4 Cubs who need to have a huge second half to keep Chicago's playoff hopes alive

The Chicago Cubs enter the second-half of the 2026 season 12 games above .500, and sitting atop the National League Wild Card race. The Cubs are positioned to make the playoffs, and more importantly, a position to be a significant buyer at the MLB trade deadline.

Beyond the trade deadline, there's a reasonable expectation that the Cubs could get healthy. Jameson Taillon will likely be back in the coming days, Edward Cabrera within the next month, and Ben Brown and Justin Steele could be options for the bullpen in September.

These struggling Cubs need to come alive after the All-Star break

The deadline and healthy certainly are two important factors for the Cubs during the final two months of the regular season, but they will also need some players to step up in the way that they didn't during the first-half of the season.

Alex Bregman

Alex Bregman has certainly been one of the biggest disappintments of the season so far for the Cubs. There's no question about that. That said, Bregman remains one of the most important players on the Cubs roster. If Bregman can be the player he's been throughout most of his career, that is the type of bat that can mask deficiencies across the pitching staff.

The hope for the Cubs is that Bregman has started looking like himself over the last two weeks before the All-Star break, and the result were starting to appear against the Reds last weekend. He leads the Cubs in RBI since June 30, and last weekend, he had 4 hits in 14 plate appearances, with two home runs and a double.

Shota Imanaga

Shota Imanaga's return to the Chicago Cubs has been about what should be expected. The biggest difference is that Imanaga is generating more chase this season, sitting in the 97th percentile. There's also been improvement with his barrel rate, sitting int he 15th percentile, but not enough to put an end to his issue with the home-run ball.

Along those lines, Imanaga has an ERA of 4.17 through 19 starts. The improvement is that he hasn't nearly as unpitchable as he was at the end of the 2025 season. The Cubs need that to be the case moving forward. The rotation is still leaking oil, and even with a deadline addition, regression from Imanaga is the last thing the Cubs need.

Caleb Thielbar

Lost in the injuries throughout the bullpen and Phil Maton's struggles this season is that Caleb Thielbar has been pretty bad. Thielbar has an ERA of 4.23 in 32 appearances this season, but his FIP of 5.27 is more indicative of how he has looked this season.

There's regression just about everywhere you look on Thielbar's Baseball Savant page. He's missing more bats this season, but the sacrifice has been command. He's walking 10.9% of the hitters he's faced this season, up 5% from last season. As is the case with the rotation, the Cubs will add reinforcements to the bullpen at the deadline, but Thielbar returning to form will also be needed.

Nico Hoerner

It's been a wild turn of events for Nico Hoerner this season. He looked like a clear MVP candidate in April, and since then, he's looked completely lost. There was brief hope at the end of June that Hoerner was turning the page from his prolonged slump, but that hasn't been the case. Hoerner has a wRC+ of 1 through 39 plate appearances this month, and an OPS of .374.

It's bee perplexing, considering there haven't been any dramatic shifts in Hoerner's underlying metrics from the 2025 season. The only real difference is that he's hitting fewer balls on the ground. There's been about a 5% drop from last season. Still, that wouldn't explain all of his struggles. The Cubs will need to find the answer to his struggles, especially if they want the lineup to have length in the playoffs.

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