Watching the game last night, I saw that Marquee tossed up a graphic that was appropriate for the day, since Colin Rea was starting.
What struck me, though, was how unintentionally illuminating it was about how sideways things have gone for the Cubs the last year and a half on the pitching side:
Via @WatchMarquee, Colin Rea is the workhorse of the Chicago Cubs rotation. pic.twitter.com/jNr4vYuf2W
— Brett Taylor (@Brett_A_Taylor) June 10, 2026Like I’ve said many times, it’s great to have Colin Rea available. He is very valuable for what he is – a flexible, steady, innings-eating swing pitcher. None of this is a criticism of Rea (though, hey, he does need to right the ship a bit).
But when a back-end, swing-pitcher-type is leading your entire pitching staff in innings the last year and a half, that’s probably a bad sign!
That got me curious about the innings coverage for the Cubs since the start of the 2025 season, when Rea joined the club. If you take it out to 25 pitchers, you really start to see how the Cubs haven’t really been able to concentrate enough of their innings among the best starters (due to injuries), or among younger, breakout types beyond Cade Horton and Ben Brown.
The percentages, I thought, were interesting:
Pitching Staff Cubs Innings Pitched 2025–2026 (2,030.1 Total) Innings pitched (% of team total) 1 Colin Rea 228.2 (11.3%) 2 Shota Imanaga 220.2 (10.9%) 3 Matthew Boyd 203.2 (10.0%) 4 Jameson Taillon 197.1 (9.7%) 5 Ben Brown 163.1 (8.0%) 6 Cade Horton 125.1 (6.2%) 7 Caleb Thielbar 73.0 (3.6%) 8 Brad Keller 69.2 (3.4%) 9 Javier Assad 69.1 (3.4%) 10 Daniel Palencia 68.1 (3.4%) 11 Edward Cabrera 57.2 (2.8%) 12 Drew Pomeranz 49.2 (2.4%) 13 Chris Flexen 43.2 (2.2%) 14 Ryan Pressly 41.1 (2.0%) 15 Porter Hodge 33.0 (1.6%) 16 Hoby Milner 29.0 (1.4%) 17 Jacob Webb 28.1 (1.4%) 18 Ethan Roberts 28.1 (1.4%) 19 Ryan Brasier 26.0 (1.3%) 20 Ryan Rolison 23.0 (1.1%) 21 Justin Steele 22.2 (1.1%) 22 Andrew Kittredge 21.2 (1.1%) 23 Jordan Wicks 20.2 (1.0%) 24 Phil Maton 20.1 (1.0%) 25 Julian Merryweather 18.2 (0.9%) Full-time starting pitcher All others Source: FanGraphsOn the one hand, more than 40% of the team’s total innings have gone to starting pitchers. In some ways, that’s decent coverage.
… on the other hand, of those four, only Matthew Boyd has been better than league average by ERA-. Covering innings is good, but when more than a third of those innings have been covered by guys performing at a league-average-or-worse clip, that’s a problem. It’s the kind of problem that is a bit hidden week to week, as you think about who steps into the rotation when this happens or that happens. But when you step back and look at the share of innings being taken by the guys you’d most want taking them, the story gets a little darker. Again, meaning no offense to Colin Rea, Shota Imanaga, or Jameson Taillon.
Consider this another way. The three pitchers you probably would’ve said you most want covering the largest chunk of innings going into 2025 might’ve been Justin Steele, Cade Horton, and Daniel Palencia. They have accounted for just 10.7% of the Cubs’ innings since the start of 2025, and the vast majority of that was Horton last year. Man, his and Justin Steele’s injuries really, really sting.
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