Elite Starting Pitching Keeping Cubs from Tailspin for Time Being
The Cubs have looked pretty rough over the past few weeks, but it could be worse. We’ve already looked at how their offense has been near the bottom of the barrel since the All-Star break, and they started trending down a couple of weeks before. Just think of where they’d be without the best starting pitching in Major League Baseball during that time.
Yes, you read that right.
Despite all the injuries and the lack of an impact deadline acquisition, the Cubs have had baseball’s best rotation. since the start of July. Well, as long as you use ERA as the measuring stick. Since July 1, a span of 34 games, Cubs starters have an MLB-best 3.01 ERA with a 3.70 FIP that sits fifth. They’ve held opponents to a .215 average, a mere thousandth of a point behind the Brewers and Mariners for best in baseball. If we look at results since the break, the Cubs are still at the top of the pile with a league-leading 3.31 ERA and fourth-best 3.60 FIP.
The only problem, other than the lack of run support, is that their starters haven’t pitched nearly as many innings as the top teams in the league. With 179.1 innings since July 1, Cubs starters are in 20th place and nearly 30 innings behind the Mariners and Marlins (207). Their 111.1 innings in the second half rank 24th and trail the M’s by 27.1 frames.
Oh, there is one other problem here: The bullpen’s 5.38 ERA since July 1 ranks 26th and its 5.09 FIP sits 29th. Things have gotten slightly better in the second half, but only slightly, as their 5.24 ERA ranks 23rd and 5.01 FIP sits 26th. When the offense can’t score runs and the bullpen can keep other teams at bay, you’re going to have a tough time winning many ballgames.
The Cubs’ collective performance over the last few weeks has exacerbated a cycle that was highly probable, if not inevitable, from the start of the season. Justin Steele‘s injury put more pressure on a unit that already lacked workhorses, then Shōta Imanaga‘s trip to the IL tattooed an exclamation point on it. A mix of inexperience and injury history meant this team was going to have to get a lot of good fortune, and that just hasn’t been the case.
Matthew Boyd is already up to 135.2 innings — 57 more than in any season since 2019 — when the hope in spring training was that he’d be able to give them 120. Colin Rea wasn’t supposed to be a regular starter, yet here we are. Ben Brown had never thrown more than 104 innings in a season at the professional level, and Cade Horton had only logged 122.2 innings over the previous two years after a very brief college career. Horton is already at 108.1 innings, 20 more than he’s ever thrown, and Brown is likewise at a career high of 105.1 innings.
Even with help on the way, Craig Counsell is going to have to figure out how to bail water out of the boat at a faster pace than it’s streaming in. Javier Assad is back, but he barely scraped out four frames in Tuesday’s loss and has never been an innings-eater. Jameson Taillon should return for the series against the Brewers next week, provided his rehab start in Iowa goes well, so there’s 5-6 innings every fifth day the Cubs get back. Michael Soroka, the only rotation help Jed Hoyer managed to bring in at the deadline, may be back from the IL by early September.
The front office knew the rotation would have to be good to ease the burden on a piecemeal bullpen that actually ended up being pretty good. But that can only last so long before injuries and/or overuse take their toll. The rotation wasn’t built to be among the league leaders in innings, and now a scuffling offense keeps putting the Cubs in too many high-leverage situations for those relievers to work out of. That forces the starters to go deeper to save the ‘pen, but many of those starters need to have their workloads limited.
If the bats can’t get back to their old ways, and soon, it’s entirely possible for the pitching staff to get out over its skis in a bad way. At the risk of being an alarmist, which is not typically my bag, I don’t think there’s much left to prevent a downward spiral if things get sideways for a game or three. Whether that’s an injury or a really bad pair of starts, the Cubs can ill afford to have their depth challenged.
I won’t go so far as to say the sky is falling, but I’ve got my insurance company at the ready in case we get hail damage.
