Edward Cabrera's First Cubs Start Offered a Brilliant Glimpse of a Long, Bright Future

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images

No rain or thick, heavy gray coldness scumbled the skies as the Cubs played their first night game of 2026. In fact, the North Side of Chicago put on one of the great shows of which it's more capable than many people credit, proclaiming itself a four-season city with a gorgeous little summer preview. The outfield walls are still covered only in brown, but the skies were a soft, sometimes inscrutable purple-and-orange as sunset came Monday night, leaving Wrigley Field aglow in a way that often has to wait until nearly Memorial Day. Under such auspicious skies, Edward Cabrera clambered to the top of the cairn for the first time in Cubs pinstripes.

Cabrera, 27, has become a bit less heralded an acquisition than it seemed he would be when the Cubs first pulled the trigger on a deal with the Marlins in January. At the time, he seemed a vital infusion of high-end stuff for the starting rotation, and there was little else about the team's offseason about which any fans were excited. Since then, the team has signed Alex Bregman to a five-year free-agent deal and extended both Pete Crow-Armstrong and Nico Hoerner through 2032, making Cabrera seem a bit less like a headliner. In truth, though, he might be as important as anyone to the team's pursuit of its first full-season division title in almost a decade—and he showed why on Monday.

In six efficient innings, Cabrera struck out five visiting Angels batters and only allowed two baserunners: one walk, and one hit, a harmless single on a curveball he left up in the fourth inning. He wasn't razor-sharp, in terms of command, but his stuff overwhelmed his opponents. His fastball sat right around 97 miles per hour, and he got 15 whiffs on 40 swings, with most of them coming on his dazzling array of breaking stuff and his signature changeup.

Let's take a moment, though, to talk about that heater. Cabrera made only very sparing use of his sinker Monday night, and threw 22 four-seamers out of his 80 total pitches. Only twice last year did he throw more four-seamers in a game. It seems clear, as we discussed early in spring training, that Cabrera will throw more heaters—and particularly more four-seamers, despite the lousy Stuff grades and generally tepid results that pitch has tended to get—this season than he did in his final campaign with the Marlins.

That will continue to surprise some, who watched Cabrera enjoy a breakout in 2025 partially by throttling back on the usage of the four-seamer. Its share of his total pitch count Monday night was roughly double what he averaged last year. Again, though, the Cubs throw more four-seamers than any other team in baseball; it should surprise no one to see them work with a newcomer to find the ways in which that pitch will work for him.

As the lineup turned over, he did lean more into his changeup, which is one argument in favor of throwing the fastball more. By forcing hitters—he used the heat especially often against Mike Trout and Jorge Soler, strapping sluggers known for their bat speed but never great high-fastball hitters—to respect that pitch, Cabrera can get more mileage out of everything else, up to and including right-on-right changeups, especially as he gets deeper into outings. 

Cabrera's slider also got five whiffs for him, on just nine swings. He threw the pitch exclusively to right-handed batters, and he had a new spin profile on it. Though thrown at the same velocity as it had last year, the pitch acted a bit more like a cutter, with less glove-side movement but more backspin, making it harder for the batter to distinguish from his fastball than it was last year. 

That pitch has been the subject of a bit of a quest for Cabrera over the last year. He had a home base to which he repeatedly returned in terms of movement, but four separate times in 2025, he had two-start stints in which he tired something new with it. In the plot below, the point highlighted with red text shows where Cabrera's slider was working in Monday's outing. Around that, I've identified where he most often worked over the last two years, as well as each of the excursions he attempted toward new slider frontiers.

He might yet go back to what he was doing before, but the change to the spin characteristics of the pitch suggests that the Cubs view a more cutterish slider as worth a try. For one night, at least, it worked like a charm.

The curveball was also working. Cabrera threw that pitch 13 times, and got three whiffs (on five swings) and four called strikes with it. The most important thing was that, in addition to being able to take something off and land it in the zone, he showed the ability to get the pitch up to 87-88 miles per hour at times. That's a level of power on the curve few pitchers can match, and last year, he was at his best with that offering when he threw it hardest.

Velocity Band	No.	Horiz. Mvmt.	IVB	Whiff Rate	RV/100
< 83 MPH	115	11.2	-10.5	36.1	0.89
83-85 MPH	280	11	-11.2	43.6	1.06
85+ MPH	157	10.6	-10.9	50	2.35

If a pitch isn't losing movement as it gets harder, it's little wonder that it generates more whiffs and better results. Cabrera did see the velocity on the curve decline sharply later in his outing Monday night, which is only logical. It might make sense, as he shifts to a more fastball-forward pitch mix, to blend the curve in with the heater early in outings, then go more changeup- and slider-heavy as the game wears on, since those pitches' effectiveness depend less on velocity than do his heat and his hook.

Really, though, Monday night was about more than these nuts and bolts. It was a chance to celebrate (and fantasize about) the future the Cubs are trying to build. The offense put up plenty of runs, and the team won comfortably. More than that, Cabrera looked in control, and when he needed it, he got great defensive support from the defense behind him—a group that, like Cabrera, will be in Chicago for quite a while. The team dropped two games to a dreadful Nationals club to start the season, but in their two wins, Cabrera and Cade Horton have worked quickly, shown exceptional stuff and athleticism, and been surrounded and supported by what is now the locked-in core of what the team hopes is its next champion. Under the pale but pleasant twilight sky Monday night, it was easy to believe that that bright a day is dawning for the Cubs.

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