{"id":549732,"date":"2026-02-02T00:50:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T00:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/549732\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T00:50:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T00:50:19","slug":"zips-projects-this-new-cubs-pitcher-to-lead-the-team-in-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/549732\/","title":{"rendered":"ZiPS Projects This New Cubs Pitcher To Lead The Team In ERA"},"content":{"rendered":"

With pitchers and catchers reporting in less than two weeks, the Chicago Cubs<\/a>\u2019 pitching group is mostly set ahead of Spring Training<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Cubs were very active in revamping both their starting pitching and bullpen this offseason. They have acquired Edward Cabrera, Phil Maton, Jacob Webb, Hoby Milner, and Hunter Harvey. Chicago also re-signed Caleb Thielbar to a one-year deal.<\/p>\n

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All these moving parts make the Cubs a better rotation<\/a> than a season ago. Cabrera joins Matthew Boyd, Cade Horton, Jameson Taillon, Shota Imanaga, and Justin Steele in this starting pitcher group.<\/p>\n

Although the bullpen will look a bit different this season, Jed Hoyer did a solid job replacing last year\u2019s group in free agency. Maton, Webb, Milner, Harvey, Daniel Palenica, and Colin Rea are all locks to make the Cubs\u2019 Opening Day roster<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of all the pitchers that Chicago acquired this offseason, ZiPS believes that Harvey will have the best season. In ZiPS projections for the 2026 season, Dan Szymborski predicts that the 31-year-old will finish with the lowest ERA on the Cubs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ZiPS projects Harvey to finish with a 2.83 ERA, 12 walks, and 53 strikeouts across 46 appearances. Those would be solid numbers for a pitcher that the Cubs have high hopes for this upcoming season.<\/p>\n

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And Harvey has the potential to be the best reliever in Chicago\u2019s bullpen throughout the 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n

The key for him will be staying healthy<\/a>. He has missed significant time in each of the past two seasons due to different injuries. In 2024, he missed the final seven weeks of the season due to a back injury. Then, he pitched only 10 \u2154 innings last year after suffering a shoulder injury in April and a groin injury in August.<\/p>\n

When healthy, though, Harvey has been a reliable bullpen arm. Outside of an up-and-down 2024 season, the right-hander has put together strong numbers in three of the past four years.<\/p>\n

He finished with a 2.52 ERA in 2022, had a 2.82 ERA in 2023, and didn\u2019t allow any runs across 10 \u2154 innings pitched last season. Even with a small sample size in 2025, Harvey showed he was back to his former self after a poor 2024 campaign.<\/p>\n

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The veteran didn\u2019t allow a run across his 12 appearances and ranked toward the top of the league in chase rate (31.5%), whiff rate (30.6%), strikeout rate (28.2%), expected batting average against (.188), and walk rate (2.6%).<\/p>\n

If Harvey can carry that into 2026, the Cubs might have hit a home run on this signing. Chicago only signed him to a one-year, $6 million contract this offseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With pitchers and catchers reporting in less than two weeks, the Chicago Cubs\u2019 pitching group is mostly set…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,735,7581,138,24,4245,158,161,4914,12525,4156,442,5173,884,393,2000,4,4397,770,62579],"class_list":{"0":"post-549732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cade-horton","10":"tag-caleb-thielbar","11":"tag-chicago","12":"tag-chicago-cubs","13":"tag-chicagocubs","14":"tag-colin-rea","15":"tag-cubs","16":"tag-edward-cabrera","17":"tag-hoby-milner","18":"tag-hunter-harvey","19":"tag-jacob-webb","20":"tag-jameson-taillon","21":"tag-jed-hoyer","22":"tag-justin-steele","23":"tag-matthew-boyd","24":"tag-mlb","25":"tag-phil-maton","26":"tag-shota-imanaga","27":"tag-zips"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115998295815479430","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}