Tabor College Professional Athletes

For a small NAIA school in Hillsboro, Kansas, Tabor College doesn't get many alumni on October baseball's radar. This week, Jacob Webb put the Bluejays squarely in the middle of a pennant race conversation.

The Cubs right-hander is dealing with an injury that has the Chicago organization — and its fanbase — watching closely. Per Sports Illustrated, the news on Webb is trending in a better direction, a meaningful development given that the Cubs simultaneously received a crushing blow with starter Ben Brown being shut down for the rest of the season. In a rotation and bullpen already under strain during a tight NL Central race, Webb's availability isn't a footnote — it's a roster construction issue.

A Tale of Two Outings

Webb's most recent work illustrated exactly why Chicago needs him healthy. On August 30 against Cincinnati, he was sharp: a clean inning, a strikeout, and an ERA sitting at a tidy 2.87. The kind of outing a contending team builds late-inning plans around.

Four days later against Milwaukee — a game the Cubs lost 9-5, further extending the Brewers' lead in the NL Central — Webb struggled, surrendering two earned runs in just a third of an inning. His ERA ticked up to 3.15 on the season. The timing stung. The Cubs needed every out they could get against a division rival pulling away, and the brief, costly appearance reflected the uncertainty that comes with pitching through physical adversity.

Why It Matters

The Cubs are chasing Milwaukee in the NL Central with the calendar flipping to September, and the bullpen math is getting complicated. With Brown gone, every reliable arm in the 'pen carries more weight. Webb, when healthy and dealing, has been exactly that — a reliable arm. A 3.15 ERA in a Cubs relief corps navigating this kind of stretch is a real asset, not a luxury.

Heavy Sports reported that the Cubs issued a formal Webb update in the wake of the Brewers loss, signaling the front office is managing his workload and health transparently as the playoff picture sharpens.

For Tabor College alumni tracking one of their own on a legitimate postseason contender, the next few weeks will be telling. Webb's arm, and how the Cubs deploy it, could matter when October arrives.

The Week That Cracked Jacob Webb's Armor

For most of 2026, Jacob Webb has been the one Cubs reliever manager David Ross could dial up without flinching. The Tabor College product out of Hillsboro, KS, built one of the more quietly impressive bullpen résumés in the National League — and then the last week of August happened.

Back-to-back blown outings. Two walk-off losses. One very uncomfortable spotlight.

The Mariners Game: A Night That Turned Fast

The first crack came against Seattle. Webb entered what should have been a routine high-leverage appearance and, by most accounts, was dealing — right up until he wasn't. Randy Arozarena walked it off for the Mariners, delivering a gut-punch 5-4 loss that ended with Cubs fans collectively staring at the ceiling. The Yahoo Sports recap put it plainly: "The Cubs reliever had been so good, and was on this night… until, suddenly and unhappily, he wasn't."

A blown save is one thing. Two in the same week is a storyline.

The Diamondbacks Game: Same Script, Worse Feeling

Four days later, on Wednesday, August 26, Webb was handed the ball again against Arizona — and the result was nearly identical. He tossed a full inning but surrendered two earned runs, flipping what had been a 4-3 Cubs lead into a 5-4 Diamondbacks win. The headline from Yahoo Sports said everything: "The Jacob Webb disaster, again."

The ERA ticked up to 2.91 — still a perfectly respectable number that speaks to how dominant Webb had been before this stretch. But context matters: two losses in one week, both on his arm, both late and close. That's the kind of run that reframes a season narrative in real time.

What It Means for the Cubs — and for Webb

Webb's overall 2026 numbers still paint the picture of a reliable late-inning arm, and a 2.91 ERA in the back of a bullpen is nothing to discard. But the Cubs are in the thick of a pennant chase, and the margin for error in one-run games is exactly zero. Two collapses in five days — against Seattle and Arizona, two teams with legitimate playoff aspirations — will invite hard questions about whether Webb is hitting a wall or simply enduring the brutal randomness that defines relief pitching.

For Tabor College, a small NAIA school in south-central Kansas not typically associated with MLB pedigree, Webb's entire 2026 arc — the strong first half, the sudden rough patch, the national headlines — is the kind of story that gets printed in the alumni bulletin regardless of how it ends.

The next time Ross walks to that bullpen phone, the calculus will be a little more complicated than it was two weeks ago.