RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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ST. LOUIS — When David Peterson served up a solo homer in the second inning Monday night, it looked like a continuation of a potentially worrisome trend.
The Cubs ’ lefty starter arrived in a midseason trade with a reputation as an elite ground-ball pitcher, and given the Gold Glove defenders populating the infield, it seemed like a perfect fit, the right ingredients for a change-of-scenery success story after Peterson, a 2025 All Star, saw his fortunes dip with the Mets.
But since coming to the Cubs, his ground-ball numbers hadn’t been nearly as good as they were with his former team. He took a 32.4% ground-ball rate into his fifth start as a Cub on Monday, which paled in comparison to the 51.1% rate he had in 16 appearances with the Mets.
And then the home run, the fourth he’d allowed in five outings after giving up just six in 16 pre-trade appearances.
But it wasn’t a harbinger of doom. Instead, Peterson turned in his best performance since the trade, getting more grounders than fly balls for the first time since changing uniforms.
“David pitched really, really well,” manager Craig Counsell said after the game. “I obviously haven’t seen a lot of David when he was at his best, but this — the ground balls, the swings at the sinker — feels like this is what it looks like. It was good to see.
“You see the ground balls starting to go up, and that’s exactly what we want.”
Getting the best version of Peterson — whose ground-ball rate ticked up to 36.5% after Monday’s winning effort — would be a big development for a Cubs team still battling depth issues on a staff that’s been ravaged by injuries and just cut loose veteran righty Jameson Taillon due to poor performance.
Peterson has been very effective in four of the five starts he’s made with the Cubs, with a 1.96 ERA in those four outings. His overall numbers are enlarged thanks to a clunker against this same Cardinals team in which he gave up 10 runs and didn’t make it through four innings.
Monday, Peterson was the kind of pitcher the Cubs hoped they’d see when they made the trade, the type of pitcher he was during the 2024 campaign — he finished that season with a 2.90 ERA — and the first half of last season, which featured a 2.49 ERA in his first 13 starts and culminated in that trip to the All-Star Game.
“It was good to go out there and execute,” Peterson said. “Some of the things that we’ve been working on continued to click even more [Monday], and they’re getting better and better and more normal every time I go out.
“It’s definitely a lot closer to ‘24 and early ‘25, but I don’t necessarily look at it that way. The performances are closer to that, but I’m focused on being a better version of myself every day. That’s the goal.”
Jed Hoyer’s front office figures to make more trades for pitching over the next several days ahead of Monday’s trade deadline. Fans are hoping there’s a big, splashy deal in there somewhere, but no matter how aggressive Hoyer & Co. get , the pitching staff figures to look different come Tuesday.
After Taillon’s departure, lefties Matthew Boyd and Shota Imanaga are the entrenched duo at the top of the rotation, and they’ve been pitching like it. Righties Colin Rea and Javier Assad — the latter will, at least briefly, slot into Taillon’s vacated rotation spot — started the season in the bullpen and are capable of heading back there, should Hoyer add pitchers that force such a move.
Peterson, though, figures to stay where he is. And if he can deliver like he did Monday, that will go a long way to lengthening a rotation that dealt with depth issues during its briefer-than-hoped playoff stay last fall.
“He was outstanding,” third baseman Alex Bregman said of Peterson. “For me, that was the best I’ve seen him here, so far, and he’s going to continue to do that on a really consistent basis.”
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