For Tabor College's lone representative on an MLB roster, September has been a month to forget.
Jacob Webb, the Cubs right-hander out of Hillsboro, KS, has been one of the more turbulent figures in Chicago's bullpen down the stretch — and the numbers, combined with the headlines, tell a punishing story.
The ATL Meltdown
The week's ugliest moment came Tuesday, September 15, when Webb took the mound against the Braves with the Cubs already in a hole. He didn't make it out cleanly — surrendering two earned runs in just two-thirds of an inning as Chicago fell 6-3. Yahoo Sports dubbed it "The Jacob Webb disaster, part 4," a headline that implies this was not a one-off stumble but a pattern. The "part 4" framing alone signals that national coverage has been tracking Webb's rough stretch with growing scrutiny, and that the Cubs' backend relief corps has become a legitimate storyline in the final weeks of the season.
A Bounceback — But Not Enough
To his credit, Webb answered with a cleaner outing Friday, September 18, against the Reds. He worked a full inning, struck out two, and didn't allow a run — the kind of appearance the Cubs need from him consistently. But even with that performance in the books, his ERA still sits at 3.48, down marginally from 3.53 after the Atlanta disaster. The improvement is real but modest, and it does little to quiet questions about his reliability in high-leverage spots.
The Bigger Picture
Webb's September arc is a microcosm of the Cubs' bullpen issues writ large. When he's locating and missing bats — two strikeouts in a clean inning, as he showed Friday — the Tabor product looks like a useful late-inning arm. When the command slips, as it did against Atlanta, the damage compounds quickly and the headlines follow. For a small-school product from the KCAC, making a big-league bullpen at all is a legitimate achievement; for Webb, the challenge now is proving he belongs there when October pressure mounts.
Whether the Cubs trust him in meaningful September situations going forward may say as much about their bullpen depth as it does about Webb himself. For Tabor fans watching from Hillsboro, it's a tense final stretch — but their guy is still on the mound in the majors, which counts for something.
AI-generated summary
