Justin Steele Still Weeks from Throwing Baseball, Matthew Boyd Starting Sunday for I-Cubs, Jaxon Wiggins Still Not Game-Ready

The Cubs have already had boatloads of bad pitching news, and things didn’t get any better as Jordan Wicks allowed five runs in the 1st inning of his 2026 debut. The good news is that reinforcements are on the way, but the bad news is that it’ll be well over a week before they arrive.

Matthew Boyd has made excellent progress from an arthroscopic cleanup of his left meniscus, to the point that he’ll make a rehab start with Triple-A Iowa on Sunday. He’ll probably need at least one more outing in the minors to ramp up, though a lot will depend on how he feels after this next one.

After initially targeting a late May/early June return, Justin Steele suffered a setback in his recovery that forced him to shut down for several weeks. He’s improved enough from that flexor strain to get back to strength work, after which he’ll start throwing plyos, but it’s going to be several weeks before he’s back to throwing a baseball. That puts a July return in jeopardy.

Then there’s Jaxon Wiggins, who was scratched from his April 10 start with what Cubs farm director Jason Kanzler explained was just a matter of being strategic with their pitching deployment. It turns out that Wiggins was suffering from elbow inflammation that has kept him out of live action, though he’s been throwing bullpens in Arizona since earlier this month.

Wiggins hasn’t gotten stretched back out to game readiness and Jed Hoyer provided no specifics about a timeline for his return.

That leaves lefty Ty Blach, who recently re-signed on a minor league deal after being designated for assignment to accommodate the return of Caleb Thielbar. I kid, of course, but I didn’t feel the Blach news was necessarily worth its own separate post.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to pour bleach in my eyes and gargle with Drano.