LOS ANGELES — The Chicago Cubs are a week away from the All-Star break, yet two pitchers are already on the verge of reaching career-high workloads.
Right-hander Keegan Thompson and left-hander Justin Steele are among the highlights of an otherwise dismal season for the Cubs. Through the first three-plus months, the consistent pitchers both have an ERA+ of more than 100, which is the league average. Left-hander Drew Smyly, who came off the injured list to start Sunday’s 11-9 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, is the only other Cubs starter above that mark.
Thompson, 27, and Steele, 26, are already approaching uncharted territory with their workload.
Steele, who has spent the entire season in the rotation, has thrown 76⅓ innings through 16 starts. He is less than five innings from surpassing his combined innings from 2021 between Triple-A Iowa and the majors. Now in his ninth season in the organization, Steele has recorded only one season with more innings than last year. He threw 98⅔ innings at High A Myrtle Beach in 2017 before Tommy John surgery ended his season.
Thompson’s 77 innings over 19 appearances, including 11 starts, have already pushed him past his 2021 season total (67 innings) with Iowa and the Cubs. His single-season career high since the Cubs drafted him five years ago came in 2018 with 129⅔ innings. He could exceed that by early September.
“It’s just doing everything you can possible in between starts to recover, whether it’s taking a day of no throwing or whatever,” Thompson told the Tribune on Saturday. “Recovery is the biggest thing.”
Pitching coach Tommy Hottovy told the Tribune there isn’t a hard innings limit for Thompson or Steele. He anticipates the Cubs getting creative with how they can manage the duo’s workload over the final three months of the season.
Among the options, according to Hottovy, are skipping a start if there is a scheduled day off, rearranging the rotation coming out of the All-Star break or finding spots to give an additional day between starts. Steele is getting extended time off because of the impending birth of his child; after starting Monday in Milwaukee, he did not join the Cubs in Los Angeles and went on the paternity list Saturday.
“It’s an important way to continue to minimize or just control the amount of innings these guys are going to eat this year,” Hottovy said. “But there’s a part of me, too, that we never have the right answer. ... Guys don’t throw 180 innings until they do. Guys can or can’t. And I think we play this game a lot of times trying to protect guys and say, OK, maybe if we do this this year, it’ll happen next year. We don’t know. We don’t have an 8-ball to control the future.”
In six of Steele’s 16 starts, he was sent out for the next inning without completing it. Notably, in each of Steele’s last three outings, manager David Ross kept him in to begin the sixth (twice) and seventh on a batter-to-batter approach. He was unable to get through both innings cleanly, hitting the 100-pitch mark both times.
As Thompson has fully transitioned to the rotation, he also is being challenged. In four of his eight starts since the beginning of June, he began an inning and was pulled without getting out of it. Two of those instances came in the seventh, his first times pitching that deep into a start. A dropped fly ball by right fielder Seiya Suzuki in Friday’s loss to the Dodgers, which should have ended the sixth, instead allowed an unearned run to score and ended Thompson’s night because of a season-high pitch count (96).
There are tactical and matchup-related reasons to bring starters out for another inning while knowing they might not finish it and might leave with runners on for the bullpen. But it’s also rooted in player development. Hottovy believes it’s important for pitchers, especially young and inexperienced ones, to understand what it feels like to pitch with fatigue.
The bullpen has been a strength for most of the season, allowing the Cubs to use this approach. Hottovy and Ross are confident in their relievers to handle dirty innings and high-leverage moments. So the Cubs have picked their spots to challenge starters with a particular focus on Thompson and Steele. The Cubs’ 34-52 record and fourth-place standing in the division creates more leeway for long-term vision and development.
“Sometimes when you’re sending them out there, they’re gassed and it’s like, no, we want to see what you can do, in a reasonable way,” Hottovy said. “And, yeah, a lot of times it doesn’t work out. It may backfire, but we’re trying to build these guys for the postseason, for deeper into the season, deeper into games and pitching in those high-leverage situations. So it’s important learning opportunities for guys, and you have to juggle that when you’re also trying to win games.”
With the 13-pitcher limit and an increasingly taxed Cubs bullpen, there is a greater emphasis on getting as many outs as possible from starters. Who is available out of the bullpen on a given day can be a factor as well as matchups against the opposing lineup. Ross accounts for those scenarios when determining whether to send out a starter for more.
“All of that stuff affects us,” Ross told the Tribune. “Depending on where we are moving forward and how many multi-inning guys we have in the bullpen, like Keegan’s not down there anymore so he doesn’t give us a reset of the bullpen. So you have to be cognizant of that and understand I may need a little bit more out of you, and these guys have handled it really nicely.”
