Chicago Cubs: Projecting which starters will pitch the best in 2020

Chicago Cubs: Quintana becomes a free agent at the end of the season. He  suggested to MLB.com that he still feels like he needs to show fans that the trade that brought him to the other side of Chicago a couple of years ago was worth it

Last season, Quintana pitched well intermittently, but the overall body of work has disappointed. Last season, he posted a career-worst ERA, WHIP, and hits per nine innings.

Last season, really none of his pitches were working for him. Opponents posted batting averages in the .290’s against his fastballs and .354 against his changeup.

He should be extra motivated since it’s the last year of his current contract. Putting Quintana in the fifth spot on this list isn’t as much of an indictment on him as it may seem. If Quintana has a good season and is still indeed the fifth starter on the team, that probably means the Cubs have one of the best starting rotations in all of baseball.

At least at the start of the season, it’s hard to see Ross putting the rotation newcomer Chatwood in front of stalwart Quintana. Regardless, Chatwood is going to have a better season than Quintana.

If this happens and Quintana still pitches relatively well, that bodes well for the Cubs chances to have an excellent rotation.

Chicago Cubs: With his walk issues hopefully behind him, Tyler Chatwood will solidify himself as the fourth-best starter in the rotation

Yes, this does assume that Chatwood will beat out Alec Mills and Adbert Alzolay for a starter job when Opening Day rolls around.

Chatwood’s first season with the Cubs in 2018 was a well-documented disaster. Couple his play with his contract, and signing the 30-year-old righty looked like a massive mistake.

The issue was the walks.

A mid-90s fastball with good movement across the plate coupled with a curve that is 15 miles per hour slower than his fastballs on average gives him probably the toughest arsenal of pitches to hit out of everyone on the starting staff besides Darvish.

Between 2018 and 2019, Chatwood slashed his walks per nine innings nearly in half to finish the season with a 3.76 ERA as he transformed into one of the Cubs’ more reliable relievers last season. As a starter, he had a 3.97 ERA last season in five starts walking just 12 batters across those starts.

Mechanical changes between seasons steadied his confidence, and as Bleacher Nation’s Brett Taylor noted in an article a few days ago, Chatwood continually got better as the season progressed in 2019.

Chatwood was a 70 percent fastball pitcher in 2019. Since most of his time was spent as a reliever, he could reach back and fling it averaging about 96 mph on his four-seam fastball and sinker.

Whether those pitches will play as well when he has to pace himself, and the velocity is a tick lower because he is a starter rather than a reliever is a question mark for him this season.

But, the arsenal is there, he should still be riding the momentum of a 2019 season when he improved throughout the course of the year, and he seems to have figured out his walk issues.

Expect a big year from Chatwood as he solidifies himself as the fourth-best starter on the Cubs staff.

Chicago Cubs: Despite his age and despite a disappointing 2019 season, Jon Lester isn’t done yet

Lester is 36 years old.

Lester has over 2500 innings on his left arm in the regular season and an additional 154 innings in the postseason.

Since 2016 when he was an All-Star, posted a 2.44 ERA and won 19 games, he’s lost over two miles per hour on both his fastballs. Last season, he had a 4.46 ERA and gave up a National  League-high 205 hits.

Yet, because it’s Jon Lester, it’s hard to see him absolutely tanking in 2020 despite the fact that his career is undoubtedly on the downswing because of his age.

After randomly posting a 4.82 ERA in 2012 with the Boston Red Sox, he shed over a point off his ERA the next season posting a 3.75 in 2013. After a 4.33 ERA in 2017 a season after his World Series heroics, he made an All-Star team and again shed over a point off his ERA in 2018 in his age 34 seasons.

Lester responds to adversity, is tough as nails, and competes. It was tempting to put Chatwood in this slot (which would have been a heck of a hot take), but given who he is, how he has responded to adversity in the past, and the extra motivation he has after a bad 2019, Lester will slot in as the Cubs No. 3 starter in 2020.

Chicago Cubs: Hendricks is as steady as they come and is poised for another great season 

First and foremost, The Professor needs to stay healthy. But don’t worry, Kyle Hendricks, he has a new training program for that.

Still, though, with a fastball that averages between 86 and 87 mph (and is about two mph slower than it was when he earned the ERA title in 2016), there isn’t much room for error.

But over and over again, Hendricks has demonstrated he can operate effectively despite his razor-thin margin of error.

Hendricks is the epitome of consistency: his ERA has been sub-4.00 every year of his career, he’s pitched in at least 30 games in all but one of his full MLB seasons, he’s going to produce a lot of groundballs, and he isn’t going to surrender much hard contact.

With just an inning of extra work in the playoffs over the last two years, maybe the velocity on his fastball will start to creep back towards the 88-89 mph number that he sat at during the best season of his career in 2016.

The consistency he’s shown throughout his career, coupled with the fact he doesn’t walk guys, makes him less susceptible to have a real disaster season like some of the other guys on the list. (Such as Darvish and Chatwood who have lost control on their pitches in the past and Jon Lester whose age is a giant wildcard right now).

Two is the absolute lowest you can put Hendricks on this list, and there’s a perfect argument to be made that he could be the No. 1 starter next season as well.

Chicago Cubs: Yu Darvish will pitch like the ace that we all know he can be

Darvish has the nastiest arsenal of pitches among Cubs starters.

He throws eight different pitches ranging from fastballs in the mid-90s to a slow curve in the high 60s that just freezes hitters.

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He couldn’t stay healthy in 2018 and then walks killed him at the beginning of 2019. Infamously, he walked 11 batters in his first two starts of the season and ended the month of April, averaging seven walks per nine innings.

But then, Darvish found his groove. His ERA sunk below 3.50 in July (2.93), August (3.45), and September/October (2.39). Per FanGraphs.com, from July 31 until the end of the season, he had a 2.97 ERA which was the top 15 among all starters in baseball.

After admitting to feeling pressure after signing that massive $126 million contract with the Cubs in 2018, the bounce-back year in 2019 should have lifted that weight off his shoulders. Like Chatwood, he also pitched his very best at the end of last season and would ideally carry over that momentum/confidence into this season.

This is the season everything comes together for the man who didn’t hold back in his criticism of the Houston Astros for that sign-stealing scheme as that nasty arsenal continues to churn out strikeouts at the sky-high rate he’s known for, and he pieces together the best season of any Cubs starter this season.