SAN FRANCISCO — Another night, another Cubs starter who wasn’t part of the Opening Day rotation.
Obviously, teams start each season knowing they’re going to have to use a lot more than five starting pitchers to get through a six-month marathon. The Cubs knew they would be calling on more than the five guys who made up their rotation at the end of March.
But here in mid-June, the Cubs perhaps weren’t anticipating that injuries would have decimated their starting staff and had them leaning on fill-ins to stay afloat during an early-summer free fall.
Right-hander Javier Assad earned the nod in the series opener Friday against the Giants. Not a week earlier, he shut them down with 6⅓ innings of relief that manager Craig Counsell still was calling ‘‘heroic’’ days later.
And Assad, who was sent to Triple-A Iowa in the middle of last month, delivered again. He yielded three hits and struck out five in six scoreless innings, and the Cubs topped the Giants 5-1 for their first back-to-back victories since May 27-28.
‘‘Javy carries himself like a pro,’’ left-hander Matthew Boyd said this week, after his shoulder soreness forced Assad into the start Friday. ‘‘He has a professional mindset. He’s mature beyond his years.
‘‘We’ve said it all the time: It’s going to take all of us to take us where we want to go. It’s awesome to see him go do that. He’s a talented pitcher.’’
Promising options have been somewhat hard to come by for the Cubs, who will need to continue to find patches with right-hander Cade Horton down for the season, left-hander Justin Steele’s status still unknown, right-hander Jameson Taillon on the injured list until after the All-Star break and Boyd’s return from the IL delayed.
The Cubs can be thankful that right-hander Ben Brown has broken out and turned in some of the best numbers in the majors. Entering play Friday, his 1.74 ERA was the fourth-lowest among pitchers with at least 50 innings.
Other attempted solutions have been less successful. Right-hander Colin Rea has an ERA north of 5.00, ranking second on the team in innings pitched despite starting the season in the bullpen. Left-hander Jordan Wicks quickly was jettisoned back to Iowa after a couple of uninspiring outings.
And with healthy arms struggling at times, too, it has made for a bumpy ride.
‘‘How we’ve handled it, there’s times when you feel you’ve got things under control and there’s times where you feel like you’re hanging on by the seat of your pants,’’ pitching coach Tommy Hottovy told the Sun-Times on Wednesday.
That’s not unique to the Cubs or to this season, of course. The grind of a season has a way of draining even the most stacked pitching staffs. Just ask the Dodgers of recent vintage.
Though the mere mention of the postseason might have fans laughing sarcastically, thanks to the team’s 9-22 stretch through Friday, the Cubs’ championship-level expectations demand some of this depth deliver if they’re going to succeed — or even play — in October.
‘‘Ultimately, the process of how we go about evaluating where guys are — tracking workloads, making sure we’re continuing to put guys in the best spots to be successful — that’s what’s most important,” Hottovy said. ‘‘We’ve done a decent job with that. But, ultimately, it comes down to guys stepping up.’’
So far, rotation-wide — including the healthy guys from the Opening Day group — that hasn’t happened to the degree it must. Entering play Friday, Cubs starters had the second-highest ERA in the majors (6.46) since May 9, the day after the team’s second 10-game winning streak concluded.
That includes poor showings by Taillon, right-hander Edward Cabrera and left-hander Shota Imanaga, who are not depth pieces. But it also includes Rea and Wicks — and even Brown, who has done a good deal of work to keep that number from being even higher.
In other words, just like with the offense, the starters need to be better to get to the Cubs where they want to be, even when injuries throw them a curveball.
