<p>SAN FRANCISCO — Another night, another <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/cubs" >Cubs</a> starter who wasn’t part of the Opening Day rotation.</p><p>Obviously, teams start each season knowing they’re going to need to use a lot more than five starting pitchers to get through a six-month marathon. Obviously, the Cubs knew they’d be calling on more than the five guys who made up the rotation at the end of March.</p><p>But here in mid June, the Cubs maybe weren’t predicting this, that injuries would have decimated their starting staff and had them leaning on fill-ins to stay afloat during an early-summer freefall.</p><p>Right-hander Javier Assad earned the nod in the series-opener with the Giants on Friday night in California. Not a week earlier, he shut down this same lineup with 6⅓ innings of relief work that manager Craig Counsell was still calling “heroic” days later.</p><p>And so Assad, who was dispatched to Triple-A in the middle of last month, suddenly looked like a promising option.</p><p>“Javy carries himself like a pro,” lefty Matthew Boyd said earlier this week, after <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/cubs/2026/06/10/cubs-matthew-boyd-injury-shoulder-soreness-javier-assad-craig-counsell-rotation-injuries" >his shoulder soreness forced Assad into Friday’s start</a>.