Cubs’ 2026 starting rotation poised to dominate

The Cubs‘ Achilles Heel was plainly obvious at the end of the 2025 season, especially in the playoffs. So much so that, three months later, team president Jed Hoyer is still talking about it. During Saturday morning’s panel at the 2026 Cubs Convention, Hoyer said that it was the injuries to his starting pitching staff that hampered his team the most last October.

There was confidence that they could get past the Brewers, but Hoyer said there was real concern about navigating a seven-game championship series, had they gotten that far. That experience drove the front office’s approach this offseason, and as things currently stand with the addition of Edward Cabrera, Cade Horton set for a healthy return and Justin Steele’s return looming later in the season, the starting rotation is in much better shape with spring training just a couple of weeks away.

“I think we’ve got one of the top rotations in the league,” Matt Boyd said.

Whether or not Boyd’s sentiment bears out into next October will depend on a few things, one of which is Boyd himself, along with the aforementioned starters. He had a masterful 2025 season, logging his highest number of innings pitched since 2019 and earning his first career All-Star nod, but the Cubs will need more of the same from him this year.

On that front, Boyd said not signing with the team until Thanksgiving weekend last winter meant he didn’t have as much time to develop an offseason gameplan with the Cubs’ pitching coaches. But this time around, they were able to hit the ground running as soon as the division series ended.

“The coolest thing is clear direction from day one,” Boyd said. “We had a plan in place before the season was already over […] Just being in contact with [the pitching staff] through the duration of the off season, as compared to trying to speed everything up on December 1 as I was last year.”

Boyd is on the Team USA roster for the World Baseball Classic, which will add innings to his overall workload this year, but he said the experience of preparing for the games in Tokyo last March gave him a roadmap for getting ready for the WBC. Though there was concern about him pitching too much last year because of his injury history, Boyd held up through 31 regular season starts in 2025, and on Saturday he told fans during the pitchers’ panel that he threw harder last season than he has in his career.

Sitting down the line from Boyd at that panel were to pitchers whose velocity will be a key factor for the Cubs’ rotation this season: Cade Horton and Edward Cabrera. The latter averages in the upper 90s with his fastball and has a changeup that he told fans on Saturday can touch 98 miles per hour. The Cubs’ front office had interest in Cabrera last winter and at the trade deadline last summer, Hoyer said, because they believe he is just now entering into his best years.

And where Cabrera will be the new face in the rotation, Horton is set to build on a highly successful rookie campaign last year. A rib injury cut his season short in late September, but going into his final start in 2025, Horton was on an incredible run in which he posted a 0.93 ERA in 11 starts. That stretch provided a glimpse of what Horton is capable of, and now that he is fully recovered from the September rib injury, Horton is set to build on last year’s success in his sophomore season.

“This offseason has been really good. I took a week off and then got right back after it, and that’s been a huge help,” Horton said. “I feel like I picked up right where I left off, so [I’m] just really excited for this season.”

Before the injury, the Cubs were already being mindful of Horton’s innings total, expecting to have to scale back the number of innings he pitched late in the season anyway, but headed into 2026, Horton said he has been told that the proverbial training wheels are off.

That said, Horton shared on Saturday that having the limits in place last season helped develop his efficiency, and he expects that the improved pitch economy he developed in 2025 will help him go deeper into games this season.

“It forced me to be in the zone early and often and not really waste pitches,” Horton said. “I fully plan on continuing [that]. That’s where I had success, was just attacking the zone, so I fully plan on having that mentality.”

Mid-season usually means contending teams are looking at the trade market for arms, and it’s very possible the Cubs will be doing that come July, but regardless of whether or not that’s the case, they should have another arm joining the rotation at some point in the summer. Out since last April with an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery, Justin Steele is progressing toward a return in May or June, though a precise timetable is still hard to determine.

Steele said on Saturday that he threw off of a mound at a Cubs training facility near Wrigley Field on Friday, which was the first time he’s gone off of a mound in his rehabilitation. He said the throwing session went well, which has been true of his entire rehab journey thus far.

“There hasn’t been any hiccups at all through this process. It’s felt good the entire time,” the Cubs lefty said. “If anything, we’re ahead of schedule. Kind of been pushing the envelope the entire time […] it’s full steam ahead.”

As much as the Cubs might love getting Steele back sooner than the second or third month of the season, and his recovery process has him on track for an earlier return, he said that there will still be something of an innings restriction on him in 2026.

With that in mind, the Cubs have to plan Steele’s return date accordingly. And, of course, knowing that the expectation is for a full month of Cubs baseball in October, that could mean Steele waits just a bit longer to make his season debut.

Steele said he expects it to be difficult not to want to ramp up in February and March when his fellow pitchers are preparing in Arizona for Opening Day, but the recovery process he has gone through already has developed his patience in waiting for the right time. Until then, the Cubs will roll into the 2026 season with a rotation that has greater depth than last year’s group, and they hope the kind of depth that will be making a lot of starts in October.

“It’s extremely deep,” Steele said of the Cubs’ 2026 rotation. “I would say we have eight to ten guys that could go out there and take the ball any given day, and you feel really good about your chances of winning the ballgame that day.”