Daniel Palencia is Having a Really Weird Season, But a Really, Really Good One

The 2026 Cubs have played 62 games. Their star closer, Daniel Palencia, has entered in a traditional save situation just twice. Palencia spent a few weeks on the injured list with a mild strain in his lat, but he's made 15 total appearances. He's just not getting chances to close games, because the Cubs rarely win, and when they do, they have an odd knack for winning in big, cathartic ways.

All three times he's had a chance to save a game, Palencia has done it. However, the first such occasion didn't come until the team's eighth game of the season. It would be more than a month until the second, which wasn't even a normal save; he came on to get the final out of an 8-3 win against the Reds on May 7. A week after that, he got his third save (and second typical one) of the season. It's now been three full weeks since, without a fourth opportunity arising.

Craig Counsell has therefore had to find times to use his closer, just to give him work, but even those games have been relatively thin on the ground. After Palencia's stint on the IL, the Cubs are using him carefully on purpose, a plan that makes a ton of sense for a tight, muscular athlete who throws this hard—but which gets very complicated when the usual chances to pitch aren't coming. Until Counsell used him in each of the first two games of the team's current series against the Athletics, Palencia hadn't worked on fewer than two days' rest since May 7. He's had five days between healthy appearances as many times as he's appeared on back-to-back days this year: twice each.

It's been maddening, for the team and for its fans, to watch a pitcher who became an international star in March with a dominant run for the World Baseball Classic champion Team Venezuela have almost no impact on their season to date. Palencia hasn't been idle, though. He's only getting better, even if he's had to wait and wait and wait for chances to prove it.

The samples are, alas, too small to jump to conclusions about whether Palencia's improvement in avoiding hard contact is sustainable. He's been prone to getting hit hard at times in the past, despite (or because of) his exceptional velocity. This year, barely over 26% of the batted balls he's allowed have been hit 95 MPH or harder, down from a career rate over 45% entering this season. He's also keeping his walk rate very low, for a late-inning reliever who throws so hard. That's all great, but it's impossible to say whether it's permanent, given how little he's worked.

However, there are other things we can study that lend some credence to those improvements in results. Here's Palencia throwing a slider to the Brewers' Brice Turang during the NLDS last year:

And here's him throwing one to Christian Yelich, last month:

If you can, ignore the results of the two offerings. Watch Palencia pitch. Can you spot the important differences? There are two. Firstly, his lower half gives him more power and direction. His stride is longer down the mound, which gets him into his legs more and helps him get over his front leg as he releases the ball. Second, his arm slot is higher. His average arm angle is up about 4° on his slider and 3° on his fastball this year. That sounds small, and isn't necessarily a sign of a conscious change in the way he's moving, but it makes a difference. Here's Palencia's spin profile for 2025, with the distribution of spin directions out of the hand for each pitch type on the left and the actual movement of the pitches on the right:

Here's the same pair of images for 2026:

Changing his delivery a little bit has dramatically improved the consistency with which Palencia executes his slider, giving it a shape he can tweak a bit but which seems to be devastating in whatever form he chooses for it. On average, he's also throwing it about 2 MPH harder (despite his fastball sitting right where it was last year), but that's because he's found ways to turn it into more of a cutterish offering at times, then increasing its depth (and giving back that extra velocity) at others.

Palencia's extension at release is up significantly this year. That's created half a tick of increased perceived velocity even on a fastball technically traveling the same speed, according to Statcast. His whole arsenal plays up because of that. The Palencia we saw in March is still here; he just hasn't had enough chances to save the day for his domestic club. Hopefully, that will change soon, because the wasted outings by an elite reliever are getting hard to stomach.