After the Los Angeles Dodgers came to town and completely outclassed the Cubs, outscoring them 20-3 over a three-game sweep, David Ross said that to be a championship-caliber club, it would take great starting pitching. That weekend concluded a 3-14 stretch that has set the Cubs on a course toward another July sell-off and has fans wondering when they’ll see a winner at Wrigley Field again.
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Through May 8, the date of that final loss to the Dodgers, the Cubs starting staff was 27th in baseball with a 5.27 ERA and under 4 1/3 innings per start. But since that game, they’ve found some semblance of competence. Yes, the level of competition has dropped, but they’ve won three straight series against the Padres, Diamondbacks and Pirates and gone 6-3 overall. And it’s the starting pitching that has made all the difference, posting a 2.54 ERA and averaging nearly 5 2/3 innings during that stretch.
While the offense has had its fair share of moments during this upturn in play, Ross is right, they’ve been carried by their pitching. The bullpen has been brilliant all season long, but the team’s best play has come when the starters aren’t giving up early leads or forcing relievers to work more than half the game. As much as Ross’ focus is on the 2022 season, the reality is this season isn’t likely to end with a postseason appearance. Just getting close to .500, seeing some young talent come up to the big leagues and figuring out what pieces they may have to be a part of a future contender would be a win.
But the question then becomes how long is this rebuild going to take? Jed Hoyer has shown in his early run as team president that he’s not the sentimental type. He also doesn’t take half measures. For him not to move nearly every impending free agent at the deadline, including Willson Contreras, it would have to take a dramatic turnaround by the team on the field (or by Contreras and the Cubs front office in any negotiations for an extension). One can’t just look at the Cubs’ last rebuild and assume the same pat will be taken. Building around a young offensive core doesn’t seem realistic, not when Brennen Davis — who is currently on the injured list — is the only impact position player prospect above Single A.
So if the goal is to win in 2023 — which it absolutely should be since Cubs fans shouldn’t have to wait around through multiple losing seasons just to see a large-market team with loads of money be able to field a winning team — this will likely be a different route to success from what fans saw nearly a decade ago. It has to be. The way talent is developed, the Cubs’ situation and just the game as a whole have all changed significantly over the last decade.
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But Ross has his blueprint. He’s made it clear that pitching will be the hallmark of the next winning team. It was when the Cubs won in 2016 too, even if that team was littered with young hitters. Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta and Kyle Hendricks — along with a brilliant defense — led that group. Those three were acquired via free agency and the trade market, not developed through the system like many of the core position players on that team. This time around for the Cubs, it may be a different route.
As nice as Monday’s start was from Wade Miley and how impactful Marcus Stroman’s return to the rotation will be on Thursday, it’s outings like Justin Steele had on Sunday (6 IP, 1 ER, 10 strikeouts, 1 walk) and the one Keegan Thompson delivered Tuesday night (5 IP, 0 ER, 5 strikeouts, 0 walks) that should excite Cubs fans.
“Those are good signs,” Ross said. “You start to see different guys come up and have success and then you’re able to go out and fill in the holes. Then all of a sudden you’ve got a championship-caliber team on paper.”
Slowly but surely, the Cubs are starting to get a reputation for having turned things around when it comes to developing pitching. The hitting development is getting better too, but that process seems only to have recently gotten into full swing. But people inside the organization, the players being developed and talent evaluators across the game believe the Cubs’ pitching development has really taken a step forward the last few years. Multiple pitchers currently with the Cubs point to 2019, when current assistant GM and VP of pitching Craig Breslow was hired, as a turning point. It’s not just on Breslow, of course, but also the numerous people he’s hired and other impactful coaches who have been around and been put in a better position to succeed that have helped reshape the philosophies.
In Sunday’s impressive outing, Steele leaned on his slider, getting nine of his 13 whiffs on that pitch alone. It wasn’t until his time at the alternate site at South Bend during the 2020 season that Steele even learned how to throw that slider. He took a grip he learned from his brother, adjusted it slightly after seeing what worked according to the data, then took it into live BPs and dominated. That helped lead to his breakout 2021 where he also refined the grip on his curveball, making sure it had more drop and less sweep so he had two very distinct breaking balls to work with.
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Steele said until 2019, the only metric he knew about when it came to pitching was velocity. When he started to learn more about how pitches spin and what that means, he embraced it. He was able to throw a pitch in the lab, get the feel for it, then look at the corresponding numbers and data and understand better how to throw his pitches most effectively.
Thompson has improved every piece of his arsenal over the last few years, peaking this season as one of the most valuable pitchers in the game. According to Baseball Reference, only Pablo López has accumulated more WAR among pitchers in the game. Thompson has dominated as a multi-inning reliever and is flashing enough as a starter that he’s at minimum putting himself on the radar as a future rotation piece on a quality team.
And it goes beyond Steele and Thompson. Caleb Kilian is dominating in Triple A and the Cubs seem to be able to call up a new reliever who is impacting the big-league club every other week. Adbert Alzolay is on the IL, but he’s shown that when healthy, he’s at least an impactful multi-inning reliever. He’s just another pitcher who completely reshaped his arsenal under the watch of a new player development staff — again at the South Bend site in 2020 — and has seen great results. In general, there is significantly more pitching talent and just pitchers with big-league quality stuff in the Cubs system than there has been in a long time.
This is a 180 as far as the narrative around this organization. Dogged for failing to develop pitching for more than a decade now, one of the biggest regrets the Cubs can point to during the last window of contention was the money they had to spend on starting pitching in order to fill the gaps created by a lack of production from the system. Post-2016, it meant being unable to invest in other areas, like the holes in a lineup that desperately needed more contact. It goes beyond spending big on an impact, front-of-the-rotation starter. The Cubs should still be doing things like that because that’s what big-money organizations can and should do when the right pitcher is available. But instead of taking risks on projects like Tyler Chatwood, investing in an oft-injured reliever like Brandon Morrow or feeling boxed into picking up a $20 million Cole Hamels option, the Cubs would have loved to have pitchers in their system they could have called upon to take on those roles.
“The real goal is to stockpile the talent through player development,” Ross said. “We’ve put a lot of resources in that and made some trades the last couple years that has helped bring in more talent. A big credit should go to our pitching development and Craig Breslow leading that. He’s changing some philosophies and trying new things. He’s had success and failures and found his way to implement new stuff that seems to be paying off pretty well right now.”
Perhaps the Cubs don’t have an ace coming up, but if they can build a deep rotation — meaning five quality starters with strong depth ready at Iowa — maybe that can work. If Stroman is still around next year and Hendricks as well, all the better. That means the Cubs can focus their free-agent money on or direct trade assets to beefing up the offensive side of the ball.
With all the talk of the Cubs emulating last year’s Giants on offense, building a group of position players who are interchangeable and are put in a position to succeed by facing pitchers who accentuate their strengths, perhaps the real area to mimic is on the pitching side. FanGraphs rates the Giants pitching staff as fourth in WAR in all of baseball. The Giants were willing to give the money (but not the years, which is very similar to how Hoyer thinks) to a pitcher like Carlos Ródon, who has impacted them significantly. But they also had a surprise arm in Logan Webb. Like Steele, Thompson and Kilian, Webb never appeared on any top 100 lists or was viewed as an impact rotation piece. But here he is, putting together another strong season in San Francisco for a team that’s seven games above .500 and once again competing for the postseason. Those are the types of success stories the Cubs will need if they’re going to kickstart this rebuild and compete by next summer.
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“I felt like everybody talked about the Cubs (struggling to) develop pitching,” Steele said. “Now we’re just feeding them to the big leagues. Me, Keegan, Scott (Effross), there’s so many guys coming up behind us. Caleb Kilian, Kohl Franklin, Cam Sanders, all those guys are just as good. They’re going to be here at some point. It’s exciting.”
Not every single one of those names will impact the Cubs this year or next or even turn into a success story. But if the Cubs can help develop a handful of them into quality rotation pieces and continue to call up talented relief pitching, that should free up resources for other areas. To be able to surprise in 2023, the Cubs will have to add a big-league ready, impact bat via free agency or trade. And if they lose Contreras, probably two. But if they can solve their pitching problems and continue to bring up quality arms, maybe they won’t be as far off from contention as many believe they are at the moment.
(Photo of Steele: Joe Camporeale / USA Today)
Sahadev Sharma is a staff writer for The Athletic and covers the Chicago Cubs. Previously, Sahadev was a national baseball writer for Baseball Prospectus and ESPN Chicago. Follow Sahadev on Twitter @sahadevsharma
