NEWSLETTER
It was always coming. Justin Steele had been so consistently good for so long that a bad start was going to happen. It was just a matter of when.
Unfortunately, it came during the same week when multiple other starting pitchers also got blown up, a week that itself came on the heels of a multi-week stretch of the Cubs losing agonizingly close games. It felt like a terrible time for it to happen.
All that said, there’s an argument to be made that even this bad outing wasn’t THAT bad. Five earned runs is never good, but he did get through six innings, striking out eight and walking just one. Moreover, the run in the first inning came on a wild pitch that – let’s be honest – Tucker Barnhart really should’ve blocked. The rest of the runs all came in that fourth inning when Steele was leaving some really bad pitches over the middle of the plate and the Astros punished him for it. I can imagine much worse starts than that.
AND it turns out Steele was pitching through some sickness:
So, you had one bad inning, while pitching under the weather, and making it six innings to help save the bullpen. When you think about a guy at the front of the rotation, that’s what you would hope a “bad” outing would look like.
Lastly, here’s a little reminder on the remaining years of control for Justin Steele, who could (and in all likelihood WILL) be arbitration eligible as Super 2 player as soon as 2024.
