Justin Steele has made so much incremental progress that it can be harder to appreciate just how good he is right now. It’s also been roughly 20 years since the last time the Cubs had a real wave of homegrown pitching talent. Kerry Wood, Carlos Zambrano and Mark Prior wowed people with their physical size and right-now stuff, making their major-league debuts at the ages of 20 or 21. In so many ways, Steele is an outlier.

Advertisement

It’s only April — and a 12-9 start will cover up some of this — but the cracks are beginning to show in the Cubs pitching staff. Jameson Taillon, the $68 million offseason addition, is on the injured list with a strained left groin. Kyle Hendricks, the last player remaining from the 2016 World Series team, is about to begin a minor-league rehab assignment. Hayden Wesneski, the rookie who looked so good last September and in spring training, has a 6.23 ERA. Michael Fulmer, the presumed closer heading into the season, has an 8.68 ERA.

Now would be a good time for all the depth that the Cubs talked about to suddenly appear. Steele, who will face San Diego’s star-studded lineup on Tuesday night at Wrigley Field, could also continue pitching like an ace. Of all the X-factors that could propel the Cubs into the playoff race this summer, Steele’s continuing development is at or near the top of that list.

“With Justin, you just saw the growth through the years,” Triple-A Iowa pitching coach Ron Villone said. “You saw steps, not leaps and bounds.”

The Cubs selected Steele in the fifth round of the 2014 draft out of George County High School in Lucedale, Mississippi, using some of the money saved from Kyle Schwarber’s deal to give the left-handed pitcher a $1 million signing bonus. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2017 and learned how to throw a slider in 2020. He made his major-league debut in 2021, splitting that season between the bullpen and the rotation. He listened to Jon Lester’s recommendation to establish the fastball inside.

Steele, 27, has thrown 201 career innings at the major-league level, a low odometer that should bode well for his future. In his last 11 starts dating back to July 22 last year, he has a 1.17 ERA. He’s 3-0 with a 1.44 ERA and four quality starts so far this season, relying almost exclusively on a four-seam fastball (60.3 percent, per Statcast) and a dominating slider (35.9 percent).

Advertisement

Steele’s first arbitration-eligible year is lined up to be 2025. When the team announced Ian Happ’s three-year, $61 million contract extension earlier this month, Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer was asked, “Who’s next?” Hoyer didn’t mention Steele by name, but the implication seemed to be clear.

“I don’t see us negotiating with anyone else in-season,” Hoyer said. “I hope at the end of the season we look up and there’s some obvious candidates.”

Steele’s athleticism immediately stood out to Villone, a left-handed pitcher who lasted 15 years in the majors before joining the Cubs organization. Villone also overlapped with Steele as the minor-league rehab pitching coordinator, the Double-A Tennessee pitching coach and a supervisor at the club’s South Bend alternate training site during the COVID-19 pandemic. Steele still projects a coachable demeanor, a sense of calm and a quiet determination.

These are simple concepts that are difficult to execute. Find out what you’re good at, and then become great at it. Take the big things — like 40,000 fans at Wrigley Field or a 162-game schedule — and make them smaller with your focus and preparation.

“You have to evolve with the game, too,” Villone said. “He came in with a fastball and a curveball. His slider is his pitch now, so it shows you how special an arm like that can be. It wasn’t his No. 1 pitch coming in, but now it’s wipeout. It’s devastating to hitters and they know it’s coming.”

Steele’s left-handed delivery is deceptive. His 92 mph fastball has unique characteristics. He can throw two pitches 96 percent of the time because they don’t function as only two pitches when there is so much movement. He understands pitch sequencing. He knows how to set up hitters and keep them off-balance.

“He’s thinking about what’s going to happen in April, in July and October,” Villone said. “That’s somebody with a plan.”

Advertisement

Steele is a top-10 pitcher in baseball right now in terms of creating soft contact and avoiding hard contact, according to FanGraphs. Statcast places him around the 90th percentile as far as average exit velocity and avoiding the barrel of the bat. Not even a full month into the season, Baseball Reference already values his contributions at 1.1 WAR.

“There’s an evolution to all pitchers,” Cubs manager David Ross said. “I remember when Max Scherzer came up with the Diamondbacks, he had a lot of velocity and didn’t know how to pitch. He got away with some velocity once he got in the zone. And then he learned how to hit the corners and throw the slider for chase and backdoor the slider. You develop a changeup.

“Jon Lester was just four-seam, cutter in to start. And then as he developed the breaking ball, he was able to take that underneath. And then the changeup and the two-seamer and the backdoor cutter. You grow and you learn how to pitch.

“When you have the stuff that (Steele) has — and you can get hitters out in the zone with really a two-pitch mix — there’s the value. And then you learn how to locate that better. You learn how to backdoor certain things, different sides of the plate, different quadrants within the strike zone and then also other pitches as they develop. That’s a long journey.”

Steele has already gotten this far — 10 seasons in an organization that has completely changed in the last decade. He didn’t get traded when the Cubs were unloading prospects to chase a World Series trophy. He didn’t get overlooked when the franchise started rebuilding again.

Steele studies the data and the scouting reports, but he doesn’t talk about pitching as if it’s a science experiment: “You just have to move the ball around and throw it where their barrel’s not.” He moved to Arizona with his young family this past offseason to work out at the team’s training complex and stay connected to the coaching staff. He’s close to becoming the top-of-the-rotation starter the Cubs have been trying to develop from within for so long.

“It seems like it’s so far away when you’re in rookie ball and Low A,” Steele said. “Half the battle is convincing yourself that I can do it.”

(Photo: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)