Let’s Find Some Repertoire Unlocks for Cubs Starters
Yesterday’s piece on front office addition Tyler Zombro spurred some questions in the comments that sent me down rabbit trails I thought might be fun to pursue further. Zombro’s role is somewhat amorphous in that it will shift throughout the year based on what the organization needs at the time. His focus right now is on player acquisitions — it’s possible he’s the reason the Cubs signed Tread Athletics client Ben Heller — but that will most likely change to pitch design and analysis as players start reporting to camp.
As such, I wanted to take a (rudimentary) look at what Zombro and the rest of the Cubs’ pitching development infrastructure might be looking to tweak with a few of their pitchers. While “development” is typically used in conjunction with prospects, I think it’s important to acknowledge the reality that big leaguers still need to hone their games as well. Jameson Taillon is a great example there and I already examined some of his potential improvements, but a little repetition is okay.
One of the things I really love about Taillon is how transparent he’s been about his offseason work, and I’m not talking about sharing clips of nasty breaking pitches or other such highlights. Most of his social media posts are just mundane patterning drills and solo toss, nothing too exciting. But that’s the kind of work it takes to get better at his level, or any level for that matter.
Whether it’s stuff they’re already working on — as we already know is the case with Taillon — or something the Cubs will have them incorporate this spring, let’s see if we can find some unlocks for a few Cubs pitchers. All movement profile charts come from Baseball Savant, which you should all be frequenting if you’re not already.
Taillon
This is just a regurgitation of the stuff at the end of the Zombro piece, so you can skip ahead if you already read that.
Taillon put in work this winter with Tread founder Ben Brewster on his slider/cutter grip and also his sweeper. I know there are still a lot of people out there who don’t believe sliders and sweepers are different pitches, but consider that Taillon’s cutter is in the 85-87 mph range and his sweeper is around 80 mph with a distinctly different movement profile. The gyro he’s trying to hone in the first video below has similar velo to his curve and sweeper and should fall somewhere in the space between the brown, yellow, and blue dots in the first of the images below.
That was the case in 2022 prior to adopting the sweeper (third image), though his slider didn’t have as much depth as what we appear to be seeing in these recent clips. The same can be said for his cutter, which he has thrown a lot more with the Cubs. That pitch was rough from 2021-23 (latter of those in middle image), but mechanical adjustments last year led to it being far more effective. If he’s able to differentiate the slider from the cutter and sweeper, his varied repertoire will just be that much better.
Gyro slider/cutter pitch design with Cubs starter Jameson Taillon and Ben Brewster. ?
#TreadFam pic.twitter.com/6TgN8l5U0e— Tread Athletics (@TreadHQ) December 8, 2024
“My best ones I throw (sweepers) are mid-height that take off.” ? – Cubs starter Jameson Taillon pic.twitter.com/H0mpsQQcf8
— Tread Athletics (@TreadHQ) November 21, 2024
I covered this in the Zombro piece as well, and now I’m beginning to wonder if this is just Deep Impact to yesterday’s Armageddon. Perhaps I can massage things just a bit to tease out some new information. The basic idea here is that I’d like to see if Steele can finally figure out the changeup to give him another little nudge forward. As good as his fastball/slider combo has been, it’d be nice for him to have another pairing in his bag to generate more whiffs and provide something to fall back on if one of his primary pitches is off.
The issue here isn’t just that Steele throws his changeup too little for it to be an impact pitch, it’s that the characteristics probably need improvement. He modeled the pitch after the one Cole Hamels threw to great effect, but he’s only taking off about five ticks of velo from his fastball. Hamels had around an 8 mph gap between his offspeed and hard stuff.
Then there’s the matter of his sinker usage, which is nearly as low as the change. Given that his cut-ride fastball has more glove-side movement than most lefties, Steele might benefit from upping the usage of both his sinker and change. Those two pitches have a great deal of overlap in terms of movement profile, so pairing them up a little more might improve the effectiveness of both even if the change remains relatively firm.
Another option is for Steele to alter his changeup grip, perhaps going with the two-seam orientation Zombro promotes heavily (see video). I don’t know for sure whether Steele is a pronator or supinator, but I’m making an educated guess that it’s a latter due to his cutty four-seam and the fact that he’s struggled with a circle-change. Available evidence shows that nearly 70% of supinators are actively attempting to pronate their changeups, so they’re leaving a ton of performance on the table because they simply don’t know better.
This is where I’ll plug the idea of motor preferences again.
So maybe instead of upping his sinker volume, it might be as simple as having Steele throw what could be a more natural two-seam change. Again, that’s assuming he’s a supinator. Doing so should create more depth to take the offspeed further away from the fastball(s) movement-wise.
Should every pitcher just grip a 2-seam changeup? ?
Performance Specialist Tyler Zombro makes his case for why every pitcher should at least try to throw a changeup with a 2-seam orientation. pic.twitter.com/4nmWWIJR01— Tread Athletics (@TreadHQ) December 31, 2024
Wicks certainly doesn’t need to improve upon one of the best changeups in the game, it’s just everything else that needs work. Maybe his unlock could be increasing the usage of a pitch that will help everything else to play up. He gets excellent velo separation between hard and soft stuff, but you can see from his movement profile chart that 84% of his pitches occupy the same quadrant. Though there’s nothing wrong with the profiles themselves, hitters had very little issue with any Wicks pitch other than the change.
It doesn’t help that they didn’t really have to worry much about the curve or slider, which is why I think dialing in the hook could be the key here. The best pitches for a given pitcher typically follow a line created by their arm angle, and you can see from the image below how Wicks’ repertoire does just that. Following that line down into the lower-right quadrant takes us right into the curveball.
Not only are we talking about a big velo separation, but the slurvy properties of the pitch give it a great deal of horizontal differentiation from his big three. Having something that bears in on righties could help to keep them off the fastball, plus it would allow Wicks to have more of a put-away pitch against lefties who might be expecting something on the hands.
Dialing in the slider might help as well, whether it’s leaning into more of a sweeper or really figuring out the gyro. I lean toward the latter simply because keeping it more toward the center of the chart keeps it in line with Wicks’ arm angle and provides an offering that falls between his fastballs/changeup and the curve. It’s pretty clear he lacks consistency with the pitch, hence the limited usage, but finding a way to replicate that cluster of yellow dots near the intersection of the crosshairs would make both the slider and curve more effective.
It’s not easy to find much to improve upon from Imanaga’s outstanding debut season, but let’s give it the old college try anyway. As is the case with some of his colleagues, particularly Steele, Imanaga is largely a two-pitch guy who incorporates some other offerings to spice things up a bit. His high-ride fastball is complemented by a nasty splitter, giving him a lethal combination that made up 83% of his repertoire last year.
With a lower arm angle (40°) than either Wicks (50°) or Steele (46°), Imanaga might want to lean into his curve and sweeper a little more. The curve obviously creates more depth and follows nicely along his arm-angle line from the four-seam, while the sweeper does pretty much the same for the splitter. We’re only talking about 11% of his total pitches in 2024 and I’m not advocating for a big jump, but maybe doubling the curve to 6% or so and throwing a few more sweepers to get the combo to 15-18% overall.
Consistency should come with frequency, or at least that’s the hope, and maintaining that slurvy movement on the hook while landing the sweeper in the league-average section more often would add value. As with so many of the other suggestions here, it’s more about enhancing the primary offerings than generating much impact with the lesser pitches themselves. Ideally, you get both.
As much as I’d love to keep nerding out on this stuff and perhaps making wildly inappropriate suggestions that experts would scoff at, I’ve already written more than most people care to read. But don’t you worry your pretty little heads too much, I’m sure there’ll be plenty more hypothesis and conjecture to come as long as the Cubs aren’t doing anything else of note.
Ed. note: I thought about looking at Matthew Boyd, but I’m flying blind to an extent because of the small sample and the fact that I simply haven’t watched him pitch very much. That said, I think continuing to lean on his changeup as he did in limited action last season is the play. It overlaps with both his four-seam and sinker to a great degree while getting almost 11 mph of velo separation. His low arm angle (26°) means his slider and curve both have a lot of overlap as well, with the curve actually generating more glove-side sweep.
The Cubs saw a lot to like in his eight starts late in the season and I’d suspect they want him to keep leaning into that changeup-heavy profile. I would even suggest further dialing back the sinker in favor of a few more sliders.