. A deal for Jesús Luzardo was done, but the Cubs’ medical staff didn’t clear Luzardo and it was never consummated.

Luzardo was a part of a dominant Philadelphia Phillies rotation. The lefty made 32 starts and had a 3.92 ERA in 183⅔ innings. What the Cubs could have used most from Luzardo was his velocity (he averaged 96.5 mph with his fastball) and strikeouts (his 28.5% strikeout rate ranked sixth in all of baseball).

It’s hard to ignore the Cubs’ team strength when talking about pitching. Their defense is elite. They have six Gold Glove finalists. Dansby Swanson, who wasn’t nominated, is as consistent at shortstop as they come. The defense is a big reason why Chicago had a team ERA of 3.81 (ninth in MLB) and starters’ ERA of 3.83 (eighth).

But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to improve.

“When the ball is not in play is better than when it’s in play, by definition,” Hoyer said. “You’re always looking for stuff and strikeouts. We’ll continue to push that. But I think the combination of our pitching infrastructure and a combination of our defense, I think we can get the most out of a lot of pitchers because I do feel like we make plays and I think that that shows up almost every night.”

The Cubs’ bullpen actually improved significantly in terms of strikeouts over the course of the year. The rotation, though, was never quite adept in that area at any point in the year. They ranked 23rd with a 20.5% strikeout rate. The league average strikeout rate for starters was 21.8%. No Cubs starter who topped 30 innings this season was able to top that. The Cubs’ rotation ranked 24th in average fastball velocity at 93.4 mph.

This isn’t a new development. It was an issue last winter, and it continues to be something that they need to address. There was hope within the organization that Ben Brown could add that element to the rotation — he certainly has both velocity and swing-and-miss stuff. The issue was his lack of consistency and his inability to limit hard contact. It remains to be seen whether he’ll be tried as a starter again, moved permanently to the bullpen or used as a piece in a trade.

There are reasons to expect internal improvement. Horton seemed to really learn how to harness his full arsenal as the season went along. In his final nine starts, he had a 26% strikeout rate. He did this without sacrificing command or giving up significantly more hard contact. It was an incredibly impressive final stretch for the rookie and he will be looked at as a huge piece of the puzzle in 2026.

Steele isn’t a pure strikeout artist, but his career rate of 24.4% will help boost this area as well. But the Cubs know they have to continue to unearth more swing-and-miss pitchers. Whether it’s signing an obvious stuff guy like Dylan Cease, trading for a stud like Joe Ryan or looking for value like they did with Boyd (his strikeout numbers really dipped near the end of the season), adding more to the rotation, and just the pitching staff in general, is a must.

Fortifying this area and creating more depth is a good way to ensure a return to the playoffs. Beyond that, the Cubs know that pitching of all kinds is what they’ll need to make an even deeper run than they did this fall.

“I think when you watch this postseason and look at different teams, I think that everyone is focused on that because the game has changed,” Hoyer said. “With kind of one exception, you’re not having a lot of guys going deep in games, you’re using a ton of arms. The early rounds of the postseason involve, for almost everyone, a lot of bullpenning and things like that. So yeah, it puts a lot more emphasis on pitching depth than ever before. I think we did a good job of that this year in a lot of ways. But I think we have to just continue to push to get better.”

© 2025 The Athletic Media Company. All Rights Reserved. Distributed by New York Times Licensing.