Was the Cubs' Pitching Injury Crisis Inevitable?

[Brian Kelder]

Image courtesy of © Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

The Cubs' pitching depth has been annihilated by injuries. The bullpen has lost its projected closer and top three setup options. Cade Horton is done for the year, and Justin Steele just had a setback. The rotation in Iowa is so thin that they only have one traditional starter. This isn't luck. This is a risky plan gone awry.

Let's look at the injuries one by one. You'll see the common thread: not randomness, but identifiable durability concerns. 

• Cade Horton: Elbow; previous Tommy John surgery and shoulder issues
• Caleb Thielbar: Hamstring; 39 years old
• Hunter Harvey: Tricepts; pitched 15 innings combined the past two years
• Daniel Palencia: Lat strain; battled shoulder issues last year and throws a million miles an hour
• Ethan Roberts: Attacked by a falling vent; is not rich enough to have others do routine housework or to buy fancy no-slice vents
• Riley Martin: Elbow inflammation; is a pitcher
• Phil Maton: Knee, also older pitcher (now back on the roster)
• Matthew Boyd: Bicep strain; has been hurt more than healthy in career spanning over a decade (now back on the roster)

Let's look at the bullpen first. Relying on two pitchers over age 35 as your high-leverage adds is always going to carry added risk. Their arms are sound, but the aches and pains and strains come fast and furious as you age. With Maton's knee and Thielbar's hamstring, this struck. Soft tissue and joint injuries become more common for older players. Added to the risk inherent in the pitchers' arms, this was always a gamble.

The younger pitchers were also risky. Any contribution by Harvey was always going to be a bonus; that's why spending so much on him felt peculiar in the first place. Palencia is battling recurring shoulder issues, and even top-100 prospect Jaxon Wiggins is injured, taking away a possibility for help. Jed Hoyer tried to build a bullpen, but each player took a significant durability concern into the season.

The Cubs put a huge amount of faith in Horton this year. That, too, was always a gamble. Horton came into his pro career having pitched 53 2/3 innings in college and coming off Tommy John surgery. He was then babied through a year in the minors, averaging barely four innings per start, only to injure his shoulder the next year. Horton is a prime example of the axiom that the best predictor of future injury is past injury, particularly when the injuries are all to the same pitching arm. The team babied him again in late 2025, and he still went down, again.

The rest of the rotation has a similar risk. Edward Cabrera has been injured for parts of every year of his career. Boyd is 35 and has his own injury demons to counter. Colin Rea is 35, and Javier Assad had a lost season last year with an oblique issue. Shota Imanaga had a hamstring issue last year. Jameson Taillon had a calf strain and a groin strain.

The Cubs didn't spend on Dylan Cease, who cost a premium because he never misses a start. Instead, they chose to spread their resources more evenly (and, of course, to spend less than the Blue Jays are spending on their roster, overall). This could work if arms are available to call up, but to this point, there are no reliable options in the minor leagues. Instead, they now have a cheaper but thinner rotation, and it's backfired. They'll have to spend either money or farm-system talent (the latter, at least, being in short supply at the moment) to reinforce this stuff before the trade deadline.

This can all still work, given the Cubs' elite defense and deep offense. The Cubs should remain in contention this summer. But against good teams, both in the regular season and the playoffs, pitching reigns supreme. The Cubs, at this point, are lacking in that department, with few internal options to supplement. It's probably more a failure of the scouting and development side than anything else, but that's Hoyer's responsibility, just as his choices with regard to trades and free agency are. 

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