The Cubs Need To Improve The Rotation, But They Should Just Say No To Ranger Suarez – Cubs

The Cubs appear poised to lose Kyle Tucker to free agency without a fight, and yet, the Cubs have a bigger hole to fill in their rotation than that left by their departing right fielder. Don’t take my word for it, Jed Hoyer has been saying as much since November 11th at the general manager meetings in Las Vegas. More specifically than just pitching, what the Cubs truly need are strikeouts. The team has done a great job of getting the most out of what they have, finishing the season 10th in ERA (3.81) despite ranking 19th in fWAR. They have done this through a combination of an elite defense and Wrigley Field turning into a pitcher’s haven. Still, their inability to strike out hitters and overpower them came back to bite them in the playoffs, as the team was clearly an arm or two short in the Milwaukee series. 

The fix is obvious: just add more strikeouts. In theory, this won’t be a hard fix, as despite the excellent ERA, the team finished just 21st in strikeouts in 2025, so there’s nowhere to really go but up. The problem is that while it’s easy to identify the need to add swing-and-miss stuff to the pitching staff, almost every other organization in Major League Baseball is going to place the same importance on striking hitters out, making it an expensive endeavor. Thus far in the Jed Hoyer era, the Cubs have been far more value-focused than anything; a team consistently looking for a good deal and willing to wait out markets, rather than going and getting “their guy”. This hasn’t always been a bad thing; they’ve managed to build bullpens on a shoestring budget and have also found players like Matthew Boyd to round out their pitching, but it also means that acquiring known strikeout artists has proven to be difficult. 

If you were going to apply the same value-forward proposition to the 2025 free agent class, it’d be hard not to zero in on left-handed pitcher Ranger Suarez. The writers of DiamondCentric ranked the 30-year-old Suarez as our ninth-best player available, with a projected contract of five years and $110 million. While $110 million sounds rich on the surface, it’s a much smaller projected number (and fewer years) than we have tied to remaining pitchers such as Framber Valdez and Tatsuya Imai (both are projected for six years and over $150 million in total dollars). The value begins to show itself when you take into account just how close Valdez and Suarez have been over the course of the last two seasons, and where we have the two projected in terms of free agent contracts: 

On the surface, it would seem, then, that signing Ranger Suarez to a five-year deal around a $22 million average annual value would be kind of a slam dunk, but I’m not so sure he’s a good fit for what the Cubs need. In fact, he’s a contract and a player I hope the Cubs stay far, far away from, despite a recent report from Mark Feinsand suggesting the Cubs are among the three most “serious” threats to sign him. It’s not because I think Suarez is bad, but that going with the “value” option has been a bit of a bugaboo for the team in general, and has seemingly left them a player (or two) short in each of the last two seasons. Breaking from that mold (even just a little bit) feels like a necessary next step in climbing the MLB hierarchy. 

Even just beyond breaking an internal mold, I hold reservations on the pitcher himself. The first reason is that red flags are already popping up, with a backslide in velocity. As recently as 2023, the left-handed pitcher was averaging over 93mph on his fastball. Jump to last season, and he’s bled two full mph off the pitch as he now sits at 91.2mph. The velocity bottomed out mid-season, around 89mph, between June and July, before jumping back up to the low-90s. Still, nothing suggests that 93mph is coming back without some serious intervention (whether medically or mechanically, I’m unsure). 

The decline in overall velocity hasn’t been seen entirely in terms of his strikeout rates, as he has sat pretty neutral over the course of the last three seasons, with K%’s of 22%, 23.2%, and 23.2% over his last three campaigns, but the drop in velocity remains concerning. A pitcher who already does not generate much whiff and who does not add much in terms of extension is playing with fire. There will come a point at which a lowered velocity is going to catch up with a pitcher who’s already hovering around league-average strikeout rates, and it doesn’t feel like Suarez is too far from that as is.

Not everything is terrible with Ranger Suarez, however. As noted in the chart above, he’s shown an elite ability to limit contact, finishing last year in the 89th percentile or better for barrels, exit velocity, and hard hit rate. He gets a good deal of chase, too. In front of that elite defense, Suarez would probably look to be a pretty good pitcher at times! But does he really solve what the Cubs need right now? 

The answer is: not really, I really don’t think so. The Cubs already have left-handed pitchers who use lower-velocity, deception, and movement to limit batted ball data, like Justin Steele, who will return from injury in the first-third of the 2026 season. They have another lower-velocity lefty in Shota Imanaga, and Jameson Taillon is essentially the right-handed version of a “limit-the-hitter to weak contact” type himself. Suarez’s 23% rate is just a bit above league average for a starting pitcher, and his velocity is already below that of a league average starting pitcher (and even when we account just for left-handed ones). If the Cubs’ biggest deficiencies in their rotation are strikeouts (21st) and they also lack some velocity (13th), then adding yet another pitcher like Ranger Suarez seems to be missing the point. 

Now is the time for a 92-win-Cubs team to stop worrying about surplus value in every single move. That isn’t to say “ignore value entirely”, but instead to suggest that a big-market team like the Chicago Cubs should occasionally get a little irrational about a guy they have to have. They’ve already missed on Dylan Cease, bowing out reportedly when the bidding got to $200 million, but just because they’ve missed on Cease shouldn’t mean they need to give up on the pursuit of the almighty K. Tatsuya Imai projects to have a strong ability to strike out hitters in MLB. Other pitchers such as Michael King (27.6 K% since 2023), Joe Ryan (28.3 K% since 2023), Edward Cabrera (career 25.9 K%), and MaKenzie Gore (career 25.6 K%) remain available on the market in some fashion. There are likely other names that could become available or are available without even knowing, so these five shouldn’t be the end of the discussion either. 

Ranger Suarez might not be a ticking time-bomb (though with the velocity decline, he might be, too), but he projects as a safer, more value-oriented signing that would improve the Cubs, but not likely in the way the team needs. The team needs to diversify a bit and become a little less reliant on great defense to make their pitchers look good; Nico Hoerner is an impending free agent in 2027, and Dansby Swanson took a bit of a step back last year – their defense isn’t going to last forever. Dylan Cease on the contract he got would have looked very good at the top of the Cubs rotation with Cade Horton, but they cannot just allow that to be their one swing in terms of adding more whiff to their starting rotation group. They cannot simply rely on prospects to add what they need; Cade Horton looks like he’ll help, and rookie Jaxon Wiggins may as well, but beyond those two, the cupboard is pretty barren in the system right now. So instead of using a ballpark and extracting every ounce of value, the Cubs should be looking to just “get a dude” for lack of better wording. Get a hoss, a stud, whatever you want to call him – bring in some strikeouts, even if it costs a little more. Sadly, Ranger Suarez, while a fine pitcher in his own right, falls short of that status in my mind. It isn’t that he’s a terrible pitcher; he’s just not the right pitcher for the Cubs. 

What do you think of Ranger Suarez? Should the Cubs pursue the left-handed pitcher? Or are there other options for the Cubs that you’d rather have? Let us know in the comment section below!