Monday Morning North Sider: Taillon Returns, Wesneski’s Three Pitches, Movie Trailers, And More

The Chicago Cubs won their series against the Arizona Diamondbacks to finish a long road trip, before splitting a four-game set with the Miami Marlins at home. It was a promising result (against the defending NL pennant winners), followed by a disappointing one (against the National League’s worst team and the other one who broke Cubs fans' hearts by edging them out last September).

Something I’ll note up top for this week: due to a hectic life schedule (and the upcoming NFL Draft), I cannot get to the full allotment of subtopics this week. We’ll still cover the Cubs as usual, but after that, I’ll only share a brief entertainment section. This won’t be a new normal; the regularly scheduled programming will resume next week.

• The big story this week was the return of two Cubs pitchers, each of whom delivered brilliant performances in their first major-league action of the season.

• Those pitchers were, of course, Jameson Taillon and Hayden Wesneski. Taillon returned from the lower back strain he suffered in Spring Training after just two rehab starts, while Wesneski played hero in long relief duty on the same day he was recalled to the big league club (he has since been sent back down to Triple-A Iowa).

• Tackling Taillion first: In the Cubs’ 8-3 victory over the Marlins in the first game of their weekend series, Taillon allowed three hits, walked none and struck out four, while tossing 73 pitches in five innings of work.

• He threw first-pitch strikes to 17 of the 18 hitters he faced. He got 12 whiffs, generated by four of his six pitches. The re-worked curve looked dominant, and he attacked hitters once he got ahead in the count.

• Manager Craig Counsell had high praise for Taillon after the start, per Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic: “I thought he was very sharp. He came out with lots of strikes, pounding the zone. It’s an aggressive team, so he just got ahead and finished at-bats very quickly. Really did as much as we could have expected and what we hoped for.”

• The Cubs need this version of Taillon - the one that seemed to figure things out in the second half of last season - if they hope to remain afloat while Justin Steele is on the mend and Kyle Hendricks continues to struggle. 

• As for Wesneski: the righty appears to have simplified his arsenal this season, eliminating the weaker two of his three fastballs (the sinker and cutter) in favor of a repertoire that consists of just a four-seamer, a sweeper, and a power changeup. More on that coming tomorrow, right here at NSBB.

• Wesneski threw four innings of shutout ball against the Diamondbacks in the series finale on Wednesday (Wesnesday? Many are saying), relying on just his four-seamer and sweeper to get the job done. It was an inspiring performance, especially since he rescued Jordan Wicks from trouble in the fifth and saved a taxed bullpen plenty of bullets. Manager Craig Counsell went so far as to call it the Cubs’ “best pitching performance” of the season thus far.

• We know the Cubs are keeping Wesneski stretched out as starting pitching depth at Triple-A, so it’s not like he’s definitely being converted to relief. Can such a limited repertoire work in more extended appearances? Can he continue to fool hitters a second and third time through a lineup with just two or three pitches? Only time will tell.

• Alexander Canario and Cody Bellinger both crushed home runs in the team’s win in Game 2 of the doubleheader against the Marlins on Saturday. Bellinger has been swinging a much better stick of late, batting .333 with two homers, two walks and just three strikeouts over the last seven games.

• Adbert Alzolay is becoming a problem. He’s blown four save attempts already this season, including one in Game One on Saturday. His four home runs allowed are the second-most of any reliever in baseball this season. The Cubs need him to right the ship quickly - otherwise, it’ll be time to open auditions for the ninth-inning gig. That process began in Saturday's nightcap, when Ben Brown and Héctor Neris bore the relief load.

• Want to guess who’s first on that home runs allowed list, among all pitchers? Why, it’s none other than Kyle Hendricks, with eight. The veteran righthander is the last remaining piece of the 2016 World Series team, and he was an effective starter as recently as last season. 

• Nevertheless, Hendricks just looks plain cooked at this point. It’s nearly impossible to imagine a team that doggedly refused to DFA Jason Heyward for years would dump a franchise icon in such an unceremonious way, but he’s been the weak link in the rotation so far. After Sunday's loss, Counsell sounded on the verge of a move.

• On a brighter note, several Cubs prospects have looked tremendous to open the season. Matt Mervis is back to mashing at Triple-A Iowa (five homers), while Pete Crow-Armstrong is showing off his speed (five steals). Matt Shaw has an OPS above 1.000 at Double-A Tennessee, while Cade Horton has a 1.59 ERA and 0.88 WHIP in three starts. The future is exceedingly luminous for the Cubs, who continue to exercise patience with their top prospects even as they dominate the levels to which they were assigned at the start of the year.

In all, the Cubs are doing a good job managing a tough schedule and loads of injuries to start the season. Counsell has, in my opinion, showed himself to be an excellent manager. The top prospects are performing well down on the farm. For all the negatives that we focus on, it can be easy to lose sight of the positive start to the 2024 season the Cubs have had.

As mentioned up top, I’ve only got time to mention a brief entertainment section this week. However, this is of outsized importance, so I hope you’ll forgive me for this week’s truncated proceedings.

• When I’m not writing about baseball (or the NFL), I am a filmmaker. And now, the trailer to my directorial debut, a short film titled “Path of Two Minds”, has been released.

• The film was shot back in June 2023, and was set to be released around Thanksgiving. However, due to post-production snafus (including a number of pesky audio bugs), we had to delay it until now.

• I wrote, directed, and served as an executive producer on the film. It was a huge leap of faith to effectively run the operation, considering I neither went to film school nor ever worked on a professional set before, but against all odds, we made what I consider to be a very high-quality short film.

• And that, of course, is due to the fact that I was surrounded by passionate, hard-working, and talented people. Without my cast and crew, I have no idea where I would be today.

• A fun note for those who have seen our videos on this site: @Ethan Staple served as one of my co-executive producers on the film!

• If you’d like to see all the amazing people who worked on this movie, you can check out our official IMDb page.

• We don’t have a distribution plan yet for release, though we will be attending the film festival circuit in the Northeast later this summer. You can keep up with our progress on our FilmFreeway page.

• Last thing I’ll note: pre-production on my next film has begun! We have much bigger aspirations for this next one, and I’ll be sure to keep you all apprised of its progress in the coming months.

We’ll wrap it up there, folks. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for indulging my passion project.

The Cubs play six games this week (after a scheduled off day today). They draw the stunningly bad Houston Astros (last in the AL West) for three games at Wrigley Field before heading to Boston to face the Red Sox over the weekend. Pretty cool that they’ll play back-to-back series in the two most historic ballparks in the game.

Have a great week, everyone! Go, Cubs, Go!