In Pitching Philosophy, Cubs Might Need to Recalibrate Balance Between Zigging and Zagging

[Matthew Trueblood]

Exploiting market inefficiencies is not a substitute for a personality.

Image courtesy of © Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

 

Earlier this month, I wrote about the Cubs' unique usage of a pair of pitches that rarely go together: cut-ride fastballs and power changeups with ample arm=side run. That's just one crystallizing way to understand a broader organizational philosophy, though. The Cubs believe that the league, as a whole, is too fixated on velocity, and they've set themselves on a different course. For the eighth straight season, this year will find them at the bottom of the league in terms of average fastball velocity from starters. That's intentional. They've identified other traits they prefer to prioritize.

Cade Horton, Justin Steele, and Jordan Wicks all possess the Cubs' favorite characteristic: a cut-ride fastball shape. In other words, their heaters have more glove-side movement than a hitter's eyes expect, given the speed and carry on the pitch--or, flipping the axis of expectation mentally, more carry than the hitter thinks it will have, given the cut spin they see out of the hand. Fastball shape has become a very popular buzzword in pitching analysis, because the release point and movement of a pitch can be every bit as important as the velocity or location.

As pitching gurus will readily tell you, fastball shape is also an important concept to understand because it's rarely changeable. Most organizations think of fastball shape as being akin to a fingerprint; you can't easily change what a pitcher's fastball naturally does. Mechanical overhauls can alter fastball shape, but those usually involve a complete rebuild of a hurler's approach and arsenal. Such breakdowns and rebuilds are extremely and increasingly rare in the modern game.

Therein lies the rub for the Cubs. More than perhaps any other team in baseball, they value that cut-ride shape. They value a different look, and believe that the league tends to undervalue it. They even believe that pitchers can survive at lower velocities with that shape (generally true), and thus that they can get the same value from hurlers at lower velocities and reduce their overall injury risk (much less clear, though plausible). To some extent, they're right about those things.

Right now, however, they've overly committed to that concept. It's good to have principles and predilections within an organization; that's a sign of firmly understanding the job at hand. Trouble lurks, however, when a team crosses the line from predilections to obsessions, or from principles to dogmatic beliefs. At that point, you start making overly extreme decisions. Your tendencies become too strong, and you foreclose helpful possibilities to yourself.

For instance, when you select too strongly for a relatively rare fastball shape, you have to narrow the pool of pitchers you consider--and you might do so too much. Picking from just a segment of the population if talented pitchers in a draft class or on a free-agent market (minor- or major-league) often means accepting lower velocity, not primarily because it might mean a slightly lower injury risk, but because the really hard-throwing hurlers don't meet your stringent criteria.

In this specific case, focusing on an uncommon fastball shape also means getting locked into the idea that fastballs must come first. No team in baseball has thrown fewer sliders than the Cubs this year. That's not unusual, recently, but it is a problem. Sliders miss bats. Even good cut-ride fastballs often don't. Why doesn't the team just throw more sliders with the hurlers they've selected? It's not always that simple. One key variable in the effectiveness of a slider is the average velocity of the fastball off of which it works.

Breaking ball shapes are more like signatures than fingerprints. They can be fiddled with, altered, and molded. Velocity, meanwhile, is like body weight, if we're sticking to things that identify a person: It's affected by biology and habits, but it can also be optimized, to some extent. Thus, a couple years after his fastball shape had many people worried and his prospect stock fell precipitously, Kumar Rocker emerged again as a top prospect this summer for the Rangers, culminating in a debut this month.

Rocker throws very hard, which helps offset the suboptimal shape of his heater. He also has a devastating, top-of-the-scale slider, a pitch he and the team have worked together to reengineer. It would work well no matter what, but it has the potential to vault him into the middle or front of a rotation in the near future because it plays off a fastball that sits 96-97.

The Cubs need not abandon their project of collecting guys who have an appealing, unusual fastball shape. It's part of how they became top bidders on Shota Imanaga. It's how they locked in on Horton and Wicks, and while they each had semi-lost seasons in 2024, they both look like reasonably sound picks. Broadly, though, they need to loosen their commitment to any one set of criteria for selecting pitchers. Occasionally scooping up a hurler like Brandon Birdsell on Day Two of the Draft is highly valuable, but they could do that while still taking more standard-issue, harder-throwing pitchers with top picks.

There's something to be said for seeking a less velocity-oriented solution to the problem of getting outs in the big leagues. It might be the future of baseball; emphasizing everything but velocity might be positioning the Cubs to benefit significantly from an ongoing rise in injuries related to pursuing too much velocity. It might make them especially well-suited to a league that tweaks its rules to favor pitchers who can pace themselves and turn over lineup cards. Neither the actual benefits of throwing less hard nor the chances of structural changes to the game are clear enough to justify strongly committing to a strategy that sacrifices so much of the most fluid currency in pitching, though.

For that matter, too, consider Wicks, who worked hard to add velocity this past offseason and had injuries (which felt closely related to that work) derail his 2024. Selecting pitchers for traits other than velocity might not prevent some of them from chasing more velocity, offsetting whatever health benefits would come from throwing less hard.

A fine line exists between being too rigid in an organizational approach and not having a clear enough idea of what you're looking for. Either thing is problematic, but the good organizations manage to avoid both traps. They have preferences, even idiosyncratic and proprietary ones, but they don't overcommit to them. The Cubs need to establish themselves in that happy, medium space a bit better going forward, because while their approach to pitching acquisition and development is creative, it's not returning enough value to justify the risks it poses. The team is missing out on some easier developmental projects and some more lucrative ones, because they believe a bit too fanatically in the virtues of their own approach.

 

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