Chicago Cubs Pitching Staff Will Need Trade Deadline Help

There are plenty of reasons to be surprised the Chicago Cubs are doing as well as they are at this point in the season. As May comes to a close, they have a solid lead in their division and are among the top teams in the National League. That’s despite playing through the hardest strength of schedule in the first month of the season and going without their top two starting pitchers in Justin Steele and Shota Imanaga.

Steele went down with an elbow injury in April that will keep him off the mound until 2026, and Imanaga has been out with a hamstring strain since May 5 and likely won’t return for at least a couple of weeks.

Those two factors could easily have sunk the Cubs’ playoff hopes early in the season, but instead, Chicago is poised to be a buyer at the trade deadline in July. And on that front, it’s fairly easy to discern where on the roster the Cubs could use the most help.

Their starting pitching depth – buffeted by offseason additions like Colin Rea and Matthew Boyd – has handled the absences of Steele and Imanaga nicely, but there might be signs that the once-sturdy rotation is beginning to wobble. Rea struggled for the second straight start against the Reds on Friday, and the Cubs opted to use an opener for Ben Brown on Saturday.

The Cubs were already likely candidates to be aggressive on the pitching market at the trade deadline, but if their remaining starting pitchers are going to struggle, then that likelihood only increases. They could pursue a top of the rotation type starter, but the Cubs have also had a lot of success in finding “project” pitchers who come to Chicago and succeed in ways they have not in the past.

“We’ve had some real success stories organizationally with what we’ve done with pitching this year,” manager Craig Counsell told reporters Friday. “We’ve got a good pitching program here, and that’s just incrementally trying to make guys a little bit better. You take shots at this, right? You take just a number of shots.

“The player deserves a lot of credit, and some you just keep looking for those opportunities. That’s the bottom line, is that you never stop, never get satisfied, never stop looking for those opportunities. That’s something the organization [does]

well.”

If the Cubs decide to go after a top-tier starter, Marlins pitcher Sandy Alcantara is expected to be available. Even though Alcantara has an 8.47 ERA through 11 starts this season, the consensus among MLB executives seems to be that his track record and skill set will outweigh the numbers Alcantara is putting up this season.

“The longer he is removed from the injury the better he will likely be,” an American League executive told MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand. “At the Deadline, he could demand a pretty price with up to two-and-a-half years of control remaining on his contract.”

And from a National League executive, “It’s not very often a Cy Young caliber starting pitcher is available on the market. If he gets back to his old ways, he can have a major impact on who ends up the eventual World Series champion.”

Injuries and some under performances have also impacted the Cubs in the bullpen. Ryan Pressly, acquired in a trade with the Astros over the winter, has essentially lost the closer role. That spot was briefly occupied by Porter Hodge before he hit the injured list, and for now, Daniel Palencia is holding that responsibility. And along with that, Julian Merryweather, once a stabilizing force in the Cubs bullpen, was designated for assignment earlier this week because of his struggles on the mound. As a group, the Cubs’ bullpen had a 13th-ranked ERA (3.77) going into Saturday’s games, and they will likely have to bolster that part of the roster as well.

The Cubs could look to the scuffling Orioles for help on that front. They are expected to have a handful of pitchers available come July, and any one of Felix Bautista, Gregory Soto, or Seranthony Dominguez would be a big help to the Cubs bullpen. They have the minor league depth to send the kind of return that Baltimore would be looking for, and relievers are traditionally not extremely costly at the trade deadline.

The current Chicago Cubs roster has all of the ingredients for a division winner, and they have weathered some of the early season tests impressively. But in order to make the most of a 2025 season that is showing potential for their first National League Central title since 2017 and first postseason appearance since the 2020 wild card series, the Cubs are going to have to address some of the emerging needs on the roster. With an offense that leads baseball in runs scored, it’s easy to see that they need to pursue pitching this summer.