Cubs Hiring Pitching Trainer Tyler Zombro as Special Assistant
If you want to understand how the Cubs’ pivot toward emotionless analysis will help them improve at the margins, look no further than their latest front office hire. As first announced by Tread Athletics, the Cubs are naming former Tread pitching trainer Tyler Zombro as a special assistant tasked with improving the performance of their arms at all levels. Zombro spent time in the Rays and Rangers organizations and just officially retired as a player in August after battling nerve issues since taking a line drive to the head during a Triple-A game in June of 2021.
We’re thrilled to announce that Performance Specialist Tyler Zombro [@T_Zombro24] will be joining the Chicago Cubs as their Special Assistant, Pitching effective Spring Training ’25.
He will be working closely with Cubs Leadership in Player Acquisitions, leveraging his unique… pic.twitter.com/cJaUUbt7GX
— Tread Athletics (@TreadHQ) November 18, 2024
Though very few reading this know anything about Zombro, industry insiders familiar with his work believe this is a big coup for the Cubs. Tread has quickly become a destination for elite throwers over the last several years and Zombro rose to esteem in his time there since 2019. Per the announcement, he will continue his work with Tread in “an adjusted capacity” before officially starting with the Cubs when camp opens next spring.
Zombro will be “working closely with Cubs leadership in player acquisitions, leveraging his unique skillset to drive value,” which seems to indicate less of a hands-on instructional approach. My first thought is that this fills some of the void left by Craig Breslow‘s departure to take the head baseball ops role in Boston last October. Not that the Cubs waited a year to do so, mind you, just that Breslow has long been viewed as one of the smartest men in baseball and those cleats are very hard to fill.
Though it’s probably too late for this warning, you should not take this as a sign that the Cubs believe they just hired Rumpelstiltskin and can therefore purchase straw instead of gold. Every organization wants to improve its pitching infrastructure, and this is a way to do that with a talented individual who can serve as what Joe Maddon would call a force multiplier.
It’s also interesting to note that this comes in the wake of the Cubs contracting Tokyo-based sports data analytics firm Next Base to bolster their injury-prevention efforts. Their methods may lack emotion, but they make a hell of a lot of sense on paper so far.