The Chicago Cubs got dealt a devastating blow last week with the news that lefty Justin Steele would be lost for the rest of the 2025 season due to elbow surgery. Steele had established himself as the team's co-ace alongside Shota Imanaga, and was coming off seven brilliant, shutout innings against the Texas Rangers in his most recent start.
Losing a pitcher like that, especially at this point in the year, would be a significant blow for any team. So in some sense you can't blame the Cubs for being a bit behind the 8-ball when it comes to their rotation moving forward; injuries happen, especially in this day and age, and pitchers like Steele don't exactly grow on trees, after all.
But while there was no way for Chicago to predict that Steele would go down, and it would be unreasonable to expect the team to avoid a downgrade ... man, did the downgrade really have to be this steep?
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Justin Steele injury threatens to expose Cubs' too-tepid offseason
As things stand, the Cubs have four starting spots accounted for in Imanaga, Jameson Taillon, Matthew Boyd and rookie righty Ben Brown. Imanaga is rock solid, but Taillon isn't much more than an innings-eater, while Boyd has his own sketchy health record to worry about. And that's not even touching on who will fill the No. 5 spot: Javier Assad is still coming back from a spring oblique injury, while lefty Jordan Wicks pitched to a 5.48 ERA last season.
There are vanishingly few sure things in this rotation right now, is the bottom line, and it's unclear exactly how Chicago is going to come up with the innings necessary to navigate a long regular season — even if its powerful offense keeps on mashing. And while, again, you can't expect a team to predict injury to a key player, it's not hard to pause and think back to all those quotes president Jed Hoyer gave over the offseason about how important it was for the Cubs to bolster their starting pitching situation.
But Hoyer, in typical fashion, failed to deliver despite talking a big game. Chicago's rotation reinforcements never materialized, settling for the early Boyd acquisition while making excuses about how the value just never really lined up. And now here they are, facing the worst-case scenario, wishing they had maybe been a little bit more irrational this past winter.
The Cubs knew that their rotation was a question mark even with Steele healthy, and they also knew that injuries are simply the reality at the position in 2025. They decided to roll the dice anyway, and now they're left to face the consequences after they came up snake eyes. Maybe a trade for someone like Sandy Alcantara at the deadline will save the day, but desperation is never a good place to deal from, and it's hard not to feel like Hoyer left his roster in too vulnerable a position.