Justin Steele looked good in his first start of the spring on Saturday, striking out five batters in two scoreless innings of work.
Steele has been in the Cubs organization for 10 years. He was drafted in 2014, and played in the minor leagues until joining the Cubs in the majors in 2021.
Steele was only 18 when he was drafted, and he still feels like one of the young guns on the team. But he will be turning 30 this summer.
Last year, Steele was the Opening Day starting pitcher for the Cubs, but he had to leave the game with a hamstring injury. This year, he has a goal for the number of starts and innings that he wants to play — and he would like to be an All-Star again too, as he was in 2023.
"I'd be crazy not to say I want to be an All-Star, and you know, that's the main thing is making sure I get to 30 starts, 180 innings. You know, the hamstring on opening day last year put me out five to six weeks, so that kind of hurt as far as getting the number of starts, the number of innings that I want," he said. "But just got to avoid that this year. I feel like my body is in a good spot. We've made some improvements to the roster. I would say as a whole like this is probably the best roster we've had in a few years, and I'm excited to compete with these guys. It's going to be a lot of fun, and we're going to win a lot of baseball games."
Steele said during the offseason, he took only about 10 to 14 days off from practicing his throw.
"I didn't want to have any, you know, lull period of like getting my getting my arm back into shape, getting my shoulder, elbow, everything where it needs to be," he said. "I kind of just carried what I had in the season into the offseason, kept my arm moving, kept my body moving—and it's been great. I haven't had any issues."
This year, the Cubs will start their season early with a two-game series against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Tokyo on March 18 and 19. Steele has been preparing in camp, and is eager to find out everything Tokyo has to offer.
Steele said he wants to enjoy the food in Japan, and wants Shota Imanaga to show him some good spots. He also said Imanaga is quite the teammate.
"He's amazing, you know, just breath of fresh air every single day. He's in such a good mood all the time," Imanaga said. He loves baseball. He loves pitching. He loves getting better. He loves trying to make everyone else better. He's asking me questions about my pitches. I ask questions about his pitches. I mean, he's just an amazing teammate."
