Article: Does Porter Hodge Throw Enough Strikes to be Effectively Wild?

[Jason Ross]

When the Cubs added righthander Porter Hodge to the 40-man roster this offseason, a few eyebrows were raised. The hard-throwing pitcher had really struggled in 2023. In 2024, Hodge has emerged as a potential power arm to join the MLB roster. With command issues remaining, does Hodge have what it takes to be effectively wild?

Image courtesy of © Chloe Trofatter / USA TODAY NETWORK

There's no beating around the bush: Porter Hodge had a kind of miserable, no-good 2023 season. On the heels of a breakout 2022, the then-22-year-old starting pitcher started the season on a rough 12-start stretch. Plagued by walks, he could never seem to string two good starts together, as he would routinely follow a walk-free outing with one in which four or five hitters got a free pass. After Jun. 14, the Cubs made the call: Hodge would go to the bullpen. Sadly for the righty, the demotion to the pen did not seem to fix his control issues, and the year ended shrouded in mystery about how the Cubs would handle the pitcher.

I wrote about Hodge and the unique stuff he possesses back in December. For the uninitiated, Hodge throws an incredibly interesting cutter, punctuated with a 12:00 release point, which is incredibly rare. At 93 mph on average, the pitch plays well with his fastball/slider combination to create something of a stuff monster. Below, you'll see a visualization of his tilt chart. Pay attention to the number of cutters he manages to throw directly over the top. The question with the pitcher has always been: Can he throw enough strikes? 

The 2024 season has started off quite well for Hodge. By striking out a whopping eight hitters in just four innings, coupled with a single walk, he rapidly earned a promotion to Triple-A Iowa. He hasn't really slowed down there, either, surrendering just a single run in five innings (three appearances). He does have an inflated walk rate, but, we'll re-approach that in a minute. 

Coming back to the overall question on Hodge, we should probably also ask ourselves: How many strikes are enough? The MLB average for Strike% on the 2024 season sits at 63.5%. Despite the season being young, this is roughly in line with most seasons, as league-wide Strike% tends to hover around the 64% range (though it has been on the decline). Porter Hodge, so far, has sat at 60.5%. With that said, his first appearance in Triple-A is doing a lot of damage here. Hodge started that inning off with two ground outs, followed by three walks in a row. Having fun with arbitrary endpoints, Hodge has really settled in: he finished off that inning with a strikeout, and since then, he has fired in 62.5% of pitches for strikes to go along with a 7-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio. 

The good news for Hodge is that 62.5% strikes is a pretty good number for someone like him. We shouldn't expect the control to be a strength for Hodge; his stuff is too funky and too movement-based, so a slightly below-average strike rate is going to be likely. We shouldn't expect him to become Devin Williams (62.1 Strike% in 2023), Jordan Hicks (61.4%), Aaron Bummer (62.3%), or others, but you can find a host of useful names who sit below the league average in terms of strike-throwing.

So maybe we need to shift the question again, to something like: How many of his pitches are entirely noncompetitive? Looking at Hodge's pitch chart reveals what I think will be the next hurdle: cut down those pitches at which no one is going to offer. Below, you'll see two charts: on the left are the results of his pitches and the right are the specific pitches he throws. Note how many of these pitches are just entirely uncompetitive, and that it doesn't seem to be correlated to a specific pitch type; this is reflected in his 22.8% non-competitive pitch rate (pitches that are further than 18 inches away from the center of the zone). No one is really putting the ball in play when Hodge finds the zone: he has a 25% in-zone whiff%, compared to an MLB league average of around 19%. But he's only getting 16.7 chase%, which is below league average. Too many of those pitches just aren't going to get anyone to swing when they're that drastically uncompetitive. 

Here's the good news: a solid number of those uncompetitive pitches came in that one bad outing that started off his time in Iowa. His season rate is 22.8% of his pitches as "non-competitive," but his rate since that third walk has dropped by over 4%, to 18.1%. This still represents a worse-than-average rate (that sits at 16.4%), but it's movement in the correct direction. Quality MLB relievers such as Mark Leiter Jr. Jose Leclerc, Alex Lange and Matt Brash ran high non-competitive pitch rates last year. It's not advisable, but it's do-able. Regardless, I'd much rather see Hodge creep closer and closer to the league average.

Despite the high number of non-competitive pitches, Hodge gets big chase numbers against righties, with his chase rate over the last run in Triple-A being over 31% for them. That is way up from his previous chase numbers, so being just "below-average" in terms of his non-competitive pitches seems to make a world of difference. This would make sense: sliders have a platoon split and right-handed hitters are more likely to chase sliders as they move away from them and the hitting zone.

There's probably a real reason to get acquainted with Porter Hodge right now. The Chicago Cubs have had a pretty poor run of injury luck so far, as they've had the likes of Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon, Julian Mertryweather, Kyle Hendricks, and Drew Smyly come down with knocks already. The team will have their bullpen depth tested plenty of times this season. Being that he's on the 40-man roster already and has incredible stuff, Hodge is likely to get a shot at the MLB roster sometime in 2024. I think he projects more in the José Cuas mold: he's going to excel in the right matchups, even if his command isn't great. Will he walk some hitters? Yes. And it seems as though hell be ineffective against at least some subsets of left-handed hitters. With that said, there's always a role for an arm who neutralizes same-handed batters, and Hodge has a lot of those skills. If he can just keep the non-competitive pitches to a minimum, Porter Hodge just might have enough to be the Cubs version of Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughn. Let's hope he makes the strike zone sing. 

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What do you think of Porter Hodge? Do you think he'll ever throw enough strikes to be effectively wild? Let me know in the comments below!

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[Jason Ross]

4 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

I had to disagree there…3 HRs in 80 upper minors innings, 103 Ks, 64 Hs…These are strong numbers. 

In general I’ve been impressed with Hodge’s ability to keep the ball in the park throughout the pros. He’s allowed just 13 HRs (with 327 Ks) in 257.2 IP…I’d lean towards yes, he can be an effective ML pitcher 

While I appreciate that sentiment, the reality is that you can strikeout a bunch of guys, the control was...horrendous. There's just no world in which I can agree that a walk rate of 13.6% in Double-A, where hitters are more prone to chase/expand the zone than at higher levels, constitutes anything but a rough season. Especially a season in which he was demoted from starter to reliever. But that's semantics and pedantics! We can have different barometers for what we think constitutes successful seasons.

With that said, I've been in Hodge's corner for a while, so I think we agree on the upside here. Wrote about him in January, picked him as my breakout candidate in 2023...love the stuff here. If he can keep his strike% and competitive pitch% in an acceptable range, he should be a nightmare for RHH's. The stuff clearly misses bats and barrels when he's close enough to the zone. Wouldn't be surprised if he's a Cub in June or even a bit earlier (though that would probably mean more injuries, and I'd rather we not have more of those right now).