ST. LOUIS — The Cubs couldn’t afford to keep sending struggling pitcher Jameson Taillon to the mound in the middle of a playoff race, cutting their longest-tenured active arm loose Monday.
Taillon was designated for assignment a day after he was crushed for seven runs and three homers in a loss to the Pirates, further stressing the Cubs’ need for pitching as the trade deadline approaches.
After just 15 starts, Taillon has allowed more home runs, 25, than all but one pitcher in baseball, the most glaring statistic among plenty of sour ones for the 34-year-old righty, who was in his fourth season on the North Side.
But the results overall were poor in Year 4 — Taillon was slated to hit free agency at season’s end — with a 5.92 ERA, a number that was sky-high in his last eight outings, during which the Cubs won just once.
Sunday proved the last straw, with manager Craig Counsell bluntly saying postgame that the Cubs would discuss whether Taillon would make his next start. That decision was made quickly, it turned out.
While Taillon’s own honest assessment Sunday — “I’m hurting the team” — shows the Cubs should have a better chance to win without him giving up multiple homers every fifth day, losing Taillon isn’t nothing inside the clubhouse, where he was a veteran leader and a well-liked presence.
In the immediate future, Taillon’s spot in an already-thinned Cubs rotation figures to go to Javier Assad, the righty who filled in admirably while Taillon was on the shelf with a hamstring injury earlier this summer. Assad’s last two appearances came in relief, with the Cubs plotting to keep him in the bullpen during a stretch of 17 games in 17 days. But Taillon’s departure will change those plans; after a four-game series in St. Louis, the Cubs need a starter come Friday’s game against the Yankees at Wrigley Field.
In the longer term, the team’s need to land impact pitching at next week’s trade deadline only heightens. Already, Jed Hoyer was going to be shopping for pitchers while the Cubs continue to battle the depth-depleting effects on an avalanche of pitching injuries. Now there’s a starter-sized hole in the pitching staff with the Cubs in the thick of a playoff race and trying to chase down the Brewers in the NL Central.
We’ll see if this departure spurs Hoyer’s front office to be more aggressive than it was last season, when the team president balked at the high price of pitching. That decision looked costly in hindsight, when pitching-depth issues helped end the Cubs’ postseason stay sooner than hoped.
Pitching again seems to be the area of the roster that could keep the Cubs from a deep October run, and their depth is in even worse shape now than it was 24 hours ago.