Tarik Skubal would liven arms race with Brewers, but Cubs have plenty of pitching needs beyond staff ace

LAS VEGAS – The hot stove is switched on, at least for a little while.

Baseball’s offseason is underway, though it’s expected to come to a screeching, indefinite halt with an expected lockout at the beginning of next month.

Until then, though, let the rumors fly.

The Cubs arrived at this week’s GM meetings in Las Vegas in need of pitching, obvious after Jed Hoyer spent his end-of-season press conference hammering home that reworking the staff is Priority No. 1.

That need is more glaring in the wake of the Brewers’ World Series win, which reframed the Cubs’ task from chasing down their pesky division rivals to chasing down the kings of the baseball world.

“They’ve had the best record in baseball the last two years,” Hoyer said of the Brewers last month. “Both having them in our division having the best record in baseball and being in the National League, the standard has to be exceptionally high.

“Their pitching has been exceptionally good. That’s the area that we have to double down and really focus on.”

Jacob Misiorowski blazes fastballs past batters, and the Brewers’ bullpen is replete with weapons no batter wants to face, having just dazzled with a 1.38 ERA in 65 playoff innings.

The Cubs, meanwhile, after finishing 14 games back in the NL Central standings, have nothing but question marks when it comes to figuring out what their staff will look like when the 2027 season begins.

All five pitchers who finished the season in the starting rotation are free agents, the in-house candidates to replace them are coming off significant injuries, and the bullpen is likely due for a makeover after Hoyer bluntly critiqued his own work in putting together the 2026 relief corps.

That’s a lot.

The shiny bauble out there for Cubs fans to dream about suiting up in blue pinstripes is Tarik Skubal, the two-time Cy Young winner who headlines this offseason’s otherwise lackluster free-agent class.

He’s sure to get a massive payday, and while the Cubs have been reported both as likely to jump into the bidding war and unlikely to even sniff it, Skubal is exactly the sort of prize that would liven up an intra-division arms race and get the Cubs closer to the champs.

The best way to match a Misiorowski? How about a Skubal?

The Dodgers tried that, of course, to no success. Skubal was their big trade-deadline import as they sought a three-peat. The Brewers swept them out of the NLCS.

Unlike the Dodgers – and much to their fans’ frustrations – the Cubs haven’t made spending big free-agent bucks a habit, even though last winter’s $175 million deal for Alex Bregman dented the narrative a tad. Bregman showed exactly what paying for high-end talent gets you, playing Gold Glove defense and finishing the season as the lineup’s second best hitter after a sluggish start to his Cubs career.

But Skubal’s contract figures to be in another stratosphere, dollar-wise, and with the Cubs needing so much more than just one arm to improve their pitching, he could very well be beyond what they’re willing to pay.

After Cubs pitchers gave up more homers than almost every other team in baseball last season, Hoyer talked of the need to nab ground-ball and strikeout types to complement the Cubs’ elite defense. That’s what he tried to do with deadline acquisitions Clay Holmes and Kevin Gausman, though that didn’t equal the lengthy playoff run he hoped, the Cubs out of the playoffs after just two games.

A Holmes reunion would make sense, possibly coming at a price that would allow Hoyer to keep adding impact arms, something dropping big money on Skubal could potentially preclude.

Regardless, the Cubs have made no bones about what the expectation is at Clark and Addison: to play championship-caliber baseball. Their small-market neighbors to the north did just that this year.

“I watched the World Series,” Bregman said after winning a Gold Glove last month. “We wanted to be playing in that last game and winning that last game.”

Is there any suite of pitching moves that can get the Cubs to the Brewers’ level? Would betting big on Skubal be the best way to close the gap?

That’s what Hoyer & Co. have to figure out this winter.