Chicago Cubs 2026

ChiefGritty · Wednesday at 10:46 AM

If I may complain as a neighborhood resident, shutting down all these lanes of traffic the whole offseason to install sidewalk bollards to host an All-Star Game that isn't going to happen because of the labor stoppage is very annoying!

champaignchris · Wednesday at 4:26 PM

oldman said:
Remind me how many starting pitchers we expected last year but who went down with season ending injuries? Could that have something to do with our pitching problems?

The plan going into the season was that they’d start with Boyd, Horton, Cabrera, Taillon and Imanaga, and have Steele ready to come in by midseason.

Imanaga had a nice year. Basically put up his expected numbers.

Boyd missed about a third of the season, and was a little disappointing when he was in.

Horton and Steele were hurt all year.

Taillon and Cabrera both missed about half the season and were putrid when they did pitch.

Cubs thought they’d get about 800 innings from these six pitchers and got about 470.

Grandpa · Wednesday at 7:41 PM

champaignchris said:
The plan going into the season was that they’d start with Boyd, Horton, Cabrera, Taillon and Imanaga, and have Steele ready to come in by midseason.

Imanaga had a nice year. Basically put up his expected numbers.

Boyd missed about a third of the season, and was a little disappointing when he was in.

Horton and Steele were hurt all year.

Taillon and Cabrera both missed about half the season and were putrid when they did pitch.

Cubs thought they’d get about 800 innings from these six pitchers and got about 470.

Cabrera has almost always sucked. They traded for him to throw a lot of innings. He also gives up a lot of runs.

Grandpa · Friday at 10:23 AM

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/50292274/early-2027-season-power-rankings

I'm not going to drop any spoilers on the 2027 power rankings, but this is worth a gander.

Illiniaaron · Friday at 2:08 PM

It will be interesting to see if the Cubs will be aggresive in acquiring starting pitching in free agency before the lockout. They are in a pretty precarious situation.

Second place is 1st loser · Friday at 2:37 PM

Illiniaaron said:
It will be interesting to see if the Cubs will be aggresive in acquiring starting pitching in free agency before the lockout. They are in a pretty precarious situation.

The problem with being aggressive here is that who, outside of Skubel and maybe King, is worth throwing cash on?

Grandpa · Friday at 3:57 PM

Second place is 1st loser said:
The problem with being aggressive here is that who, outside of Skubel and maybe King, is worth throwing cash on?

They have proven that if you are willing to destroy your arm you can get a lot more outs. They have also proven that if you are NOT willing to destroy your arm you will lose your chance to be a major league pitcher.
Long term contracts are not safe in this climate.

Second place is 1st loser · Friday at 4:09 PM

Grandpa said:
They have proven that if you are willing to destroy your arm you can get a lot more outs. They have also proven that if you are NOT willing to destroy your arm you will lose your chance to be a major league pitcher.
Long term contracts are not safe in this climate.

Here inlies the problem with not being able to develop pitching. If you get absolutely nothing out of your farm system.....you're stuck in this situation year after year.

Illiniaaron · 2026-10-31T12:45:58-0500

Second place is 1st loser said:
Here inlies the problem with not being able to develop pitching. If you get absolutely nothing out of your farm system.....you're stuck in this situation year after year.

From the reporting I’ve seen, there is NO help coming from the minors for at least a couple years. Really bad misstep by Hoyer and the rest to let it get this bad.