The Cubs already had a rotation problem on their hands. Ben Brown’s latest health update only made it bigger.
Chicago enters the offseason with Jed Hoyer staring at a pitching staff that needs a serious reset after a rough 2026 finish. The offense went cold at the worst possible time, scoring just one run in a quick two-game Wild Card exit, but the real damage had been building on the mound for a while. Injuries hit both the bullpen and the rotation, and the staff never really found steady ground.
The front office tried to patch things together during the season by swinging trades for Kevin Gausman and Clay Holmes. That helped stabilize the picture some, but both pitchers are now on the free agent market, which leaves Hoyer back where he started: trying to rebuild the rotation from the ground up.
That task is even trickier now because the list of available starters is thin. Holmes and Gausman are free agents, along with Shota Imanaga, Matthew Boyd, David Peterson, and Colin Rea. The only controlled arms with meaningful starting experience still in the organization are Javier Assad, Cade Horton, and Brown.
Horton is already a question because he is working his way back from Tommy John Surgery. Brown, though, is the one drawing the most concern right now.
According to The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma, Brown’s health “remains up in the air” as the offseason begins. Sharma called him the “biggest question mark.”
Brown still isn’t throwing and could wind up needing surgery. That update follows the neck injury that shut him down in the middle of the season, the same issue that cost him time in 2024.
That it happened again was already a bad sign. The bigger problem is that more than four months have passed and Brown still apparently hasn’t moved forward in his recovery. For a Cubs team with so many pitching holes to fill, that’s a tough development to absorb.
Brown had finally started to look like something real in 2026. The sinker gave him another weapon, and it played well with his usual mid-to-high 90s fastball and sharp curveball.
He still had his rough moments, but the results were much better over 20 appearances, including eight starts. He finished with a 1.85 ERA in 68.0 innings.
The Cubs have used Brown in the bullpen and in the rotation, but the long-term hope has always been that he could grow into a third or fourth starter. This season offered the clearest sign yet that he might get there. Now, with his recovery stuck in limbo, Chicago may never get the chance to build on that progress.
That uncertainty puts even more pressure on Hoyer’s offseason. If Brown can’t be counted on, the Cubs have to chase starting pitching even harder.
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