The Last-Place Cubs Are Injured, but All Is Nowhere Near Lost Yet

This isn’t how they drew it up on the North Side this winter. The Cubs won 92 games in 2025, and then they made some additions in the winter. The Brewers, meanwhile, subtracted. Chicago had the best playoff odds of any team in the NL Central, whether you’re talking about our odds, PECOTA’s odds, or pretty much any projection system you can name. The Cubs had exciting rookies, battle-tested veterans, and fun vibes. Surely, they’d sail through 2026.

Nearly two weeks into the season, it’s fair to say that things haven’t gone according to plan. There’s the standings, for one thing: They’re in last place in the NL Central. But this early in the year, only four games separate first and last in the division, so that’s not the biggest problem in Wrigleyville. A bigger concern is that Cade Horton and Matthew Boyd, two of Chicago’s top starting pitchers, hit the IL on consecutive days. Seiya Suzuki hasn’t appeared yet this year, though he’s expected back on Friday.

Horton’s injury looks to be the worst of the two. He left last Friday’s start after feeling forearm discomfort, and after getting some scans over the weekend, he’s seeking a second opinion from Dr. Keith Meister. That ominous turn of phrase doesn’t guarantee a long-term injury, of course, but it’s definitely not a good sign. Pitchers don’t generally seek second opinions from famous surgeons unless there’s a decent chance of surgery.

Boyd was supposed to be the safe option in the Cubs rotation. We had him down for the most innings and the most WAR, the staff ace. His bicep strain might not be all that bad; he noted that he could have pitched through the injury if it weren’t so early in the year. But that’s not really the nature of pitcher injuries, in my experience. Sure, sometimes they’re short. But a guaranteed minimum stay doesn’t exist. I think it’s reasonable to be worried about Boyd’s prognosis until he’s back on a major league mound, even though he seems likely to return far sooner than Horton.

The Cubs, to their credit, accumulated plenty of pitching depth this winter. Justin Steele isn’t due back until around midseason, so they made sure to stock their roster with more quality options than there were turns in the rotation. Javier Assad, who has made 36 starts for the Cubs over the last two years, was recalled from Triple-A to fill one rotation spot. He’s not a frontline option – as you might imagine, what with his starting the season in the minors and all – but he’s solidly above replacement level. He’s been much better out of the bullpen in the majors, but if you need a few weeks of competent starting pitching, he more than fits the bill.

Colin Rea, who slid over from long relief to claim the other spot in the rotation, is a different verse of the same song. Like Assad, I wouldn’t want to go into a season with him as one of my top five options. His best season as a major leaguer was 2025, and even then, he performed pretty much like a fifth starter. He struggles greatly with left-handed hitters, a weakness that’s minimized out of the bullpen, and he doesn’t miss enough bats to make up for the loud contact he allows. But, also like Assad, I’d be pleased if my break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option was as accomplished as Rea. At the point where we’re asking who should be the eighth starter on the depth chart (counting Steele), beggars can’t be choosers.

However, don’t take my appreciation of Chicago’s pitching depth as a statement that everything is fine. Our Depth Charts projects this team to have the ninth-worst rotation in baseball the rest of the year, and that counts the production from guys who are expected to return from injury. Losing two of your top starters two weeks into the year hurts. Doing that while your best guy still isn’t back from elbow surgery is even worse. But this is mostly expected. The Cubs came into the year projected to have baseball’s 11th-worst rotation in our Positional Power Rankings, and they were still the favorite to win the division.

Luckily for the Cubs, two of their three healthy starters have been on point to begin the year. Edward Cabrera, their big trade acquisition this winter, hasn’t allowed a run yet. The peripherals aren’t quite as pretty – a 14.6% walk rate means he probably won’t remain unscathed for long – but the Cubs brought him in to add length to their rotation, and he hasn’t been scored on. It’s hard to argue with those early returns. Shota Imanaga, who briefly flirted with free agency before returning to the Cubs on a qualifying offer, looks like he’s going to be solid, too. It’s only been two starts, but he’s looked good to my eyes, and both of our pitching models think that this is the best he’s been as a Cub.

Jameson Taillon, the last member of the rotation, is off to a bumpy start. He avoided damage in his first start, against the woeful Angels, but only barely – he walked four and only struck out three. In his second start, the Rays tagged him for two homers. His velocity is down. His stuff, never a strength, grades out worse than ever. If it weren’t for the injuries, it’s reasonable to think that the Cubs would be considering swapping Rea into the rotation in the short term anyway – only for an ineffective Taillon instead of for an injured Horton.

Amid the pitching woes, Suzuki’s absence hasn’t slowed the Cubs down on offense. Matt Shaw has played nearly every day in his place; it’s nice to have a top prospect as a utility player. Alex Bregman’s slow start has been offset by strong production from stalwarts Nico Hoerner and Ian Happ. I feel roughly as good about the Cubbie offense as I did before the year began. I’m a little worried about Bregman’s fit in Wrigley, and I’m eagerly watching Pete Crow-Armstrong to see how he adjusts to a steady diet of offspeed junk, but everything else looks in good order to me.

Give the Chicago front office its due: President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer has built this team with a lot of injury replacements. Most clubs would look more diminished than the Cubs do while missing three of their chosen starting rotation members and one of their best hitters. But still, they’re missing three of their starting rotation members and one of their best hitters. That’s pretty clearly bad. And besides, this team’s slow start began before the injuries to Horton and Boyd. Neither Rea, nor Assad has had a turn in the rotation yet, and each of them will be making at least three starts apiece before reinforcements arrive. Things might not get better right away.

Even so, it’s hardly time to panic. But it is a reminder of how thin the margins in the playoff chase are with few true doormats to count out. The only NL team who has seen its playoff chances decline by as much as Chicago’s in the early going? That’d be the Giants, who are allowing nearly twice as many runs as they score. The Cubs now have the seventh-best odds of making the playoffs in the NL. Only six teams make the playoffs. You can do the math.

I think that’s a good encapsulation of what’s gone down so far. The Cubs haven’t played particularly poorly, but they’ve spotted their division rivals, all of whom started hot, some games in the standings. At the same time, a series of injuries has impeded their ability to get those games back – or at least our forecast of their ability to get those games back, as represented by their true talent level. We had them as a .523 team before the season; now, we have them at .512 for the rest of the season. When you put it that way, their decline in odds makes sense.

That said, the Cubs aren’t in dire straits yet. We’re 10 games into the season. Fortunes have a ton of time to rise and fall. A miserable April can cost you a playoff spot, but the Cubs are 4-6, not staring down a 2-8 record or anything. And even more impressively, they aren’t out of rotation options. Ben Brown, who made 15 starts last year, is currently working in long relief. Like Assad and Rea, he’s probably best-suited as a reliever, with iffy command holding back a nice fastball/curveball combo. I wouldn’t be excited to put Brown in my rotation, but he’s the ninth option on Chicago’s depth chart. In that context, he’s hilariously far above average.

Even the hitters have some injury insulation. Suzuki has already played the field in rehab games, and the Cubs announced that they expect him to rejoin the major league roster this Friday and play the outfield right away. That frees Shaw up to float around the diamond in a superutility role. Between Hoerner’s ability to slide over to short and Shaw’s versatility, the Cubs can weather an injury to any starter and still be able to field a reasonable lineup. It’s not like hitters get injured all that often relative to pitchers, anyway.

So, are the Cubs battered early? Most definitely. They’re one of the most injured teams in baseball at the moment, with four good players already on the shelf. But they’re not fried yet. They’re not that far behind in the standings. They had a metric ton of replacements available, and they still have a few options even now. The solution to their injury problems right now is essentially “their 2025 rotation” – Assad, Rea, and Brown combined for 49 starts last year – and that team won 92 games and made the playoffs. I think this is a happy situation, even though it looks sad on its face. Every team deals with injury at one point or another. The Cubs are strikingly well set up to get through theirs. Now, if they could only get Crow-Armstrong and Bregman going.