The Chicago Cubs have won just one World Series in the past 117 years. That one came in 2016, but the club is clearly not content to wait another 108 years for the next one, amassing the sixth-highest active-roster payroll in MLB.
They traded for Houston Astros slugger Kyle Tucker over the offseason, and added another Astro, high-leverage reliever Ryan Pressly as well as making an array of smaller deals to reinforce their squad for a serious postseason run in 2025.
So far, the effort has paid dividends. At 52-35 after defeating their arch-rival St. Louis Cardinals on Friday, 11-3, the North Siders boast the third-best record in baseball and hold a four-game lead over the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Central division.
Injury-Riddled Cubs Pitching Staff in 2025
But their run through the first half of the season has not always come easily for the Cubs. Starter Shoto Imanaga has already missed almost two months with a hamstring injury, returning on June 26.
The Cubs’ 2023 All-Star lefty Justin Steele managed just four starts before being his season terminated by an elbow injury that led to surgery.
Releivers Porter Hodge and Eli Morgan also remain injured, and are on rehab assignments. But of Friday, the Cubs were forced to announce more bad news for their pitching staff.
Veteran Jameson Taillon, in the third year of his four-year, $68 million deal with Chicago, was sent to the injured list on Friday with a strain of his right calf muscle.
âHeâs going to miss a pretty significant amount of time,â manager Craig Counsell announced, as quoted by MLB.com. âMore than a month.â
According to the Cubs announcement, Taillon suffered the injury not on the mound, but while doing his running following a routine bullpen session on Thursday.
âThese things happen,â Counsell continued. âYou have to, as an organization, be prepared for the next step, the next solution. And thatâs where weâll be. … Thereâs a little room for us to be flexible right now, and weâll use that to our advantage and go from there.â
Taillon Was Having a Tough Season Before Injury
Taillon, the second overall draft pick in 2010, taken by the Pittsburgh Pirates out of The Woodlands High School in Texas, pitched two years with the New York Yankees after spending his first four in Pittsburgh.
In 2022 he signed his four-year contract with the Cubs as a free agent. The team was counting on him to fill an important role in the rotation as the Cubs make their push to get back the World Series, but so far the 33-year-old has largely struggled, and has been particularly plagued by the long ball.
At the time of his injury, Taillon had already given up a National League leading 22 home runs in 17 starts, after allowing 21 in 28 starts all of last season. He has posted a 4.44 ERA, but even that number may be deceptive. His FIP (fielding independent pitching) number sits at an inflated 5.17 â a disparity believed to indicate that a pitcher has benefitted significantly from a solid defense behind him.
Taillon was scheduled to start the second game of the Cubs three-game set at Wrigley Field against their “Route 66 rivals,” the Cardinals.
Counsell said that he plans to go with a bullpen game on Saturday instead.
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