Justin Steele Won't Be Able to Help 2026 Cubs, Except Through a Poignant Morale Boost

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of Matt Marton-Imagn Images

You might have seen the news, over the weekend, that veteran Cubs starter Justin Steele fired two shutout innings Friday for the Triple-A Iowa Cubs, striking out five in the process. It was the fourth official appearance of Steele's rehab assignment with Iowa, and the last one. It's time for Steele to rejoin the Cubs, if he's to continue pitching competitively this year, and the Cubs could sorely use a lively arm in the bullpen—especially one who's such a great competitor; who throws left-handed; and who has proved they can get out both lefties and righties in the majors.

It's my sad duty to give you the straight dope: Steele is still very much diminished. If he's not permanently broken, he's at least out of commission, and more service will be needed to get him back online. Even in that latest outing (by far his best for Iowa), Steele was only sitting around 90 miles per hour with his fastball. At his best, from 2022-24, Steele sat 92 and touched 96; this is a tangible loss of velocity for a pitcher who didn't have it to spare.

The lost velocity on Steele's slider matters, too, for its implications about his ability to miss bats against big-league hitters. The hard cutter that is his primary fastball has also picked up a troubling tendency to cut even more than it used to; that's going to make it less deceptive.

Again, we all know Steele to be a great competitor and a skilled athlete. However, he's never had an especially deep arsenal, and the two pitches he's always leaned on are now markedly worse. To succeed in the majors with his present stuff, he'd have to be razor-sharp in terms of locations. Even as he sliced through a Triple-A lineup Sunday, though, Steele didn't show the ability to do that. The truth is that what little success he's had in the minors this fall needs to be chalked up to pitching in the minors; he's nowhere near a big-league-caliber pitcher right now.

This is bad news on every possible level. If you were holding out hope that Steele would return to save the 2026 bullpen and become a playoff hero, you're out of luck. It gets worse still, though. He's almost 18 months removed from Tommy John surgery—his second. If this is the best he can muster even in a short stint, after that much time, it's very likely that Steele will be unable to help the 2027 Cubs. The team would have to pay him almost $7 million to keep him via arbitration this fall. They could strike a deal with him instead, bringing him back on an incentive-laden deal with a low base salary, but there's a real chance that Steele will depart the Cubs organization for good before Thanksgiving.

It's just a confluence of the realities of his injury and the business of the game; he's a year from free agency and positioned to earn more money than he's likely to be worth. The team has showed their willingness to be frank and ruthless in such situations, even while being grateful for their pitchers' work. This is just a slightly higher-profile version of the sequence that saw Adbert Alzolay leave the organization two years ago.

All of that sucks. It leaves only one small way for everyone involved to benefit. Steele should be called up to join the team at some point during the final home series against the Marlins. After the Cubs clinch a playoff berth (likely to happen Tuesday), Steele should get a chance to pitch once more in the majors for the team that drafted him, and to which he has belonged for 12 years. He can't give them a bullpen boost next month, and he can't be counted upon as a starter for 2027. Many fans aren't even thinking about that yet, and hopefully, Steele himself hasn't acceded to that way of thinking, either. It's all true, though. Looming on the horizon is the probable end of his tenure with the Cubs.

The vibes around the Cubs are shaky right now. Alex Bregman's serious facial injury casts a pall even over the imminent clinch of a playoff spot. Barring a miraculous run from a few key guys, the pitching staff is too thin for the team to go win a World Series, and everyone knows it. And Steele, like Ben Brown and Cade Horton, has only an uncertain future in the game, not long after being an All-Star. It would do everyone some good—Steele, the fans, and the team itself—if Steele could climb the mound at Wrigley, hear the fans' raucous ovation, and check the box of making it back to the bigs after his second major elbow surgery. It sounds terribly small, and maybe it is, but it's the only way Steele will be able to help the club this fall—this and, perhaps, some roaring and cheering from the railing of the dugout next month, having at least nominally reclaimed his right to be there.

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[Irrelevant Dude]

This certainly puts a damper on things.

Give him the offseason to rest and then build back up with a full (labor agreement notwithstanding) spring and hopefully we will see him back near 100% in April.