Cubs pitching staff navigating challenging stretch

Since spring training, Craig Counsell has stressed the importance of having a Cubs pitching staff that can cover all the innings of a 162-game season. Through good and bad days, long starts and short ones, there’s a lot that goes into planning which pitchers to use when from Opening Day to the last out of the season.

The first two games of this weekend’s series against the Diamondbacks — a wild and historic 13-11 win on Friday and Saturday’s 6-2 victory — have put that importance on display, especially the need for a group of bullpen arms who can pick up innings when the starters have to come out of the game early.

On Friday, Counsell had to use seven different relievers after Colin Rea left in the fifth inning, and on Saturday, Ben Brown lasted just four frames before Counsell had to turn to his bullpen. In Friday’s game, the relievers nearly gave up the game, but the next day, Caleb Thielbar, Brad Keller, and Daniel Palencia retired 14 straight Arizona batters to secure the win. Other than a brief hiccup in the ninth inning when Diamondbacks second baseman Tim Tawa went deep against Palencia, those three relievers saved Counsell from needing to dig deep into his bullpen for a second straight day.

“Those guys were great,” Counsell said. “All of them, but Thielbar going six up, six down really put the game in a good place for us and put the rest of the bullpen in a good position. They all just attacked the zone with strikes. It’s a team that they don’t chase very much, and they’re good at that. And our bullpen today just attacked the zone and did a fabulous job at that.”

The Diamondbacks lineup’s stinginess was a part of what limited Brown to four innings. He needed 100 pitches to get that far into the game because they weren’t chasing at his breaking pitches just outside of the zone, something that Brown often relies on to get swings and misses.

In all, Brown held Arizona to one run on Corbin Carroll’s leadoff homer and otherwise struck out six and gave up only two hits besides Carroll’s. But he was frequently deep in counts and walked one batter in every inning, which drove up his pitch count quickly.

“I was getting strikeouts, I was getting swing and miss, everything I want to accomplish,” Brown said. “Ultimately, walks are going to be a part of my game, just like a lot of swing and miss. I need chase; that’s just kind of how I do things. So there’s going to be walks, but not having four, maybe two, and then being able to pitch a fifth and sixth inning is the goal.”

Brown has the potential to be a frontline starter. Counsell said he thinks Brown has the capability to be really good, but keeping him on a consistent schedule and then navigating the natural challenges of a full season will be necessary to him making the next step in that direction. But until Brown does that and is able to give the Cubs five and six innings a start on a regular basis, the rest of the pitching staff will have to navigate getting more of the outs in games he’s starting.

Thielbar’s two very quick innings set up Keller to come in and retire the top of the Diamondbacks order in the seventh, and then Palencia needed just 10 pitches in the eighth before ultimately shutting the door in the ninth. Counsell had closer Ryan Pressly — one of the seven relievers put to work on Friday — warming in the bullpen after Palencia gave up that ninth-inning home run, but he didn’t end up needing to use Pressly.

Getting those late-inning outs meant a little more, especially given that the bullpen gave up 10 runs in one inning on Friday and also blew a late-inning lead against the Diamondbacks earlier this season. But Thielbar and the rest of the bullpen has to move on quickly from those kinds of outings.

“The life of a bullpen guy is short memory, so you can’t really think about that kind of stuff,” Thielbar said. “Yea, it happened a couple of times this year against this team. We really just have to keep our head on straight [and] try to just go out there and keep pitch to pitch and not worry about the stuff that happened yesterday.

“Obviously, it’s hard not to have that in the back of your mind, but you really have to have as short of a memory as possible.”

Those three pitchers being able to cover the last five innings of Saturday’s game makes a big difference in who is available both on Sunday and in the upcoming series. The Cubs have already had one of the toughest schedules through their first 23 games, and they still have series against the Dodgers and Phillies ahead of them before April is over. It also helps that the offense has been electric. They have scored the most runs (143) and have the best run differential (+42) in the league. Friday’s win came thanks to that group rallying after the ten-run inning to score six runs in the bottom of the eighth, and they attacked Arizona starter Zac Gallen early on Saturday, putting up all six of their runs in the first two innings.

Kyle Tucker, Seiya Suzuki, and Michael Busch drove in a pair of runs each, and Suzuki and Busch hit back-to-back home runs in the second inning for the second set of back-to-back Cubs home runs in as many days.

“It’s a lot of good hitters, honestly. Top to bottom, our whole offense [is] guys who give consistent, good at-bats,” Busch said. “We’ve been seeing it basically since game one, just the at-bat quality not matter the situation, no matter if we’re up [or] down, no matter if we’re coming off the bench.”

The Cubs were dealt a major blow when Justin Steele needed season-ending elbow surgery, a procedure performed on Friday. It was not Tommy John surgery, but rather what was described as “revision repair” on his left UCL, but the timetable for his return is still about a year. Before Saturday’s game, Counsell said the initial expectation is that Steele could be back on the mound by April 2026.

But the Cubs still have a lot of the 2025 season left, and it’s shaping up to be an exciting one. They lead National League Central and Fangraphs currently gives them about a 60 percent chance of making the playoffs. A big part of getting there in October will be determined by whether the pitching staff successfully covers the many innings to come between now and the end of the season.