With less than 24 hours to go before the trade deadline the Cubs made a move for a starting pitcher. It wasn’t a blockbuster deal for Tarik Skubal, who will take his electric left arm to Los Angeles to join a Dodgers team that is already flush with talent. It wasn’t a move for Freddy Peralta, who will take his body of work that has stymied the Cubs to the tune of a .169/.281/.305 career slashline against the Northsiders over 109.1 career innings against his former division rival to the American League
East and the Tampa Bay Rays. Instead the Cubs made a savvy deal for veteran starter Kevin Gausman.
Gausman has certainly been an ace for both the San Francisco Giants and the Toronto Blue Jays dating back to the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. He fortifies a battered Cubs pitching staff and should bring a veteran presence along with Postseason experience to Chicago. You can see highlights from his 2025 Postseason where the Blue Jays fell just short of dethroning the Dodgers in the World Series:
The team context
Don’t get me wrong, Skubal and Peralta are great, but the cost to acquire them was steep. The Cubs may have been in on one of those starters if they had a deeper farm system or just needed a single ace in the rotation. But as we’ve discussed many times this season, pitching injuries have been a real Achilles’ heel for this Cubs team who have managed to ride the top offense in the league to a 63-49 record. They’re still 6.5 games back of the division-leading Brewers, but that record is good for a four-game lead for the top Wild Card spot. You can see the top ten teams by fWAR and some of their key offensive stats below:
For as good as their hitting has been this season, the Cubs pitching has needed help. By fWAR their starting pitchers rank 25th in MLB between the Washington Nationals and San Diego Padres. It doesn’t get better when you look at the bullpen, where the Cubs rank 26th in MLB by fWAR, in between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics with a cumulative fWAR of -0.5.
But for all of their pitching woes, the Cubs are not the Nationals, Padres, Giants or Athletics. They are a team that is currently on track to play meaningful baseball in September and maybe even October with a 92.2 percent chance to make the playoffs according to FanGraphs:
To move their pitching up to the league median, or better the Cubs didn’t need one arm. Reporting says they are looking to add three additional pitchers between now and 5 p.m. CT today. Sunday night we found out the first of those pitchers is Gausman.
The arsenal
Gausman has a three pitch mix that he throws in similar ratios to both righties and lefties. He has a 94 MPH fourseam fastball he throws approximately half of the time. He pairs that with a split finger he throws about 38 percent of the time and mixes in a slider the remaining 10 percent of the time. It’s a pitch mix that has remained remarkably stable since 2022:
His fastball is still excellent, but the secondary pitches have fallen off a bit this season. It’s possible the Cubs have a fix for that. However, it’s equally possible they are just looking to upgrade the innings they just lost by designating Jameson Taillon for assignment. Either would be a suitable upgrade for the Cubs rotation, however if they have a fix for his secondary pitches Gausman may be able to return to closer to his prior ace status. Ironically, Taillon was claimed by the Blue Jays and the Cubs will receive a player to be named later for him.
The stats
Gausman has been one of the best starters in baseball since 2020 whether you measure that in innings pitched or results. Below you can see a list of the top 29 pitchers in baseball by fWAR, where Gausman ranks second behind Zach Wheeler. Fun fact, Cubs trade target, George Kirby of the Mariners just missed the cut at #24 here. For reference the first pitcher with any Cubs experience during this time on this leaderboard is Justin Steele who ranks #66:
If you were to sort that full table by innings pitched, Gausman is also second there (behind Logan Webb’s 1141.2). High quality innings, and a lot of them, sounds like exactly what this iteration of the Cubs needed at the trade deadline.
But it is worth noting that the Cubs aren’t getting 2021 Gausman in this deal. Gausman turned 35 in January and Father Time is undefeated. The Cubs are hoping a trade to a contender and some tweaks on Gausman’s secondaries, gets him closer to his ace-like status for seven more regular season starts and as far as the Cubs can go in October. Cubs fans have seen the idyllic version of this movie before when the Cubs traded for 34-year old Cole Hamels during a down year, only to see him return to form at the corner of Clark and Addison.
And there are reasons to believe Gausman might be better in blue pinstripes than he was in Blue Jays baby blue. For starters, Gausman’s 4.38 ERA is almost a run worse than his 3.51 FIP. As a reminder, FIP stands for fielding independent pitching, and tries to look at what a pitcher can control rather than the impact a good or bad defense may have on his outcomes. But Gausman isn’t moving to a neutral defense, he’s moving to the best defense in baseball by many metrics. Of the 19 pitchers who have thrown at least 10 innings for the Cubs this season, 16 have ERAs that are lower than their FIP — including newcomer David Peterson. That’s notable, because Peterson did not have a lower ERA with the Mets, and close readers of this blog will recall I highlighted that metric for him as well (yes, that includes the July 3 start against the Cardinals we’d all rather forget).
Another reason for cautious optimism that the Cubs may be getting a better version of Gausman can be seen in his BABIP, which is an uncharacteristically high .313 for the 2026 season. That could indicate a decline for a 35-year old pitcher, but it could also indicate some bad luck. The type of bad luck that turns into better results when you swap Andrés Giménez for Dansby Swanson at shortstop, Ernie Clement for Nico Hoerner at second and Jesús Sánchez for Ian Happ in left field and, of course, Daulton Varsho for Pete Crow-Armstrong in center.
At the risk of introducing some non-statistical analysis in a “by the numbers” column, it also seems like Gausman is just a great guy who should fit right into a Cubs clubhouse that is by all accounts close, business-like about their approach to the game and genuinely likeable. There was genuine sadness among Toronto fans and writers that the time had come to part ways with a great guy:
The return
The Cubs gave up two prospects for Gausman, both contact-oriented infielders in Brett Bateman and Ty Southisene. I’ll confess, even as the person who peers into minor league stats in the NL Central regularly for BaseballHQ, neither were on my radar as being particularly close to the big league roster. So I did the exact same thing y’all probably did and sought out the reaction of a trusted prospects expert. Below is what Keith Law wrote up for The Athletic:
This feels like a very light return for two months of Gausman, even the 2026 version who’s down from his peak performance. Brett Bateman bounced back after he was beset by a broken hamate bone in 2025 and bottomed out at a .307 slugging percentage. This season, he’s hitting .312/.431/.422 with better contact quality too. He could be the strong side of a center field platoon, or a quality fourth outfielder who can handle all three spots against right-handed pitching. He’s an above-average runner with probably 40 power, enough that he should hit in the .270-280 range with some walks thanks to his strong contact skills. Ty Southisene, brother of Atlanta prospect Tate Southisene, has zero power — literally, no pro homers in over 700 plate appearances — and probably has to move to second. He’s very small, so there’s no projection here for him to get stronger.
Takeaways
Overall, this feels like the first of a series of moves to improve the Cubs pitching staff before 5PM tonight. Gausman adds innings with more of a track record than the Cubs other options, including a decent amount of Postseason experience and excellent clubhouse vibes. If the Cubs get the same version of Gausman the Blue Jays saw in 2026 they’ll have improved on 2026 Taillon considerably, if they have some tweaks that can return him to something like his 2025 form, this is a straight-up steal of a trade.
Welcome to Chicago, Kevin Gausman. Here’s hoping a couple of other guys are on the way to join you as the reinforcements at Wrigley Field as the Cubs kick off the post-trade deadline run with a series against none other than those juggernaut Dodgers at Wrigley Field tonight.
