NEW YORK — In Jed Hoyer’s 25 years working in three organizations’ baseball operations departments, he can’t recall seeing his team’s starting pitching depth be decimated as significantly as the Chicago Cubs currently are experiencing.
And they’re only halfway through the regular season.
The Cubs enter an important weekend series against the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers coming off a four-game sweep of the New York Mets despite losing two more starters — right-handers Ben Brown and Edward Cabrera — to the injured list. They now have five big-league starters on the IL, testing their organizational depth.
“You never have enough pitching, but we felt like we were 11 and 12 deep going in (to the season) so we felt like we had depth — and it went away really quickly,” Hoyer said Thursday. “This clustering has been something I haven’t really experienced, especially different injuries: a couple elbows, couple hamstrings, a neck, a knee. I mean, this has been all over the map.
“I say to you guys every year, when you leave spring training you don’t know what you’re going to get. So this is the set of challenges that we’re faced with, and we just have to overcome them.”
Losing Brown amid his stellar stretch in the rotation — a 1.70 ERA in eight starts — is a blow, as the 26-year-old had taken a huge step forward thanks to the development of a sinker and changeup in the offseason to round out what had been a two-pitch repertoire.
Cubs starting pitcher Ben Brown walks through the dugout in the sixth inning against the Blue Jays on June 19, 2026, at Wrigley Field. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
After Brown experienced neck discomfort the last two weeks, it finally reached a point he couldn’t pitch through it. He has been diagnosed with a stress reaction in his neck, similar to the problem he experienced in June 2024 that was diagnosed as an osteoma, a benign bone tumor, that ultimately caused him to miss the rest of that season. Manager Craig Counsell acknowledged there is some concern that the problem is similar.
Brown will be seeking a second opinion, and there isn’t a clear plan of attack for his recovery. But, Hoyer said, “it’s going to be a somewhat lengthy process here of rest.”
“That injury you can’t do much,” Hoyer said. “You have to rest it, and that’s what we have to figure out, how long that rest period is. I really feel bad for him. He was having an All-Star type season, pitching great for us, and it’s unfortunate.”
The Cubs also don’t have clarity on how long Cabrera might be out. They hope his moderate left hamstring strain will have a similar healing process to Jameson Taillon’s hamstring strain, which was roughly a six-week time frame to return after initially sustaining it.
“Certainly in the moment it looks worse, and you never know how each guy is going to heal,” Hoyer said. “But that would probably be a good case for us.”
Cubs pitcher Edward Cabrera bends on the mound during the fifth inning against the Rockies on June 16, 2026, at Wrigley Field. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Any hopes that left-hander Justin Steele will be able to make impactful starts in the second half of the season also might need to be tempered. Steele, who suffered a setback in his return from April 2025 elbow surgery when he was diagnosed with a flexor strain in late April, only started throwing a baseball last week, the first step in a long buildup.
Steele expressed optimism last week that he could be back in the rotation before the season ends, but Hoyer expressed less certainty about that possibility. The Cubs won’t have a great idea of when Steele might return, or in what role, until he gets further along in his throwing progression.
“It’s great to be ambitious. You want that, you want him to push,” Hoyer said. “It’s our job to be realistic. I certainly think he could help us, but being stretched out enough to make starts, we have to play for a long time for that to happen. So realistically, in September, it’s hard for him to be a starter, but I still think he can help us.”
As for whether Hoyer has had a more direct conversation with Steele about the reality of the timeline, he believes there are steps the 30-year-old needs to get through before that becomes a relevant discussion. Steele is expected to visit his surgeon, Dr. Keith Meister, in a couple of weeks.
“At that point we’ll have a better sense of the timeline,” Hoyer said. “But in the meantime, it’s been nice to have him around.”
The Cubs are built around their position players and elite defense. Both of those areas must step up in the coming week until their pitchers can get healthy enough to help them in some capacity during the second half.
Hoyer and the front office will continue to look for moves to bolster the pitching staff in the lead-up to the Aug. 3 trade deadline, as they did with Wednesday’s trade to acquire Mets lefty starter David Peterson.
“We’ll always talk about the trade market, but realistically the second wild card of the American League is two games under .500 right now, so it’s really hard to be out of the race in the American League,” Hoyer said. “A little bit easier in the National League for some teams, but teams aren’t talking trades that much right now.
“We have to assume that we’re going to be mostly focused internally. We’ll talk to every team, we’ll explore things, but realistically I would imagine, given how teams are clumped together, it’s going to be pretty late toward August 3rd.”
The Cubs (44-37) reached the midpoint of the season with Thursday’s victory, putting them on track to finish with 88 wins. With all the ups and downs — including two 10-game winning streaks, a 10-game losing streak and all the pitching injuries they have endured — the big question is this: What are the Cubs?
“That’s a difficult question because I think it’s a really good team,” Hoyer said. “We have a great position-playing group. We’re facing real challenges pitching-wise right now, and so in some ways that’s sort of crystallizing or clarifying what we are.
“The way we’ve got to this point has been unusual. But from 30,000 feet, we have a good offense, we have a good defense. This current version of our pitching staff, with all the injuries, we’re going to have to have guys step up, we’re going to have to be creative, and that’s the challenge.
“We can certainly overcome it. I think we will overcome it, but we’re going to have to do some things differently than we imagined.”