Is the Cubs' Pitching Lab Even Operational, At This Point?

I’m not going to pretend to know a lot about the inner workings of pitching development. I was never a pitcher (lacking the mental fortitude to do so), and I possess only a rudimentary knowledge of what institutions like Driveline do, outside of increasing velocity. But I do know that the Chicago Cubs were starting to gain a lot of credit for their pitching infrastructure under Craig Breslow. This manifested in “bargain-bin” arms turning into viable relief options, before they were subsequently shipped out of town during the team’s recent reset.

That was pretty solid process. Names like Scott Effross, David Robertson, and Brandon Hughes either broke out or reestablished themselves as part of the organization. Mark Leiter Jr. & Julian Merryweather, too. There was a time when Rowan Wick looked like a closer-in-waiting. Keegan Thompson & Adbert Alzolay have flashed good things. The team has a myriad of recent success stories in flipping the narrative around their in-house pitching solutions.

But the team’s recent bullpen woes have started to dissolve any good will they’ve built up with their recent process. Alzolay struggled to sustain his success prior to (or perhaps because of) his injury. Thompson lost it to an alarming degree, as well. José Cuas was a disaster, and Héctor Neris is enduring the worst season of his career. This is all happening while names like Jeremiah Estrada & Trevor Megill have gone on to thrive outside of the organization.

The process itself is, of course, not unique. Every team does some variation of what the Cubs are doing in terms of adding relief help. Find a veteran, help them develop or elevate a pitch, and hope you can catch lightning in a bottle. But the Cubs tried to sell themselves as having a high-end pitching development infrastructure, and their recent results appear to be waning relative to their organizational counterparts.

Their bullpen ERA ranks 24th (4.49). The strikeout numbers look decent, but they’re walking opposing hitters at a rate tied with the Los Angeles Angels for the league’s fifth-highest (10.8%). Their collective velocity is in the bottom half of the league, while they are proving incapable of generating swings outside of the zone. Strike One has been an issue as well, with a first pitch Strike% that sits just 19th. I’m oversimplifying, but there’s just something broken within the Cubs’ process in their relief corps, especially coming off a year where they sat pretty nicely in each of those regards.

It's especially frustrating, given that Craig Counsell’s ability to manage a pitching staff was purported to be a crucial factor in 2024. While the Cubs didn’t add much outside of Neris, that blend was supposed to be a boon for the organization this year, even with the current personnel. That hasn’t happened, and it’s already leading to grumbling about the job being done on the bench--valid or not.

That idea applies to the larger questions starting to emerge regarding the “lab”, as well. Maybe it’s just a personnel issue. Some health issues and some young arms working through some stuff could be holding the staff back in larger ways than we might realize. But when you’re talking about a narrative, validity doesn’t always matter. And the narrative surrounding the lab is starting to shift toward something irrecoverable.

Again, I’m not here to speculate on the effectiveness of the Cubs’ behind-the-scenes process in matters of pitching. We don’t know the intricacies, and we aren’t yet at a point where we can point to Breslow’s departure, given that (pretty much) the rest of the front office personnel remains in place. Something here is broken, though. And it’s costing the Cubs, in an increasingly dire way.