Cubs homer – A league-worst home run surrender has the Cubs staring at a painful reality: the homers aren’t just one pitcher’s quirk, they’re staff-wide—and it comes at the worst time for a team chasing October.
ST. LOUIS — The baseball didn’t just travel over the fence on Friday night. It kept coming, enough that manager Craig Counsell called it “bothersome” as the Cubs tried to get through a season stretch that feels like it’s slipping out of their control.
By the time the sun came up Saturday, the total sat at 82 home runs allowed—three more than it was 24 hours earlier—after left-hander Shota Imanaga yielded a trio in a series-opening loss to the Cardinals on Friday night.
Imanaga has been an easy target in the most recent skid, giving up eight homers across three consecutive outings. But the problem isn’t confined to him. Starters entered Saturday having allowed a league-worst 54 home runs, and the staff as a whole was on pace to give up 229 this season.
It’s been an especially ugly month. Heading into Saturday, the Cubs had allowed a league-worst 46 home runs in May, including 17 multi-homer games by opponents.
Baseball’s power landscape is changing fast. and even that number doesn’t automatically settle the debate about who’s winning. Last season, the Rockies finished baseball’s most homer-happy pitching staff at 251 home runs allowed. In 2019, the Orioles allowed more than 300. But for a team built around postseason expectations. the Cubs’ latest stretch carries a different weight—one that lands directly in the October conversation.
The numbers also sting historically. Since 2015, it’s been more than a decade since a team that ranked in the top five in home runs allowed made it to the end of a 162-game season in October—when the Yankees did it in 2015.
As of Saturday, no major league pitcher had allowed more home runs than right-hander Jameson Taillon, with 19 long balls in 11 starts. Imanaga wasn’t far behind, with 13 allowed, tied for the second highest total in baseball.
Counsell has framed the issue as part of the package for pitchers like Taillon and Imanaga—fly-ball arms who produce balls in the air that don’t always stay in the park.
“It’s understanding it can be a part of your game while also trying to limit it the best you can,” Taillon told the Sun-Times on Saturday. “We’ve got some ideas. When I’m ahead in the count, good things happen. When I’m behind, bad things happen.”
He acknowledged the obvious problem from a hitter’s perspective: the pattern can become readable.
“I’m being a little predictable right now. The gameplan’s pretty straight forward when you face me. For me, there’s some pretty actionable things we can look at. … There’s lots for me to work on and improve on.”
Taillon also pointed toward something bigger than one mechanical tweak, suggesting the fix may overlap with how Imanaga handles his own vulnerabilities.
“[Imanaga’s situation is] similar to me,” Taillon said. “where he knows what makes him good, he knows his strengths. Unfortunately, hitters know that, too, and they know how to game-plan that.”
He said the Cubs might be fighting the same battle on different days.
“I think we’re fighting a similar battle right now. You don’t need to completely change everything, but how can you protect what makes you good?”
In the middle of the noise, right-hander Ben Brown has been the exception, allowing just one home run all season. But the Cubs can’t build a pitching staff around one reliable antidote, especially when starters still need to take the ball often enough to carry a playoff team.
Lefty Matthew Boyd and righty Edward Cabrera are working their way back from injuries. Even when the Cubs get healthier, the expectation is that veterans like Taillon and Imanaga won’t suddenly disappear from the rotation—they’re central to what this team believes it can become.
That’s why the home-run issue feels so urgent. Fans—and maybe even Counsell—will eventually move from “bothersome” to something sharper if the scoreboard keeps writing the same story.
Right now, though, the message from the pitchers is clear: the Cubs aren’t asking whether homers can happen. They’re asking how to keep them from stacking up—especially when every extra long ball turns the playoff chase into a harder climb.
Chicago Cubs Craig Counsell Shota Imanaga Jameson Taillon home runs allowed baseball playoffs Wrigley Field St. Louis Cardinals Ben Brown Matthew Boyd Edward Cabrera