Cubs' Mandate This Winter: Build a Pitching Staff That Misses Bats. Finally, Really.

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Chicago Cubs pitchers walked batters at a lower rate than any other staff in baseball in 2025. They made use of a great team defense and pitched to contact, forcing opponents to beat them (if they could) with solo home runs. It often worked; that's how the Cubs won 92 games. In the NLDS, though, their luck finally ran out. First of all, the Brewers—baseball's most patient team—did force a few crucial walks. More importantly, though, they stayed dangerous in two-strike counts, and hit enough home runs to beat the Cubs—some of them solo, some of them three-run blasts.

Brewers batters stacked up a shocking 10 hits in two-strike counts with two outs in the inning, including several of the pivotal plays of the series. Andrew Vaughn's series-altering homers in Games 2 and 5 each came in that situation. So did Jackson Chourio's three-run shot in Game 2 and William Contreras's first-inning volley in Game 5. Blake Perkins hit a full-count, two-out single to keep the rally going during the Brewers' destructive first inning in Game 1, and Chourio made it a blowout with a two-strike two-run single later in that frame. The Cubs worked ahead, but they could not put the Brewers away—not in at-bats, not in innings, and not in the series. It's why they're now at home.

Plenty of credit for that belongs to Milwaukee; it's very much in their nature. They were the best two-out, two-strike offense in baseball this year, and they were in the top three in two-strike hitting regardless of base-out state. However, another major segment of the responsibility for the way all those pivotal at-bats unfolded has to be allocated to the Cubs.

Chicago hurlers struck out 21.4% of opposing batters this season. That strikeout rate ranked 21st of the 30 big-league teams, the lowest of the 12 teams who qualified for the playoffs. The Red Sox, who fanned 22.1% of their opponents (18th-best) were the closest to them; the other 10 teams who made it to October finished in the top 13 in pitcher strikeout rate. When it comes to whiffs per swing, the Cubs were a ghastly 27th, and the identities of the three teams behind them tells the story: Rockies, Cardinals, Nationals.

There are tradeoffs involved in chasing swing-and-miss arms. Those guys are very expensive to acquire, and very difficult to develop—to say nothing of keeping them healthy. That ability to limit walks stems in part from being willing to fill up the zone, which costs a few punchouts. Building the brilliant defense they have behind that staff is expensive, too; the Cubs are paying roughly $55 million in 2026 for the glove-over-bat profiles of key veterans Ian Happ, Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner. If you want to bolster your pitching, you have to be willing either to spend a lot more money or to lose some of that great fielding prowess.

Nonetheless, this winter, the Cubs have to do it. Somehow, some way, they have to add lots of swings and misses to their pitching staff. They found out, late in the season and especially in October, just how far they can get with the kind of staff they've so assiduously constructed over the last several years: the Division Series. That constituted success in 2025, but it won't qualify as success in 2026. For now, that's the last season under contract for Happ, Hoerner, Seiya Suzuki, Jameson Taillon, Carson Kelly and Matthew Boyd. It's Swanson's age-32 season. The Cubs are steadily working in young hitters who they hope will make a big difference in the medium term, but they have to make some hay in 2026. On several levels, that's important to the long-term health of the franchise. Another second-place finish in the NL Central and second-round playoff exit would not be met as warmly, by fans or by ownership, one year from now.

To avoid it, they have to induce more whiffs. Even the guys you think of as strikeout-capable on the Cubs roster struggled to punch people out during their brief playoff run this fall. Other than their top two left-handed relievers, no one missed bats the way the team needs to miss them to win more next October.

• Daniel Palencia: 3 strikeouts in 29 batters faced
• Brad Keller: 5 SO, 22 BF
• Andrew Kittredge: 3 SO, 21 BF
• Matthew Boyd: 9 SO, 45 BF
• Shota Imanaga: 6 SO, 30 BF
• Jameson Taillon: 7 SO, 32 BF
• Colin Rea: 3 SO, 33 BF
• Drew Pomeranz: 6 SO, 19 BF
• Caleb Thielbar: 5 SO, 16 BF

Thielbar, Pomeranz and Keller are all impending free agents. Kittredge, Rea and Imanaga have club options on which the team will have to decide soon. There's every chance to remake this pitching staff this winter, except for one problem: there aren't a lot of great candidates to bolster the specific trait in which the team is deficient. Dylan Cease, Jack Flaherty and Michael King are the best strikeout guys in the starting pitching free-agent class; Framber Valdez and Ranger Suárez are great lefties oriented much more toward ground balls than toward punchouts. Zac Gallen and Brandon Woodruff could hit the open market, but there are reasons to harbor major reservations about the ability of either to return to their previous levels of performance, especially with regard to missing bats.

There are a fistful of good options in the relief market. The Cubs could (and probably will) also explore the trade market, where guys like (stop me when this list sounds familiar) Edward Cabrera, Sandy Alcantara, Pablo López, Joe Ryan, Luis Severino, Sonny Gray, Drew Rasmussen, Jacob deGrom and MacKenzie Gore might become available. They should certainly also address their scouting and development paradigm, to try to grow more hard-throwing pitchers who can miss bats from within their system. The difference between their bullpen and most of the others in this year's playoff field is less about sheer performance and more about the fact that many of the other pens are largely homegrown and hard-throwing, whereas the Cubs cobbled together a bunch of free-agent pickups and waiver claims to get this far. Next year, they need a full season of Cade Horton, but that's far from sufficient. They'll hope to get a bunch of big-league innings (and strikeouts) from Jaxon Wiggins, and to find another good arm or two in their system, but they need to get better at filling the pipeline with such arms.

One way or another, though, they're going to have to plunge some resources into boosting their ability to strike out opposing hitters, and that's going to be very expensive. Since they also need to reinforce their offense this winter, the bills are starting to pile up on Tom Ricketts's desk, even before he can finish counting the money he made during the team's foray into the playoffs this fall. Whether he elects to pay those bills or pay the penalties associated with refusing to, it's too early to tell—and for fans, the frustrating truth is that the penalties for not ponying up won't be paid by ownership, if that's the way it goes. Instead, they'll be paid by fans and the team on the field, in the form of missed opportunities to win more games and advance further next autumn.

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