Cubs Pitcher Notes, Tweaks, and Miscellany

[Bertz]

Let's start with this fun piece featuring Javier Assad

Quote

 

Overall, Assad’s stuff is only up a little bit. But under the hood, he’s been hard at work, and he may be a much better pitcher this year. Particularly, though he’s a guy with three good breaking balls, it’s the changes to his fastballs that will make him a better pitcher.

Assad, 26, has added an inch of fade to his sinker and a little bit of ride, making it more of a true two-seamer than a traditional sinker profile. It now has a 102 Stuff+, which seems mediocre but is almost a full standard deviation above average in that pitch type, and it gives him a top-20 sinker among starters. Last year, righties hit better than lefties against Assad, and this year, he’s blowing righties away and nobody has a hit off of his sinker. This is one of his most common approaches with the pitch.

Assad has added a little bit of ride on his four-seamer and an inch of cut to his cutter. Those two fastballs haven’t helped him so far against lefties, who are hitting .313/.389/.563 off of him, but there’s hope that the right-handed starter can iron that out with those two hard pitches. The key will be to keep the cutter in on the lefties’ hands, as the home run he allowed on the pitch was middle-middle to Jake Cronenworth.

Overall, Assad is in a position to dominate righties with two breaking balls and a sinker, and slide by lefties using the cutter and curve (to which he added 3 inches of movement in both directions) with some other pitches snuck in. Lefty-laden lineups with power might give him some tough starts, but he looks the part of a top-75 starter right now.

 

 

[Bertz]

This hasn't been updated for last night yet but Bryan Smith has been on the changes leading to Jordan Wicks' skyrocketing swing and miss rates since the first start of the year

 

 

[PackLandVA]

Seems like Assad hasn't really gotten much respect based on his results thus far.  Is it because of his metrics & pitch composition? He just seems to get hitters out and not give up a lot of runs.  That's kinda ideal for a pitcher, right?

[Bertz]

10 hours ago, PackLandVA said:

Seems like Assad hasn't really gotten much respect based on his results thus far.  Is it because of his metrics & pitch composition? He just seems to get hitters out and not give up a lot of runs.  That's kinda ideal for a pitcher, right?

I think it's a couple things

- I've talked about this before but I think because his sparkling ERA is very clearly built on luck, fans think he's bad actually.  But you can be good and lucky at the same time, that's how Blake Snell won his Cy last year

- Assad's peripherals were actually kind of bad his first few months in the big leagues.  Last June his peripherals started picking up in the pen and in August/September they mostly held up in the rotation

- Assad was a pure org guy until his velo spike in 2022, and even then I think the expectation was something in the Alec Mills neighborhood before he had a second velo spike last year.  Not to get too far into Tom territory but sometimes prospect rankings do unfairly shape expectations

[LBiittner]

In other news, the Yankees seem to like the 2024 version of Marcus stroman so far.

[CubinNY]

Bad defense costs a run for the other team for once

[LBiittner]

Hey Rcal

I feel like a part of my youth has been taken away.

Kenny Holzman has passed at age 78. One of the all-time cub greats who should never been traded away at such an early age. 

[Rcal10]

51 minutes ago, LBiittner said:

Hey Rcal

I feel like a part of my youth has been taken away.

Kenny Holzman has passed at age 78. One of the all-time cub greats who should never been traded away at such an early age. 

Yep, I remember him well. I remember one year he only was allowed to like h in the weekend when he got time away from the national guard. I want to say he went 9-0 that year. I was surprised he was only 78.