Find a Cubs fan in late March and list for them the injuries to the pitching staff the team will have sustained by the first week of August, and then ask them to predict the team’s record. It’s safe to assume no one would have the Cubs at 18 games above .500 a week into August.
The Cubs are where they are now in large part because of how they managed to weather the deluge of pitcher injuries. Guys like Colin Rea and Javier Assad were vital in stepping up for the rotation while nearly everyone in pitching coach Tommy Hottovy’s bullpen got used to being flexible about their roles.
But now with Monday’s trade deadline behind them and the Cubs’ pitching staff much deeper than it was just a few days ago, Hottovy and his staff are ready to work on how to best utilize the new pitchers they’ve added.
“It’s been fun to grind over these last two months,” Hottovy said. “With the guys who have poured their heart and soul into keeping us in the position we are, it hasn’t been easy, no doubt. But guys have been working really hard to keep us in a position to have the ability to go add guys like that.”
In all, starting pitchers Kevin Gausman and Clay Holmes and relievers Ryan Zeferjahn and Braxton Garrett joined the fold on Monday. Zeferjahn is the only one of the four who has pitched for the Cubs since the deadline, appearing in relief twice during this week’s series against the Dodgers.
Gausman and Holmes are slated to start while the Cubs are in Kansas City this weekend, and Garrett was recalled from Triple-A Iowa before Thursday’s game against the Blue Jays. Garrett was on the bus with the Marlins’ Triple-A affiliate on Monday when he found out he’d been traded. As soon as the team arrived in Gwinnett, Georgia, he got on a plane to Indianapolis to join the Cubs’ Triple-A affiliate on their road trip. Garrett said he got there and had just enough time to throw a bit with the Iowa Cubs before he learned on Wednesday evening that he was headed to Chicago.
“It’s definitely been a whirlwind,” he said. “Obviously, I have no control over being traded here, but as soon as I heard the [Cubs], the defense here is incredible, especially for a pitcher like myself, so I’m very excited for that.”
Garrett has a high groundball rate, something that plays well with the Cubs defense of course, but the Cubs’ front office saw other things in his profile that put Garrett on their watch list for the trade deadline.
“He’s a supinator, [and] we obviously like our supinators. It’s pretty clear with some of the guys that we target,” Hottovy said. “He can create pitch shapes pretty well, he’s got good spin capability. He’s got a really good sweeper and a good, hard downhill slider.”
Though Garrett has experience primarily as a starter — as recently as 2023 he started 30 games for the Marlins — Hottovy said the plan is to use him out of the bullpen in the short term future.
Including the June 25 trade with the Mets for David Peterson, the Cubs have added three starters to the staff. Jameson Taillon was designated for assignment near the end of July and then traded to the Blue Jays, but with Edward Cabrera making his way back from a hamstring injury, the Cubs’ coaching staff will have a new problem to deal with this season: too many healthy starting pitchers.
Hottovy said there’s no plan to go to a six-man rotation when Cabrera returns, but he’s not closed off to the idea of using Cabrera as a reliever, especially in the postseason.
“I think we’re definitely open to doing that,” Hottovy said. “I mean, he’s got an electric arm. It’d be crazy not to think about him being able to come in a postseason game and throw the back end two or three innings of a game.”
That said, Hottovy was plain that the plan for the immediate future is for Cabrera to continue starting. Cabrera struck out eight in four innings in his first rehab start on Wednesday, and the plan is for him to make another rehab start before the Cubs decide on the next step.
The most likely scenario is that Cabrera — along with relief pitchers Hoby Milner and Daniel Palencia, who both also pitched in Wednesday’s game for the Triple-A Cubs — is back with the Cubs within the next couple of weeks.
There’s also Ben Brown, who Hottovy said is progressing well from his neck injury, and Justin Steele, who went to Arizona this week to prepare to start throwing live at-bats in hopes of returning at some point this season, even if as a bullpen arm.
That all adds up to a suddenly deep pitching staff, and one that is much better equipped to make a long postseason run than the 2025 group. As things currently stand, the Cubs have a firm hold on the top wild card spot, but between now and the playoffs, they have a challenging slate of games in the final six weeks of the regular season.
“We have a tough schedule the rest of the way, and we’re going to need guys,” Hottovy said. “We’re going to need this consistent, daily starting group to keep putting up the numbers they’re putting up. I think the postseason is different because you can mix and match so much.
“But for the rotation these next three or four weeks, I think it’s really important to continue to add to support the guys that have been pitching well to this point.”
As the Cubs pitching staff continues to get healthy again over the next couple of weeks, they hope to take advantage of being in much different shape pitching-wise than they have been most of the season. Given the additions to the Cubs roster over the last week, confidence in the locker room is high.
“The front office went and did what what we needed, and they got some really good players,” Peterson said of the trade deadline. “Having the group that we had before the deadline, and then being able to see the work that we did to to make it even better is exciting.”
