Cubs Not Doing Enough To Address Pitching This Offseason Already Causing Issues

The Chicago Cubs may have some serious issues in the pitching department.

Michael Brauner | Mar 29, 2025

Jan 12, 2024; Chicago, IL, USA; Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer / Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

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Chicago Cubs

The Chicago Cubs are two games below .500 just four games into the season.

While the losses in Japan can be chalked up to simply running into the Los Angeles Dodgers machine, the pitching staff as a whole was shelled by the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday night.

Though there is still a rubber match to be played on Saturday night, the holes on the roster for the Cubs have already started to rear their ugly head.

Entering this past winter, most expected Chicago to be fairly aggressive in the pursuit of starting pitching, but as name after name came off the board with one lucrative contract after another, Jed Hoyer and company sat idly by while every legitimate ace disappeared.

Instead of going for legitimate rotation-leading options like Corbin Burnes, Max Fried or even Blake Snell, Hoyer -- after likely being handcuffed by ownership -- signed Matthew Boyd and stayed the course.

Through four games, it has already become clear that this strategy is going to be an issue all season long for the Cubs.

In the 8-1 defeat against the Diamondbacks, Chicago's No. 3 starter, Jameson Taillon, gave up nine hits and six earned runs, getting pulled from the game before he finished five innings.

While Taillon is not a horrible option to have at the back end of the rotation, his struggles are just the latest example of the Cubs hoping to get more production than realistically possible from players they were already paying rather than new acquisitions.

Chicago is caught between wanting to make aggressive moves but not being willing to take the real steps necessary in order to make that happen.

Trading for someone like Kyle Tucker a year before he hits free agency is the kind of move a team going for it all this season would make.

The problem is they did not follow it up with anything significant on the pitching side, and it will come back to bite them throughout the season.

Shota Imanaga -- the team's ace -- gets another shot to redeem himself on Saturday after he struggled with a career high four walks in Japan, but asking Imanaga to carry this staff with the kind of production it will need to make a run is not realistic.

Until further moves are made, Chicago is going to have to hope their talented lineup can keep their thin pitching staff afloat.

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