Chicago Cubs: Ben Brown’s surgery and timeline for return

The Chicago Cubs found a real ray of sunshine in the voluminous dark clouds that surrounded their pitching staff last season when Ben Brown’s game suddenly started to click.

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The 27-year-old began the season as a long relief bullpen option—and excelled at the gig—before being moved into the rotation due to injury-related necessity. He excelled even more as a starting pitcher.

Up until June and the return of his recurring neck injury—which was finally diagnosed as a stress reaction in his C5 vertebra—Brown had posted a 1.85 ERA overall, with a 1.70 ERA in eight starts. At the time of his injury, he was legitimately one of the best starters in all of baseball.

Multiple attempts to get healthy and back on the roster just didn’t pan out and he was finally shut down in August with the understanding that surgery would be the next option if rest didn’t work.

Ben Brown undergoes neck surgery

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Well, the lanky righty, actually had that that surgery on Wednesday.

“They put a screw in the neck to stabilize the fracture, get some blood flow to the fracture,” Cubs General Manager Carter Hawkins told media Wednesday at the GM meetings in Las Vegas. “Something that is actually relatively common on lower backs, this is a little higher obviously. He’s walking around, he looks great and we expect to have him back for next year.”

There seems to be a good deal of optimism that Brown can come back and pick up right where he left off in 2026. The sinker and improved breaking ball he added to his pitch repertoire prior to the start of the 2026 campaign appeared to add that much-needed extra something to help him fully turn the corner on his development.

“Ben’s extremely tough,” Hawkins added. “There’s no one who works harder than Ben. He’s trying to make sure that he’s healthy. The doctors gave him a really good prognosis that he’s going to be able to pitch for us next year and for a long time after that. This stabilizes things and puts him in a really good place.”

The importance of Ben Brown

For the Cubs’ sake, Brown needs to come back and pitch like he did last season. The team is facing a crisis in their starting rotation, with their entire end-of-season rotation heading off into free agency and nothing but question marks in place right now. There’s talk that Chicago may need to add at least three starting pitchers this offseason.

Having a strong, confident and fully-actualized Ben Brown—even if it’s only for half of a season—would be a big deal to the Cubs and their chances of a successful 2027.

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