This story was excerpted from Jordan Bastian’s Cubs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
CHICAGO – The Cubs’ rotation was holding on by a few threads as the team navigated to within one win of reaching the National League Championship Series in October. The group was thinned by injuries, impacted by playoff roster construction and dealing with some inconsistency.
It made the need for even more rotation depth obvious this offseason.
“There’s never enough pitching,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said during the Winter Meetings last month. “I think if you look at what happened to us in the playoffs, if we would have had to keep going, I think, is where it would have gotten daunting. I don’t think it was daunting for the first two series. I don’t think it necessarily affected us for the first two series.
“If we had to keep going … it would have been difficult, yeah. But some of that is, you’ve just got to have enough guys. And the time of the season and injuries and things like that, they add up as the season goes.”
In the wake of the Cubs pulling off a trade on Wednesday to add hard-throwing right-hander Edward Cabrera to the staff, let’s look at how the rotation situation looks with a little more than a month to go until Spring Training:
The main group
Matthew Boyd
Edward Cabrera
Cade Horton
Shota Imanaga
Jameson Taillon
With Cabrera now in the fold, this looks like a solid to strong unit to begin the season, if healthy. Boyd was an All-Star last year. Horton was one of baseball’s elite arms in the second half and was the runner-up for National League Rookie of the Year. Cabrera was one of the game’s top arms for roughly four months (2.22 ERA in 16 starts between May and August). Taillon ended the year strong and was Chicago’s best starter in the postseason. After a brilliant 2024, Imanaga was off to a great start last year before a left hamstring injury impacted his performance the rest of the way.
The comeback candidate
Justin Steele
Steele was an All-Star and NL Cy Young Award contender in 2023, earning the Opening Day starter nod in ‘24. With the first game in Tokyo last year, Steele took the ball in Chicago’s second game against the Dodgers, allowing Imanaga the honor of opening the season for the Cubs in his home country. Steele then lasted only four starts before suffering a left elbow injury that required surgery. He is back on a throwing program, with an optimistic timeline of returning in May, but certainly in the first half without any setbacks.
The depth
Javier Assad
Ben Brown
Colin Rea
Jordan Wicks
Brown began the 2025 season in the rotation, and Rea joined the group in April after Steele was shelved. The veteran Rea was re-signed on Nov. 6 to again serve as built-in depth for the staff overall. The current plan calls for Brown to prepare as a starter (same for Assad and Wicks), but all three could also be contenders for bullpen roles. Each pitcher in that latter trio also has at least one Minor League option, giving the Cubs the flexibility to send any one to Triple-A Iowa to keep starting, if so desired.
On the horizon
Jaxon Wiggins
The 24-year-old Wiggins (Pipeline’s No. 2 Cubs prospect and No. 67 on the Top 100 list) soared to Triple-A last year (2.19 ERA across three levels) and is on the radar for a potential MLB debut in 2026. Chicago selected him with the 68th overall pick in the ‘23 Draft, even though he was sidelined following Tommy John surgery. The right-hander finds himself in a similar position as Horton did heading into last season.
