The Chicago Cubs have a little problem, and by little, I mean they’re teetering on a catastrophe. Before Friday’s series opener against the New York Mets at Wrigley Field, right-handed pitcher Daniel Palencia was placed on the 15-day injured list. This isn’t a short-term injury either, as the Cubs will be without their closer for a while while Palencia deals with a left oblique strain.
It’s one of those types of injuries that don’t necessarily have a fixed timetable, and even if it did, oblique strains tend to nag and stick around longer than you’d like. Plus, a pitcher is much more susceptible to a setback like the one Javier Assad had in 2025.
Injuries are part of the game, and pitchers are especially going down at a higher rate than ever before, but this is getting ridiculous for the Cubs. Not only are the Cubs going to be without their closer, but the team has also already lost veteran set-up man Phil Maton and their other premium free agent reliever, Hunter Harvey, who are both on the injured list as well.
Injuries to Matthew Boyd and Cade Horton have also exhausted the organization’s pitching depth through the first four weeks of the season, forcing the team to move Colin Rea from the bullpen to the rotation. Meanwhile, Javier Assad has filled in the rotation, when he probably would have been in the bullpen right now because of the other injuries.
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We are now talking about 32 pitchers in the Cubs organization who are on the injured list. Because of the enormous number of injuries all happening at once, the Cubs currently have one healthy pitcher remaining on the 40-man roster who isn’t already on the active squad, and that’s left-hander Charlie Barnes, who was called up earlier this week. Barnes pitched three innings in Monday’s 13-7 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies and was then optioned back to Triple-A the following day.
Despite pitching injuries, the Cubs have actually had strong performances from their starting rotation, helping keep the team afloat. There’s really only been one bad blowup recently, and that came in Monday’s loss as Assad had to wear it against the Phillies and was charged with nine earned runs. The reason he stayed in was that the Cubs were already short-handed in the bullpen.
With all these injuries, you have to believe some finger-pointing is happening within the organization. At the very least, leadership has to review the process from the training staff up to the coaching staff because a month in, the Cubs are in bad shape health-wise.
