Chicago Cubs Legend Helped Ace Surge to Cy Young Contention

It's been quite the year for the Chicago Cubs. They completely turned around their season, sitting in the second Wild Card spot in the National League entering Sunday after looking like they'd be sellers at the deadline again.

It's also been quite the year for their ace Justin Steele, who has played his way into NL Cy Young contention this season.

The left hander is tied for the most wins in the league with 16 and has MLB's lowest ERA of 2.49. This comes on the heels of a 4-7 record in 2022 despite having a 3.18 ERA across his 24 starts.

One of the reasons behind Steele's incredible year may have to do with franchise legend Jon Lester giving his friend and former teammate David Ross a call.

According to Patrick Mooney of The Athletic, Lester said that Steele reminds him of himself.

"There are some similarities there with how I used to pitch and how he goes about it with his four-seam and whichever breaking ball he decides to use," he said.

This prompted the former ace to reach out to Ross and lay out some things he thought Steele could improve on.

"I just happened to watch a game. This is what I saw. The big thing for me in that game — and this is what I ended up talking to Rossy about — is you can’t get away with the high heater. The high heater plays. You just can’t stay up there consistently and get guys to swing at his slider. His slider is a swing-and-miss pitch, and guys were just taking it like they knew it was coming. We just talked about kind of getting him back down in the zone and up by design. And then that slider should get a lot of swings because it’s got the same plane as his heater," Lester said about his feedback.

Ross presented this information to Steele who has implemented the feedback into his approach.

It's one of the reasons why the current ace has a very good chance to win the most prestigious pitching award in the sport.