It appears, to me at least, that Cubs President of Baseball Operations Jed Hoyer has put together a pretty strong 40-man roster.
This Cubs team should be a World Series contender and, at the very least, be the NL Central champion. That’s obviously the goal, and the team as constructed should be able to do those things.
Where do any weaknesses in this team lie? What sorts of things could take this contending team and doom it to mediocrity?
I’d have to say starting pitching. For an example, we need look
no farther than last year’s Atlanta Braves. The Braves were coming off a 2024 season in which they won 89 games, though they lost a Wild Card series to the Padres. That came after two 100+ win seasons.
The Braves were expected to be strong contenders again in 2025. What went wrong?
First, they dug themselves a big hole by starting the season 0-7. But mostly, it’s because a lot of their starting pitchers went down with injuries. Only Bryce Elder made more than 23 starts (he had 28), and he had a pretty bad year. Chris Sale, Spencer Strider and Spencer Schwellenbach all missed considerable time with injuries. Their top five starters made only 109 starts. They didn’t have the depth to replace these guys in the rotation.
By comparison, the 2025 Cubs’ top five starters made 128 starts.
Of course, we hope that the Cubs starters are healthy this year, and Hoyer has made an effort to improve the depth of the rotation, something he acknowledged in Wednesday’s presser in Mesa was an issue in 2025.
So that’s what I think is the answer to the question posed in the headline. What about you?
