The Cubs are looking for help in the rotation, and Reid Detmers keeps popping up for a reason. The Angels left-hander has gone from something of a question mark early in the season to one of the more appealing arms on the market, and the latest national voice to connect him to Chicago was Yahoo Sports’ Russell Dorsey. Dorsey reported that both the Cubs and the Chicago White Sox have interest in Detmers, with the two teams likely shopping in the same aisles before next Monday.
That fits the broader picture for the Cubs, who are expected to be active as the 2026 trade deadline approaches. Even with bigger names like Tarik Skubal, Freddy Peralta, and Sandy Alcantara in the conversation, Detmers has become a sensible target for Chicago because he checks a few boxes the front office clearly values.
First, he brings control. Detmers is under team control through the 2028 season, with an additional year after 2027.
For a Cubs club that seems to prefer pitchers who won’t vanish after a short rental, that matters. It also gives Chicago and Los Angeles a cleaner trade framework, since neither side has to wrestle with the value of a pitcher who could be staring at a lost season next year.
The fit also lines up with what the Cubs could be losing after this year. Matthew Boyd, David Peterson, and Shota Imanaga are all set to become free agents, which would leave Justin Steele as the lone left-handed option in the rotation at the start of the 2027 season. Given how the Cubs have built in recent years, they likely want more than one southpaw in that mix, and adding Detmers now would take that need off the offseason to-do list.
Then there’s the skill set itself. Detmers throws a fastball in the middle-90s, so he isn’t exactly the power-velocity monster some clubs chase.
But he does one thing at a high level: he gets swings and misses. He has struck out 27.6% of the hitters he’s faced this season, which would be the best rate of any pitcher in the Cubs’ rotation this year.
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