Angels (Soriano) vs Cubs (Taillon): 3/31/26, 6:40pm

[Brock Beauchamp]

Well, what version of Taillon are the Cubs going to get this year?

	THU	FRI	SAT	SUN	MON	TOT
Brown, B	49	0	0	0	0	49
Milner	11	0	0	17	0	28
Webb, J	15	0	16	0	0	31
Maton	0	0	9	23	0	32
Thielbar	0	0	16	0	0	16
Harvey	0	0	0	10	0	10
Palencia	0	0	0	16	0	16
Rea	0	0	0	0	42	42

[Outshined_One]

Expect a delayed start with storms in the area until around 8 PM.

[Bertz]

Hopefully Taillon’s fixed whatever issues he had and can hold his normal velo for a full game.  If not it's lined up for us get a lot of Ben Brown tonight

[Stratos]

18 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Hopefully Taillon’s fixed whatever issues he had and can hold his normal velo for a full game.  If not it's lined up for us get a lot of Ben Brown tonight

I believe his last ST start he was down only 1mph from last year, which isn't horrendous i guess. I think he was around 91.1 mph if I remember.  Hopefully he has his command back.

[JBears79]

If Taillon looks anything like he did in ST, I'm not sure he will be in the rotation come June/July. Especially if Wiggins looks ready to take that spot. 

Still got hopes he can be an efficient 5 for us this year.

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

1 minute ago, JBears79 said:

If Taillon looks anything like he did in ST, I'm not sure he will be in the rotation come June/July. Especially if Wiggins looks ready to take that spot. 

Still got hopes he can be an efficient 5 for us this year.

If he looks like he did in ST, Rea or Brown will be starting in a couple weeks.

[JBears79]

Just now, Tangled Up in Plaid said:

If he looks like he did in ST, Rea or Brown will be starting in a couple weeks.

Hope they would be that quick to pull him but I just got a feeling he will get a lot of runway from both the FO and Counsell since hes a vet. 

[Jason Ross]

He'll probably get some runway. He deserves some runway. I know everyone likes to overreact to every little thing, but Taillon has been a contributor and you can't make a snap change in three starts. 

That said, the Cubs have lots of ability to replace him, so they shouldn't have to give him too much runway, either. But if he's not a useful starter than I'm not sure what the play is. He isn't likely much of a reliever if his fastball is sitting 91mph or so; even if he's getting a 2 mph bump. They can't send him to Iowa (and no he isn't going to play phantom injury, let's skip it). 

I hope he's back to around 92-93mph tonight and all of this can be punted down the road a bit. 

[Jason Ross]

Feel free to join us live tonight. We're going to try something a little different; live podcast and then into almost a "pre-game" talk. If the Cubs play on a Tuesday, we'll try to do a game like this weekly if people like it.

 

 

[Rcal10]

I think the Chicago weather and the wind blowing in tonight at 13-17mph will help Tailon look much better than he did during spring training. 

[Stratos]

AZ was a HR paradise this spring and Taillon's command/ mechanics were off to his own admission as he was trying some new things.   It's happened before where's he's off and gets lit up, then like the 2nd half last year gets in a groove and does well.

If the velo stays down he may just not be as effective as the last couple of years but we need to see him rolling at 100% with his mechanics to make a real judgement.  I'm not going say he's cooked yet if the first few starts are bad unless he's throwing 89 or something.

Edited March 31 by Stratos

[Jason Ross]

5 minutes ago, Stratos said:

AZ was a HR paradise this spring and Taillon's command/ mechanics were off to his own admission as he was trying some new things.   It's happened before where's he's off and gets lit up, then like the 2nd half last year gets in a groove and does well.

If the velo stays down he may just not be as effective as the last couple of years but we need to see him rolling at 100% with his mechanics to make a real judgement.  I'm not going day he's cooked yet if the first few starts are bad unless he's throwing 89 or something.

Each MPH is a pretty decent jump in  wOBA against and xwOBA. Roughly speaking between 91, 92, and 93mph, the numbers get significantly more in favor of a hitter the lower you go. Below you'll see statcast data from 2025 (I ran the range from 1mph+/- to account for fractional mph). But the point remains: each mph bleed is significant. The first is 90-92, then so on and so forth. 

Taillon, last year, had an xwOBA over the xwOBA a 90-92mph fastball had last year, meaning it's a bit more hittable already. If Taillon is sitting even at 91mph, I'd say it's a pretty concerning number for someone who has well below league average K% already. 

[Stratos]

6 minutes ago, Jason Ross said:

Each MPH is a pretty decent jump in  wOBA against and xwOBA. Roughly speaking between 91, 92, and 93mph, the numbers get significantly more in favor of a hitter the lower you go. Below you'll see statcast data from 2025 (I ran the range from 1mph+/- to account for fractional mph). But the point remains: each mph bleed is significant. The first is 90-92, then so on and so forth. 

 

I don't quite understand the difference in the 3 stat lines above.  Is the top one 90 mph, the 2nd line 91, and the 3rd is 92 (each within a range of +/- 0.5mph, so 92 would be around 91 5 to 92.4)?

[Bertz]

The thing with Taillon is he was already the worst projected member of the starting 5 coming into the spring.  In fact generally he projects behind Brown/Wicka/Assad too.  So any signal that "hey this guy is materially worse than your (already low) expectations" is a bright red flag.

He also looked pretty bad in his WBC start against Panama.  He kept runs off the board because it's a glorified AA team but that undercuts any sort of "savvy veteran saving his bullets / waiting for adrenaline" type excuse.

The team has alluded to a lower body issue, and he's got a lengthy history of those.  He also looked like himself the first two innings of his last ST start, and Counsell said he faded later in the outing because of the heat (pretty reasonable excuse TBH).  There's a chance this was much ado about nothing and alarm bells were raised over a fairly normal thing that we suddenly received transparency into this year.  So like of course give him a chance, frankly give him at least a couple, but the leash can't be especially long.

[Jason Ross]

4 minutes ago, Stratos said:

I don't quite understand the difference in the 3 stat lines above.  Is the top one 90 mph, the 2nd line 91, and the 3rd is 92 (each within a range of +/- 0.5mph, so 92 would be around 91 5 to 92.4)?

It's a range of: 90-92, 91-93 and 92-94. I added an extra 1mph on each side to each to capture things like fractional mph, so the low end is dipping a little too low and capturing things like "90.2mph" fastballs but as we lower he range there's simply not many pitches in that range to begin with (you can see the % of pitches). As well, it's not necessarily to show exact data, but the trend: while 91mph doesn't sound so bad compared to 92mph, for someone like Taillon, it's probably close to a deathknell on this team.

He already is someone who's fastball is more hittable than  the league average and his strikeout rate is well below league average. He has little margin to lose to begin with. Any margin, even if it sounds minimal, is bad.

I hope to see him sitting around 92mph for all the reasons Bertz mentioned above. I'd give him a handful of starts to prove it even if it isn't tonight. But he isn't someone I'd keep banging the drum for on the last year of his deal if say, we're staring down 91mph fastballs at the end of April, too. 

[Stratos]

36 minutes ago, Jason Ross said:

It's a range of: 90-92, 91-93 and 92-94. I added an extra 1mph on each side to each to capture things like fractional mph, so the low end is dipping a little too low and capturing things like "90.2mph" fastballs but as we lower he range there's simply not many pitches in that range to begin with (you can see the % of pitches). As well, it's not necessarily to show exact data, but the trend: while 91mph doesn't sound so bad compared to 92mph, for someone like Taillon, it's probably close to a deathknell on this team.

He already is someone who's fastball is more hittable than  the league average and his strikeout rate is well below league average. He has little margin to lose to begin with. Any margin, even if it sounds minimal, is bad.

I hope to see him sitting around 92mph for all the reasons Bertz mentioned above. I'd give him a handful of starts to prove it even if it isn't tonight. But he isn't someone I'd keep banging the drum for on the last year of his deal if say, we're staring down 91mph fastballs at the end of April, too. 

Thanks for clarifying.   Yes I agree even 1 mph can hurt him.  My point was that his struggles in ST weren't just velo related, his command was off too, and for a finesse guy with well-below average stuff thats often disastrous like it has in the past for him if he's leaving subpar stuff over the fat part of the plate.  He typically has  hard hit% better than the average pitcher and average or better exit velos because of the location (plus the addition of the change up last year). 

As i said, I don't think he'll be as effective if he loses 1 mph but it's possible he can still stay in the rotation as a below- average SP and BORP.  Something like a 4.50 ERA isn't good but not disastrous.  If he's worse than that then Rea, Brown, or maybe Assad can step in.

[Jason Ross]

13 minutes ago, Stratos said:

Thanks for clarifying.   Yes I agree even 1 mph can hurt him.  My point was that his struggles in ST weren't just velo related, his command was off too, and for a finesse guy with well-below average stuff thats often disastrous like it has in the past for him if he's leaving subpar stuff over the fat part of the plate.  He typically has  hard hit% better than the average pitcher and average or better exit velos because of the location (plus the addition of the change up last year). 

As i said, I don't think he'll be as effective if he loses 1 mph but it's possible he can still stay in the rotation as a below- average SP and BORP.  Something like a 4.50 ERA isn't good but not disastrous.  If he's worse than that then Rea, Brown, or maybe Assad can step in.

My point is very different: Jameson Taillon at 91mph is almost assuredly approaching replacement level. His fastball last year sat at an xwOBA of .363. We see about a .10 increase in xwOBA against for every mph drop - you can see that in the statcast data I provided. we should expect it sitting around .370 against (he's a year removed from a .380 xwOBA on the fastball at 92+mph without the changeup). 

Shota Imanaga at 91mph suffers similarly, Hitters chase secondaries, like Taillon's kick change, far less when the fastball become worse. They don't just hunt fastballs, they sit on them. And his hard hit% and numbers against that pitch are really bad. His hard hit% was low last year because he was able to get hitters to go after that changeup. That probably doesn't happen nearly as much with a diminished fastball. Much like Shota saw the same issues in hitters ignoring his splitter.

Coming back to his fastball, without that changeup the year prior he was pretty bad with the fastball. When hitters begin to lean off the changeup more and sit fastball, we can probably expect similarly terrible results, plus some, on the fastball. 

We can talk about his control issues in ST, and as Bertz said, maybe he was dealing with a lower body injury. But if 91mph fastball is the new norm, Taillon almost assuredly doesn't belong on a roster looking to win a division. Especially one with as many depth options as the Cubs have. And one with Justin Steele on the way. 

If Taillon sits at 92+mph or so, he's probably alright enough like he was last year as a inning eater who you can count on as a #5 regardless of aspirations. But there's little margin here for him to dip and keep that.

[CubinNY]

The good thing about Jamo is that we will usually know what version we are getting right off the bat. 

[chibears55]

Brown should be ready to go another 50 pitches after Taillon tonight 

[CUBDOM4life]

[We Got The Whole 9]

That font is awful 

[Bertz]

Next Friday against Pitt feels like the smart money.  Maybe Wednesday in Tampa with the built in Thursday off day?

[Jason Ross]

21 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

That font is awful 

Yeah Cubs social media is having a tough start to the year. 

This and blue on blue font on others...they're replacement level right now. 

[Derwood]

PTR making the unpaid intern do social media

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

I don't know what account he's pulling from because the one the team posts looks like this: