On paper, it appeared the Chicago Cubs made one of the best moves of the MLB trade season when they acquired right-hander Kevin Gausman from the Toronto Blue Jays.

Gausman had a career resurgence in the 2025 postseason and was still trying to capitalize on that success. Instead, the move by Chicago to acquire Gausman has been one of the worst trades that any team made.

Kevin Gausman has been a major letdown

Gausman made his seventh start for the Cubs on Wednesday against the Milwaukee Brewers, and it was yet another disappointing outing.

Just a week after tossing seven shutout innings against Milwaukee, Gausman was greeted rudely by the Brewers lineup on Wednesday. He lasted four innings, allowing seven runs on eight hits with two walks and six strikeouts.

After that start, Gausman now has a 5.31 ERA across seven starts and 39 innings with Chicago. The numbers would be on pace to be well worse over a full season than the 4.38 ERA he had with Toronto before being traded.

Chicago needs Kevin Gausman to be reliable

Chicago certainly envisioned Gausman being a major part of its rotation plans both for the remainder of the regular season as well as in the postseason. As of now, though, it's a bit unclear as to whether or not Gausman could be trusted to make a postseason start.

He will still have a couple of regular season starts to figure things out and he'll certainly need to if he's going to contribute to the Cubs locking down a wild-card spot and making a playoff run.