Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Albert Cesare/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images This July, Javier Assad will turn 29 years old. A player that old, with as much big-league playing and service time as Assad has, rarely has to face the prospect of being optioned to the minor leagues. Yet, despite having pitched well whenever he's been healthy enough to do so, that's exactly what Assad might face this spring. He's gone from Cubs camp right now, preparing for his stint with Novena México in the World Baseball Classic, and while he's away, other pitchers will be jockeying for position in the battle for a final spot in the team's bullpen come Opening Day. Barring injuries, the starting rotation to begin the season will include Cade Horton, Edward Cabrera, Matthew Boyd, Shota Imanaga and Jameson Taillon. Colin Rea will be available to move into the rotation in the event of an injury, and can be the long man in the bullpen in the meantime. Phil Maton, Hunter Harvey, Caleb Thielbar, Hoby Milner and Jacob Webb can be kept out of the mix only by injuries, because none of them are eligible to be sent to the minors. Daniel Palencia is thus eligible, but won't be sent out. That leaves just one spot up for grabs. Because of his age (and because the team does, at least, have Ben Brown slated to lead the Triple-A Iowa rotation), Assad should get an edge over the other optionable arms in the mix for that job who are already on the 40-man roster. He's performed well, anyway, albeit in extremely limited looks. Beating out the likes of Luke Little or Jack Neely is no problem for him. However, the team also has a handful of promising non-roster invitees in camp, bidding for that same spot. Collin Snider, Trent Thornton and Corbin Martin are the biggest names in that mix. If the team doesn't add one of that group to the 40-man roster (and thus put them on the active big-league list; none of them can be optioned), they could lose them via an opt-out or an upward mobility clause in their contract. Therefore, if any of the three pitch well in Assad's absence, they could sail right past him and into position to make the roster, with the burly Assad shunted to Iowa. If it comes down to it, holding onto a player who looks good in camp is worth letting Assad molder a bit longer in the minors. He could also remain stretched out to pitch multiple innings—perhaps even to start, if needed. It's not the best thing for Assad, at this point in his career, but it could well be the best thing for the Cubs. So far, the most likely person to supplant Assad seems to be Snider. The low-slot righty has his velocity back, after injuries compromised him last season. He's averaged 95 miles per hour with his cutting heater, and has looked solid with three flavors of breaking ball moving off of that pitch. Assad, for his own part, has been sharp, sitting 94 with his four-seamer and sinker and using six pitches. His four-seamer has a bit less carry, but in his case, that's ok. He needs the bloom of other shapes that play off his fastballs, more than he needs the optimized version of those heaters. Thornton is behind the other pitchers in camp, as he recovers from an Achilles injury he suffered last summer. Martin's impressions in camp have been mild, and optionable lefty Ryan Rolison looks much more optionable after a disastrous appearance Monday. Assad probably only has to beat out Snider, but for the next week or two, Snider will be in camp, getting more chances to catch the eye of Craig Counsell and Jed Hoyer. Assad won't. At this moment, it's likely that Assad will begin 2026 in Triple-A, where (somewhat surprisingly) he's only ever pitched 66 2/3 innings. Unless he's traded, he'll almost certainly spend the majority of the season with the Chicago Cubs, but on Opening Day, he might be left behind. It's the nature of the game, but if the Cubs are ever going to get much out Assad, they need to do so this year. View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images In his second game of the Cactus League season, Moisés Ballesteros collected two hits on hard-hit balls to left field. Admittedly, the first—a two-run first-inning double hit on a line toward flummoxed left fielder Will Benson—should have been caught, but even if it had been, one would have been compelled to remark on the impressive process of the swing. On a 2-2 slider bending toward his back foot, Ballesteros inside-outed the ball with real authority, at 95 miles per hour and with a 20° launch angle. It was very pretty hitting. The next inning (this game was utter spring chaos), Ballesteros was up against the same pitcher (Reds starter Brady Singer) and got another 2-2 slider. This one, however, stayed up above the belt. Ballesteros found the center of it, hitting a 105-MPH screamer through the open left side of the infield, with a 7° launch angle. This one was an objectively worse pitch by Singer, but playing off the previous at-bat, it would have drawn a whiff or a mishit from many young hitters, because it looked so much like an offering from which it ended up being so disparate in location and required swing path. For Ballesteros, though, it was no problem. There are hitters who take that second, hanging slider out of the park, even in a two-strike count, but almost all of them fail to do anything good on that first, better-executed one. There are hitters who turn on that first one and lace it into the right-field corner, thereby avoiding the need for a defender to get turned around in order to produce a double, but almost all of them foul off or freeze up on that second one. It takes an exceptionally adaptable swing (and a smart, balanced two-strike approach) to create both of the hits Ballesteros found Monday. That's the unique value he adds to the Cubs offense. Swing paths are all the rage in the analysis of hitters right now, within front offices and beyond them. The swing can now be quantified, in ways we were barely beginning to imagine even 10 years ago. Teams have metrics they don't share with the public, of course, but even the ones that are available at Baseball Savant are now enough to describe a batter's stroke in fine detail. The simplest measurement to which we now have access is bat speed, but there are other valuable ones, too—like swing tilt. Every swing has to describe a path downward, then upward, swooshing and slashing from behind the hitter's head or shoulder, through the strike zone and out around their front side. Every swing is a reaction to what the hitter sees, so the angles at which they swing change all the time—but it's also a practiced and calculated motion, so each hitter also demonstrates an average swing path that defines how they address the ball. It's reported at Savant as the angle between the barrel of the bat and an imaginary line parallel to the ground running through the handle, captured over the final 40 milliseconds before the intercept point (real or, on whiffs, hypothetical) between bat and ball. The league's average swing tilt is roughly 32°, but it ranges from under 25° to over 40°. More importantly, for our purposes today, players themselves use different swing paths, and we can use splits to gain more insight into their swings than the snapshot provided by a single number. On a four-seamer, for instance, most hitters will use a flatter swing—more on why in a moment. Almost universally, hitters use their steepest swings against curveballs. Though it's far from a perfect gauge, one way to tell how adaptable a batter's swing is is by looking at how much their swing path differs from one pitch type to another. There are multiple reasons for different swings against different pitch types, of course. The first is timing. A four-seam fastball is coming at you quicker than a breaking ball is, but unless you knew that heater was coming and got started early, you have the same budgets of time and space to spend getting the barrel to the baseball. A flat swing is a more direct one, and while it's often not technically as fast (as measured on Savant, which uses the rotational velocity of the barrel at the intercept point) as a steeper swing, it can still be quicker. What hitters want most is barrel accuracy, and the surest way to get the sweet spot on a fastball is usually to flatten out your swing a little bit. To think about why curves engender steep swings, keep the above in mind, but further, consider the second reason why swing tilt differs by pitch type: location. A pitch up in the zone requires a flatter swing to produce contact than does one at the belt, and that pitch at the belt requires a flatter one than a pitch down at the knees. None of that is new, ground-breaking information. We're just agreeing on foundational concepts. Now, consider where most four-seamers are thrown: above the belt. Meanwhile, most curveballs (and sliders, for that matter; changeups and sinkers introduce another dynamic that we'll mostly save for another day) are down in the zone, or below it. You need a steep swing to get to them. In fact, most hitters have pretty small differences in average swing tilt based on pitch type, and much larger ones based on pitch height. I've told you all of that to tell you this: Ballesteros has perhaps the most plastic swing in the Cubs' lineup, which will make him an invaluable part thereof this year. As proof (beyond those two lovely but ultimately unimportant hits on Monday in Goodyear, Ariz.), I offer this: No hitter on the Cubs last season had a greater difference between their swing tilt on four-seamers and their tilt on curveballs than did Ballesteros. Admittedly, his sample was small, but he averaged 27° of tilt against four-seam fastballs and 34° against curves. Expect that margin to shrink as he gets more playing time, but not so much that he won't still stand out. By pitch height. he's just as remarkable. Only Nico Hoerner matched the 15° spread in tilt from Ballesteros, who had: a 20° average tilt on high pitches; a 29° tilt on middle-of-the-vertical zone pitches; and a 35° tilt on low pitches. Remember that slider from Singer he hit for a double? Here's what he looked like at contact on that pitch: Now, here's another pitch he hit hard the opposite way—his first big-league homer, last summer. As the kids used to (but no longer) say, get you a man who can do both. Ballesteros is that kind of hitter, and they're hard to find. That doesn't mean he's perfect, of course. In fact, let's talk a little more about the nature of swing tilt manipulation, including the tradeoffs involved. For these purposes, we'll set aside pitch types and look only at pitch height. Remember, Ballesteros has about a 15° difference in tilt between his swings at high pitches and his swings at low ones. Looking beyond the Cubs, that's still above average; the average split is about 12°. However, Ballesteros is not an outlier in baseball as a whole. Here are four hitters who excel at this kind of swing adjustment based on location: Luis Arraez: 26° High / 37° Mid / 46° Low Cody Bellinger: 22°/32°/38° Matt Chapman: 15°/25°/32° Ernie Clement: 23°/32°/39° With the possible exception of Chapman, these names won't surprise you. They're famous for their feel for contact, and specifically for getting more than you'd expect out of their swings, relative to their raw bat speed. Certainly, if Ballesteros can be anything like what Bellinger was at his best with the Cubs, the team will flourish. Alas, it's not this simple. There's a specific penalty we need to account for: the high-pitch swing speed loss. We touched on this earlier. A pitch coming at you at the top of the zone (or above) is likely to be a fastball, which jams you up for time, but even if it isn't, it forces you into a tough spot for space. Every hitter's swing has to be able to punish mistakes in the middle of the plate, and the body can much more naturally adjust to a ball down—what you've always heard broadcasters call "dropping the head of the bat on it". When most hitters flatten out their swings to attack a pitch up, though, they lose bat speed. It's a shorter swing, and it can still work, but it's just not as easy to forge a productive collaboration between gravity, your musculature and that very blunt tool in your hands on a flat, high swing as it is on steeper ones where the barrel can dip farther below the hands. Different hitters pay different high-pitch bat speed penalties, but mostly, that's a product of choices they make. The baseline for this is around 2 MPH of swing speed, but if you choose not to manipulate your swing tilt as much as other batters do, you can minimize that. Two former Cubs illustrate that option: Christopher Morel: HIGH: 23°, 76.1 MPH / MID: 27°, 76.1 MPH / LOW: 30°, 75.5 MPH Kyle Schwarber: 26°, 76.5 / 30°, 77.6 / 34°, 76.7 As you can see, neither player sacrifices bat speed to flatten their swing at the top of the zone. That means a much smaller variability in tilt than others have, which is why they're more prone to mis-hitting the ball or whiffing, but with the right approach—good pitch selection, tailored to your swing and its most productive zones—holding onto your bat speed on high offerings can be worthwhile. Schwarber and Morel are a nice pair for illustrating just how important a great approach is to such hitters, though. Though each of those two have below-average ranges of swing tilt, there are guys who are even more extreme in that regard—and who are, therefore, even more extreme in their discipline of only swinging at what they want. Seiya Suzuki and Juan Soto belong to a class of hitters who can't manipulate their bat paths much and still do what they want to do at the plate, so they adopt an extremely selective approach, instead. The more you adapt your swing path to the pitch, the more bat speed you generally give up at the top of the zone. Ballesteros is one example; a fellow left-handed hitter in the NL Central is another. Moisés Ballesteros: HIGH: 20°, 69.4 MPH / MID: 29°, 73.2 MPH / LOW: 35°, 73.4 MPH Brice Turang: 22°, 66.4 / 32°, 71.1 / 37°, 72.3 If you're giving up four miles per hour of bat speed at the top of the zone, you're probably being too aggressive with the adjustment of your swing path. Ballesteros's case gives us a chance to talk about one more dynamic in play, though, which is the baseline tilt of one's swing. How steeply you swing when the ball is exactly where you want it is a major factor in determining how much you need to adjust to handle offerings at the top of the zone—but that needn't be a primary consideration when deciding what type of swing is best. In general, steeper swings are better swings. They handle the ball down and in the middle of the zone better, and they still have some loft left in them after the hitter adjusts at the top of the zone. There's some tilt number—let's say 24°, but you could pick anything from 22 to 25—at which you're unavoidably giving up extra bat speed; it's physics. Steep swingers can lose less speed at the top of the zone, because they don't run into that sub-25° restriction. Guys with slow, steep swings—think Michael Busch—can have big trouble handling the ball up and in, but if they have any semblance of a plan at the plate, they derive more benefit from that steep attack than damage from having a hole in their zone. In fact, you know who's absolutely perfect in this regard, giving up virtually no bat speed at the top of the zone because they're still swinging fairly steeply there but also getting to the ball consistently? It will not shock you. Shohei Ohtani: HIGH: 29°, 74.6 MPH / MID: 37°, 76.5 MPH / LOW: 43°, 74.6 MPH Ballesteros is no Ohtani. He's not Busch, either. His swing is flatter, but it still has plenty of bendability. He shows a facility for seeing the ball and changing his bat path—what old-school scouts call "smart hands"—few players in the league can match. The last step in his development at the plate could be more about selectivity than about manipulating the barrel. Maybe a perfect Ballesteros has a slightly steeper upper-zone swing, but look at that second hit from Monday, or the homer from last year: he derives real value from getting on top of the ball. No, his key will be to swing less often up there. Some 369 hitters saw at least 100 pitches in the shadow of the top of the strike zone at Triple A last year. Ballesteros had the fifth-highest swing rate in that cohort. For a guy who stands 5-foot-8, in the age of the ABS system, that shouldn't happen. Ballesteros can afford to be more picky, and to use his right to challenge pitches occasionally to thwart bad calls. The top of the zone (especially to short hitters) is where fans will feel the greatest difference between baseball before the ABS challenge system and baseball with it. For Ballesteros, the fact that few pitchers will be able to hit the top of his zone should be a huge advantage. The plasticity of Ballesteros's swing will make him a linchpin of the Cubs offense in 2026. If he also learns to let the ball along the top rail of the zone sail by a bit more often, he could turn a corner quickly and become a massive offensive weapon. Either way, though, the team has to be very pleased that he made it through a thorny entry process and landed on American soil in his hitting shoes. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images When the Cubs traded for Edward Cabrera in January, many assumed the team would continue the work Cabrera began in Miami last year, under former Cubs assistant pitching coach Daniel Moskos: ratcheting down the usage of his four-seam fastball. For most of his career, despite being thrown nearly 100 miles per hour, Cabrera's four-seamer has been his worst pitch. Given his arm angle—even the lower angle to which he adjusted last season—he doesn't have any more ride (that apparent rising action, as the backspin of a fastball defies gravity) than a hitter expects to see. It does run more to his arm side than they'd anticipate, which is good for something, but only if the pitch is well-located and well-mixed with his other offerings. When it isn't, the heater can get hammered. Last season, Cabrera favored his sinker over the four-seamer for the first time. It was just part of a broader shift in deployment of his arsenal, which saw him throw his very effective changeup and curveball plenty, but mix in his slider and sinker more, pushing the four-seamer all the way to fifth in his personal pecking order. It was a strategy of avoidance—of minimizing a weakness by making it as small a slice of his game as possible. In his first outing of the Cactus League season, though, the four-seamer was Cabrera's most-used pitch. He leaned on it harder than he has in any season since 2021, his rookie year. If you're married to the idea that the Cubs' optimization plan for Cabrera involves continuing to push him away from the four-seamer, it's easy to explain that away. Guys work on things during spring. They don't always behave the way they will when the games count. Admittedly, it would be surprising if Cabrera does lean anywhere near this heavily on the four-seamer come the regular season. However, you should still take his pitch usage Friday seriously. It wasn't a fluke, because it's very much the way the Cubs do things. The last two established, American starters the Cubs brought in (the ones to whom we can easily make a direct comparison) were Matthew Boyd and Colin Rea. Here's what happened to Boyd's pitch usage last year. And here's the same chart for Rea. Widening the lens only makes the emphasis clearer. Last season, the Cubs' four-seamer usage was 40.4%. That was the highest rate of any team in the league, by a significant margin. Last year, Rea said that the first thing the Cubs told him was how his arsenal could work better by working differently, playing off his four-seamer. No team in the majors likes four-seamers like this one does. Every pitcher is different. Chicago won't push the four-seamer as hard with Cabrera as they did with Rea; it wouldn't make sense. Don't assume, though, that the team will entirely alter its philosophy to suit one new arm. On the contrary, they're likely to assimilate that arm into their pitching philosophy. Cabrera is about to learn how to use his four-seamer better. If the Cubs didn't believe fervently that that's possible, they almost certainly wouldn't have dealt for him. One could argue that that approach is overconfident. The Cubs have had plenty of developmental wins lately, but when people in the know list the savviest organizations in the game in matters of pitching, the Cubs are never the first name out of their mouth. Asking a player who just figured out something important and turned a corner in their career to pivot dramatically toward a different plan—one that goes against his documented strengths, no less—is awfully bold. However, this is how the Cubs have had success over the last several years. They identify guys they believe can benefit from a change in pitch mix, and then they help them achieve that benefit—and the four-seamer is almost always at the center of the action. Besides, there's always utility in a pitch that sits 97 and often touches higher. Cabrera's stuff is electricity itself, and the four-seamer carries as much current as anything he throws. The Cubs are unlikely to let the value of that intense an offering go unrealized, even if other pitches net Cabrera more whiffs. He might not stick to it all year, but he's going throw the four-seamer more often early on, not less so. Get comfortable with discomfort, because if you'd hoped the flamethrower would lean even more into his curveball and changeup, you're destined for disappointment. The heater powers the Cubs' attack, and while Cabrera is unusual, he's not so unique as to be an outright exception to that rule. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images Shota Imanaga averaged 93 miles per hour on his four-seam fastball in his first outing of Cactus League play Tuesday. That was eye-opening for many, because Imanaga often struggled just to crack 90 MPH late last season. In most of his second-half starts, he averaged north of that number, but not by much—and he rarely even touched 92 or 93 miles per hour. On Tuesday, he lived right around 93 and touched 94. It's easy to imagine how that uptick in velocity might offer relief from the vulnerability to home runs that plagued him down the stretch. Truthfully, though, velocity isn't a big factor for Imanaga. He got hit hard after his return from a hamstring strain last year, but that had much more to do with command and pitch shape than with speed. Whenever something gets out of whack for the southpaw, homers will be the source of the tsuris, because he lives on a fastball with deceptive rising action and a splitter that will get hammered if not well-executed and well-located. When he does have that ride on the heater and is commanding the splitter, though, he can have success even at 89-91 on the radar gun. Alas, last season, Imanaga tried a mechanical tweak that didn't work. and it compromised the shape of his heater and the ability to throw the splitter with the action and the location that makes it play as well as possible. His average arm angle in 2024 was 40°, but in 2025, it dipped to 36°. The result was more run on the four-seamer, but (if anything) less carry, and a splitter that didn't tumble as steeply as it had in his excellent first season with Chicago. On Tuesday, those shapes were back. Imanaga's stuff had more vertical separation, because the fastball was more consistently showing that ride. Here's a comparison between his start in Milwaukee last May (which he left with the injury that would sideline him for several weeks), and the one he had against the Padres this week. Obviously, the splitter and sweeper also dropped less than did the fastball, but on balance, this is a better version of Imanaga. He can stretch the zone vertically more effectively this way, because he can more often tease the top of the zone with that fastball. Imanaga's release point was also slightly higher Tuesday, and his release was closer to the center of the mound. We don't have arm angle data for spring games, but Imanaga seems to have raised his arm slot again. That's good news. Broadly, the league is trending toward lower arm slots, which lend themselves better to some forms of pitch design and deception. In Imanaga's case, though, throwing from a high three-quarters slot (but a low sheer release height, because of his diminutive stature and the way he drives down the mound in his delivery) maximizes the utility of his repertoire. By no means is this a guarantee that the Cubs will have their 2024 co-ace back in full this season. However, it's a good sign that he appears to have corrected what amounted to a flaw in his mechanics, and that his arm is feeling so strong that he's already pushing the mid-90s in February. Imanaga looks likely to be a key contributor over the first stage of the season. On a staff that will try to protect key young arms and that won't have Justin Steele early on, that's exceptionally valuable. Imanaga's good first Cactus League outing was a major step toward a successful first month for his team. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images First baseman and designated hitter Tyler Austin will be out for a prolonged period after a debridement procedure on his knee, the Cubs announced Wednesday. Austin, 34, had been the prospective bench player with the clearest role, outside whichever catcher one cares to count as the backup, and the fact that he now looks unlikely to help them any time before Memorial Day makes a major differeence for the club. Last month, manager Craig Counsell told a Cubs Convention audience that he intended to play Michael Busch every day, after Busch emerged as arguably the best hitter on the team in 2025. That probably wasn't true at the time. Busch is a poor hitter against lefties, and Counsell had Austin as a purpose-built weapon to attack southpaws. Now, however, Busch might get virtually every start at first base, at least early in the season. Prospect Jonathon Long has put up good numbers over the last two seasons and spent all of 2025 with Triple-A Iowa, but he's considered a low-ceiling guy—and he suffered a sprained elbow on a collision at first just a few days before the Austin news. Chicago really doesn't have a backup first baseman, with Austin and Long sidelined. Moisés Ballesteros could try his hand there, but he's not the ideal physical profile for the position. Ditto for Matt Shaw. Carson Kelly has never appeared in a big-league game at first, though he has worked out there at times. If the Long/Austin double-whammy had struck just a bit sooner, the team might have turned to free agent Rhys Hoskins, but earlier this week, Hoskins arrived at Guardians camp as a non-roster invitee. Instead of trying to solve the problem by making a last-minute addition, the Cubs might simply prepare Shaw, Ballesteros and/or Kelly to man first base in a pinch and trust Busch to take that post almost every day for the first half of the year. Almost any way you slice it, now, the team's bench will include Shaw and Conforto. The final spot, vacated by Austin, might now go to any of Chas McCormick, Dylan Carlson, Justin Dean or Kevin Alcántara. The loss of Austin creates lots of extra potential playing time against lefties, in particular, which suits eeach of those four outfielders nicely. Chicago's roster looks like it will be slightly less functional and efficient than they'd hoped, at least when they break camp. However, it might be a higher-upside group, too. Austin's injury is bad news, but it creates as many opportunities as it forecloses. The 2026 Cubs just need to be more opportunistic than last year's iteration was. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images If you merely consult a spreadsheet that shows the guaranteed dollars for which the Chicago Cubs are on the hook, you might think that they've walked right up to the competitive-balance tax threshold, but declined to step over the line. If that were true, it would be a complication for them, as they stare down two key decisions this spring: whether to put non-roster free-agent signing Michael Conforto on the Opening Day roster (thus guaranteeing him $2 million), and whether to extend star center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong. Frustrating though it might (rightfully) be to many fans, the CBT line is a real and important factor in teams' decision-making. All teams have budgets, and those budgets aren't technically anchored to the CBT line, but going over the line (especially in consecutive seasons) means higher costs, draft-pick and international free agency penalties. It has to be part of the calculation about marginal spending whenever a team is hovering near the line between not being a payer and being one, or between two of the several thresholds at which penalties and tax rates rise. Here's the thing, though: the Cubs are already over the tax line. It's not that close, either. They have not only Conforto, but a handful of other experienced non-roster invitees in camp, from outfielders Chas McCormick and Dylan Carlson to relievers like Trent Thornton and Kyle Wright. Christian Bethancourt, who's likely to go to Triple-A Iowa if both Carson Kelly and Miguel Amaya are healthy at the end of camp, will make $1.6 million if added to the big-league roster at some point to backfill because of injuries. Any dollar over the league minimum earned by any of the above pushes the Cubs closer to (or, in actuality, well past) the line, since they're currently just under $500,000 below the threshold. Even if none of those players makes the roster and the team rolls with guys who play for the minimum (say, Kevin Alcántara and Ryan Rolison), though, they're going to end up over the line. Kelly and Matthew Boyd signed two-year deals last winter that included up to $500,000 per year in performance bonuses based on playing time, and each maxed out those bonuses in 2025. It's unlikely they'll do so again in 2026, but they'll get another $200,000 or more from the team based on those clauses. Then, the team signed five free-agent relievers this winter to deals that include substantial performance bonuses. Hunter Harvey, alone, can earn over $1 million in bonuses. Phil Maton, Caleb Thielbar, Jacob Webb and Hoby Milner can each earn about $250,000 more than their base salaries. Those guys won't max out their earning power, but to push the Cubs over the line, none of them has to. In some wild scenario in which none of those bonuses have to be paid, the team will be in scramble mode early, and will end up spnding money on someone else to patch holes in their pitching staff. No, the Cubs are already over the CBT line. That's good news. With the CBT not really an active consideration (but the second threshold a solid $12-15 million in guarantees away), the Cubs could go scoop up another starter before the season starts, to bolster a strong but injury-shadowed starting rotation. They can also freely negotiate with Crow-Armstrong, who sounds very interested in a long-term deal with the club. Signing him for the long haul would earn the team tons of good will with their fans, and they'd also have cost certainty for the next handful of years, rather than risking his salary skyrocketing via arbitration. Locking up Crow-Armstrong would mean giving him a boost in salary ahead of schedule, albeit a modest one, in 2026. It would also mean a signing bonus, which would be spread over the life of the deal but would be a cost incurred up front. Crow-Armstrong's CBT hit would rise sharply, because it would reflect the annual average value of the deal. That's why not having to think about staying below that line matters. Last season, the Cubs couldn't seriously consider any expensive extensions, because they didn't have clearance to surpass the CBT threshold or the breathing room to increase their number at the last second. Things are much more conducive to that kind of spending this spring. One way or another, the Cubs probably aren't done spending money this offseason. Be it a team-friendly extension for a young player or a market-rate one to keep one of Nico Hoerner, Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki from becoming free agents in November, there will be lots of conversations around the team's existing players—and there's still room to spend a bit on more pitching help, if they decide that they need it. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images When Brad Keller toed the rubber for the Cubs last spring and started touching 98 miles per hour with his fastball, I didn't believe it. Hot radar guns aren't much of a problem in the modern game; Statcast is much less vulnerable to either error or manipulation than old-fashioned stadium or broadcast readings. Still, it was hard to buy into that level of heat from Keller, who had been a sturdy but not especially hard-throwing starter until moving into long relief the previous summer. As it turned out, though, Keller's newfound Howitzer was for real. He had averaged 93.8 miles per hour on his four-seamer in 2024; that number shot up to 97.2 MPH in 2025. More intense stuff fueled his breakout as the team's first-half relief ace. He was the exemplar in the latest round of minor developmental miracle-making from the Cubs in the bullpen. On Monday, we might have gotten another glimpse of that magic. Lefty reliever Ryan Rolison was a waiver claim this winter, after pitching in the majors for the first time at age 27 in 2025. Arguably, he only got as much time as he did (31 appearances and 42 1/3 innings) because he had the good fortune to land on one of the worst pitching teams of all time: the 2025 Rockies. Even if you take some of the air out of his 7.02 ERA because he was pitching in mop-up duty at Coors Field (in front of a lousy defense), he doesn't exactly look like a big-league arm. That version of Rolison averaged just 92.9 MPH with his four-seam fastball, which has the cut-ride shape the Cubs love. His fastest heater in the majors hummed in at 94.8. Monday's version of him is a different beast. Rolison threw just four fastballs in his outing against the Royals, as he recorded his three outs on just eight total pitches. Here are the velocities of those four heaters, though: 96.3 MPH 95.7 95.7 95.2 If Rolison is a guy who sits 95 and touches higher from his high three-quarter left-handed slot, he's a very valuable, flexible piece of the team's bullpen depth chart. His two distinct breaking pitches play nicely off that heat, and he has a useful changeup, so he can even neutralize right-handed batters. The Cubs don't really need him, if everyone is healthy when they break camp next month, but unlike Keller, they also don't have to stuff him onto the roster in order to keep him. Rolison has a remaining year of being optionable, so they could stash him in Triple-A if Caleb Thielbar and Hoby Milner are both healthy. That said, a harder-throwing Rolison could be a strong third southpaw for the pen, even if the team is at full strength. He offers some of the things the team lost when they allowed Drew Pomeranz to walk via free agency, with a high-rise heater and good depth on his curveball. When the team claimed him, he appeared to be a simple scoop off the wire, based solely on the ability to shuttle him to the minors at a moment's notice. Now, it's possible to see real upside here. Rolison just might blossom into a high-leverage weapon in a playoff-aspiring bullpen. He's made the adjustments needed to tap into a new vein of electricity in his arm, and if he can show enough command, he might deliver enormous bang for the few bucks the team forked over to bring him in. View full article

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images In his first action of the 2026 Cactus League season, Ben Brown needed just 30 pitches to get through two breezy, scoreless innings. He held the Royals to two hits and didn't issue a walk, while striking out three. That's just part of the story, though. For Brown, the bigger questions were bound to be about stuff and developmental progress—and on that front, there was even more good news. Brown threw 12 curveballs, but of his other 18 offerings, only eight were his formerly standard four-seam fastball. The other 10 were, pretty unequivocally, sinkers—or, more precisely, two-seamers. The pitches still had quite a bit of carry, but they ran much more to Brown's arm side, toward right-handed batters. This is not the kind of third pitch Cubs fans have been waiting and hoping for Brown to add to his repertoire over the last two years. He's experimented with different breaking-ball shapes to complement his hard curveball and with various forms of the changeup; those offerings would be the ones he could use to turn a lineup card over better and thrive as a starter. This pitch is something else. Brown throws from a high three-quarter arm slot. Last year, he averaged a 45° arm angle, significantly higher than the big-league average. From that slot, hitters are virtually always looking for a four-seamer. Sinkers from such an angle are very rare. However, there's no sign that Brown has lowered that angle this year. Spring games don't come with arm angle data, at least right away, and Monday's game wasn't broadcast on video, but the video we do have shows Brown operating from at least as high a slot. Brown faced almost exclusively right-handed batters Monday, which is probably why we didn't see him try out a cutter or test-drive this year's flavor of changeup. It was still illustrative, though, because we got to se him use both the four-seamer (7 times) and the sinker (10) against batters of the same handedness. He was, plainly, using the sinker as a lane-changer, commanding the inner half of the plate with that pitch and the outer half with the four-seamer. The curve can play off each pitch; he just needs to prove to opposing righties that he can throw strikes on both sides of the dish. Most sinkers come from lower-than-average arm slots, but the high-slot, running two-seamer is coming more into vogue. Last season, 15 pitchers threw at last 300 sinkers from arm angles of 45° or higher. Most notably, José Alvarado of the Phillies and Félix Bautista of the Orioles use high slots, but throw running, high-velocity heaters with which batters can hardly do anything. Brown also sat 97 in his outing Monday. That's the key to all of this. At that high a velocity, in two- or three-inning stints, he can be a monster, especially if utilizing multiple fastball shapes opens up the whole zone for him and forces hitters to chase his curve more frequently. The presence of a sinker does not make him a good candidate to start, per se, and we need to see whether he's made any progress with pitches that neutralize left-handed batters before getting excited. If Brown does end up in a stretched-out relief role, though, the sinker he showed Monday could be the key that unlocks his seemingly limitless potential. A version of him that mixes elite extension and average-plus command of both fastballs with that hammer curve is the second-best reliever in the Cubs bullpen, trailing only Daniel Palencia. Even if they keep trying to make things work for him as a starter, having the sinker in his mix will come in handy. If nothing else, he's showing a new and vital skill that had previously been missing from his scouting report: adaptability. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images The Cubs need more depth in left-handed hitting, especially with prospective starting designated hitter Moisés Ballesteros delayed in his ramp-up due to visa issues this spring. Overnight, they agreed to sign veteran outfielder Michael Conforto to address that need, according to Jon Heyman of the New York Post. Conforto, 32, hit just .199/.305/.333 last season with the Dodgers, though he held onto a steady enough role to collect 486 plate appearances. Formerly an All-Star-caliber corner bat, he's been diminished by injuries and no longer gets to much of his raw power, but he still has high-end bat speed and a patient approach at the plate. He would be a major defensive downgrade in either outfield corner; expect him to serve only as a DH. Even then, the extent to which he's actually used will hinge somewhat on Ballesteros's readiness. View full article

Image courtesy of © Angelina Alcantar/News Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images In a key at-bat last September, Nico Hoerner sat on a fastball and got one in his wheelhouse. He had the advantage of being ahead 2-0 on the Rays' Bryan Baker, and there were two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the eighth inning. The score was 4-4. Never have all the incentives been more aligned for a player to swing from his heels, and Hoerner did just that. The ball was a searing line drive into the left-field corner—a double, not a homer, but only because he hadn't lifted it enough. That was the hardest Hoerner had hit a ball all season, by a good margin. It jumped off his bat at 108.1 miles per hour; he hadn't hit any other ball even 106 miles per hour all season. Locked in, sitting on one pitch and one location and looking for extra-base juice, he set a new season high for batted-ball ferocity. akQ5NEFfWGw0TUFRPT1fVlFVSFYxQUdYMVFBQVFNS0JRQUhBZ0VEQUZsV0FsSUFCUU1CQkZCVUJBcGNBbFFB.mp4 Three days later, he nearly matched himself, although the result was much less impressive. Again, he was trying to ambush something—this time, a first-pitch splinker from Paul Skenes of the Pirates. Michael Busch had just hit a leadoff homer, and Hoerner was trying to catch Skenes reeling a bit. He nearly did it, too. The ball had more of the plate and stayed up more than Skenes probably would have liked. However, it had just enough run and dip to catch the underside of Hoerner's barrel. He rapped it sharply to shortstop, 107.3 miles per hour off the bat, but this time with no luck. NnkzN1dfWGw0TUFRPT1fQWdBQ1Z3RldWbE1BREFSV0JBQUhBRmRlQUZrRVZsWUFCVmNHVVZjRkNBSUVBQVJS (1).mp4 Maybe you're worried about me, right now. Maybe you're thinking I mistakenly headlined this Nico Hoerner article with something about Jefferson Rojas. Calm your fears, though. This is very much a Jefferson Rojas article. See, those two batted balls were the only ones Hoerner produced that topped 106 miles per hour last season. On Saturday, in the second game of Cactus League play, Jefferson Rojas matched that number. First, he scalded a line drive to center field to drive in a run, as clean a single as you'll ever see. It perfectly matched Hoerner's maximum exit velocity from 2025, at 108.1 MPH. Two innings later, he hit another rocket, this time at 106.2 MPH. It had too little air under it, and became a groundout, too, but it's a nifty match for the ball Hoerner hit against Skenes. In Friday's Cactus League opener, he'd also smashed a single at 100.3 MPH, against the White Sox. So far, Rojas only hits the ball hard, and all three of the pitchers against whom he made such solid contact (Kumar Rocker, Cal Quantrill, and Tyler Schweitzer) pitched in the majors last year. This is not meant, of course, to directly compare Rojas to Hoerner. They're very different players. Besides, Hoerner managed to pull a ball at 98 MPH from Baker for that double; that makes his hit more impressive than Rojas's. The young shortstop prospect has a lot left to learn. He hit .236/.343/.387 in High A and Double A last season for a reason. Still, this is a very pleasing proof of concept. Hoerner has 30-grade game power; it's his only weakness. Rojas, whom FanGraphs nonetheless ranked as the Cubs' top prospect entering this season, is only listed as having 30-grade game power at present. The prospect team at FanGraphs does give Rojas a 50 future grade on power, though, and having seen him step into the box two months shy of his 21st birthday and hit three balls the way he's hit them this weekend, it's fair to say that he's making progress toward that eventual ceiling. It's important not to get carried away with this kind of comp, but Rojas should remind you a bit of Starlin Castro. There's the same blend of quick hands and sinewy strength as Castro brought right to the big leagues in 2010, at age 20. Massive makeup issues (and, perhaps relatedly, an overly aggressive approach at the plate) stopped Castro from reaching his full potential, but the athleticism of Rojas is very similar, and so far, there are no reports of Rojas being similarly immature and dangerous off the field. Given the calamitous .164/.279/.205 line he put up in 39 games with Double-A Knoxville last summer, Rojas is surely slated to head back there this spring. However, his upside is beginning to shine against even big-league competition. He could well get back onto the fast track to the majors, with a strong start in Knoxville begetting a June promotion to Iowa. He'll be Rule 5-eligible this fall, so the Cubs have no reason not to let him force his way to the big leagues if this season goes the way he hopes. It's only been two spring games, but he's one of the most important players in the organization, and he's off to a great start in a pivotal season. Heck, since the infield picture in Chicago is crowded and Hoerner is a free agent this fall, maybe this is kind of a Nico Hoerner article, after all. If this keeps up, Rojas is coming for a spot that currently belongs to Hoerner, but showing he can match Hoerner on the veteran's weakest front is just the first small step toward supplanting him. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images For all the good Jed Hoyer does as the president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs, he makes some big mistakes, over and over. He's a good seeker of bargains in free agency and a tough negotiator. He's assembled an improved scouting and player development infrastructure. He assiduously avoids bad risks, and gets his biggest moves directionally right almost every time. However, he's not good at the vital, detail-oriented job of building a functional roster. That's the biggest reason why the Brewers have finished ahead of the Cubs in every season of Hoyer's tenure as the team's top executive, and it could be what holds back a talented 2026 club, too. 'Directionally right' might be the operative term, and one that cuts both ways—or, rather, doesn't. Hoyer signed Alex Bregman to take over at third base this season, and he replaced departing free agent Justin Turner with righty slugger Tyler Austin. He also traded Owen Caissie to the Marlins in the Edward Cabrera deal. Moisés Ballesteros is, broadly speaking, set to replace the departed Kyle Tucker, slotting in as the designated hitter most of the time and pushing Seiya Suzuki back to regular work in right field. Even if you're high on Ballesteros, though, he's not a Tucker-caliber hitter. It's really Bregman who will be asked to bolster the batting order, bumping Matt Shaw from the lineup but providing the production Tucker brought to the table. In other words, the Cubs got more right-handed this winter, when it comes to scoring runs. They have three everyday players who bat left-handed (at least against right-handed pitchers), in Pete Crow-Armstrong, Michael Busch and Ian Happ. In theory, Ballesteros is the fourth lefty bat in the lineup against righties. There are two problems here: While Busch is a star-caliber slugger, Happ's offensive profile is more steady than spectacular. Crow-Armstrong has the whole world dreaming on his upside after a terrific start to 2025, but he was one of the worst hitters in baseball after the All-Star break, and his approach is a major constraint on any optimism about his bat. He's in the lineup every day, but more for his glove than his bat. Ballesteros, in addition to being unproven after getting just 66 plate appearances in his first taste of the majors last year, has yet to arrive in Cubs camp. This is not his fault; his visa is being held up as he tries to return from his native Venezuela. Nonetheless, it's a problem, for a player who needs a full camp's worth of reps and exposure to prepare for his first full season in the bigs. As of Wednesday, FanGraphs projects only 36.5% of the Cubs' total plate appearances to go to players who have the ability to bat left-handed, including the switch-hitting Happ. They're a very right-leaning offense, with both catchers and all three non-first base infielders batting righty. Suzuki, Austin, Shaw and all of the candidates for the remaining bench spot bat right-handed. Last year, 47.8% of the Cubs' plate appearances went to left-handed or switch-hitting batters. That's a healthier number, and even with Tucker out of the mix, the team needs to be ready to give at least 40% of its playing time to guys who can bat lefty against righty pitchers. That's not the case right now, and even the current projections are probably too generous to the team. Ballesteros is slated for 382 plate appearances, which should certainly be the goal, but if he can't get going in camp until four weeks before Opening Day, the risk that he has to spend a significant chunk of the season at Triple-A Iowa is substantial. There's not really a good solution out there, at this point—at least in free agency. The Cubs could explore a trade to add a lefty bat, but it's late in the game on that front. Every worthwhile free-agent hitter has signed. There are likely to be times, especially early in the season, when the Cubs feel locked into bad matchups with parades of opposing right-handed pitchers. To win enough games to get past Milwaukee this time around, the Cubs need to be more efficient than they've been in the past. Right now, they're not in a position to do that, which is a major problem, and there might not be a solution to that problem available. The team doesn't even have a dark-horse candidate for a roster spot in camp who bats left-handed. Hoyer hasn't built a roster that hums the way it will need to, and if he waits until the trade deadline to address his shortage of good lefty bats, it might be too late. View full article

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images On Friday, the Cubs signed right-handed reliever Shelby Miller to a two-year, guaranteed big-league deal. It's a rare step for a team to take to secure the services of a pitcher who won't take the mound in the first year of the contract. Miller underwent Tommy John surgery near the end of the 2025 season and won't pitch for the Cubs until 2027, if at all. Most of the time, a pitcher in their mid-30s signs a minor-league deal while the recuperate from this kind of operation. For instance, after his Cubs career ended on a surgeon's slab, Adbert Alzolay signed a two-year minor-league deal with the New York Mets. In this case, though, the Cubs went the extra mile. Doing that has short- and long-term implications. The Cubs will have to designate someone for assignment to slot Miller onto their 40-man roster, even though they'll pass him directly through that list and onto the 60-day injured list. That's fine, in that the team has plenty of players on the fringes of the roster whom they can lose without being especially upset. It still means that acquiring Miller now was more important to them than seeing a few spring outings from whichever arm gets the axe—likely someone like Gavin Hollowell, Luke Little or Ryan Rolison. It also means that Miller will take up a 40-man roster spot all next winter. Given how many current Cubs are set to hit free agency after the World Series, that, too, is an acceptable tradeoff, but it's a real cost. These considerations are why few teams sign players like this to deals like this one. Why did the Cubs take that extraordinary step? In part, at least, it's because of their neighbors to the north—their foremost rivals, not only for division titles but for under-the-radar pitching help. Miller was the Milwaukee Brewers' top trade deadline acquisition last summer, and though he didn't last with the team long before his elbow blew out, he and Milwaukee had mutual interest in a reunion this winter. Miller is the kind of pitcher the Brewers like, which means he's the kind of pitcher the Cubs like. In the five seasons since 2021, the following pitchers have twirled for both the Cubs and the Crew: Brad Boxberger Andrew Chafin Aaron Civale Trevor Megill Wade Miley Shelby Miller Tyson Miller Hoby Milner* Daniel Norris Enoli Paredes Drew Pomeranz Colin Rea Taylor Rogers In a sense, even that list isn't exhaustive. It doesn't include players each team has brought into camp who had pitched for the other during the same span, but who never appeared with the second club—or cases like that of Bryan Hudson, the ex-Cubs farmhand whom the Brewers scooped up and briefly turned into a strong lefty setup man. It'll suffice, though, to demonstrate the point: these teams look for a lot of the same things and compete for a lot of the same pitchers. The Brewers love a three-fastball mix. They prize pitchers who can use a four-seamer, a sinker and a cutter to positive effects, and ask their guys to lean on those offerings. The Cubs don't preach using all three of those varietals together as consistently, but they like the cut-ride fastball, which is often a way of getting the benefits of a four-seamer and a cutter from one pitch, thereby simplifying the mix for the pitcher (but putting a bit more pressure on their secondary weapon(s)). That's an important commonality, even if the two sides each think of it differently. Both teams, too, assiduously build strong defenses, and they try to get the most of them by bringing in pitchers who manage contact, rather than dodging it. Each team prefers more of their resources to be allocated to position players, so they don't often take big swings on pitching in the draft or splurge on high-priced hurlers with whiffs-forward arsenals. They're trying to prevent runs, and they're happy to do that a slightly more cost-efficient way (by sacrificing offense at one or two positions to maximize defense, and being excellent on balls in play, rather than racking up strikeouts). The overlap is not perfect, in either philosophy or execution. The Brewers have to attack things this way when it comes to external acquisitions, but they focus on accumulating depth via internal development and team control. They don't use first-round picks on pitchers, but they spend more time, energy and money on the later rounds of the draft than the Cubs do, and it shows. They're better than Chicago at pitching development, and that difference gets exaggerated by the way they go about team building over multi-year periods. Milwaukee also maximizes their chances to get that kind of development right, though, through deals like the one they made earlier this month. In trading their starting third baseman (Caleb Durbin) and two backup infielders, they created a small hole they had to patch, but also reinforced their pitching depth admirably with two new lefties. Chicago, by contrast, is willing to walk the tightrope with a more expensive and less flexible (but more proven) pitching staff. They've paid a price for that, at times, but they've also reaped the benefits of it. Since these teams tend to prefer finding and using similar pitchers at different stages of their careers, it's not surprising that they end up employing a lot of the same guys. It does add a sense of silliness to the ostensibly heated rivalry between the sides, though. Few teams in baseball are more similar than these two, in the ways they try to win games—especially on the mound. The seeds of an eventual divergence between them have been planted, in the Cubs' hiring and promotion of Tyler Zombro, who has some slightly different predilections than the Brewers', but even then, there's overlap. If one of the two clubs likes you, the other is likely to like you, too. Being a Brewer, especially, is a leading indicator of eventually being a Cub. The teams sometimes vie unexpectedly hard for the same otherwise forgettable players, which is a big part of why Miller has a 40-man roster spot right now. At least twice in the last two offseasons, both teams have pursued a pitcher who ended up signing a minor-league deal with one or the other; they often end up at the top of the market for hurlers the rest of the league is less high on. As much as each side might want to beat the other, they show considerable tacit respect for one another by so often locking in on the same targets. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images There's a certain tension between what Cade Horton throws and what he says (or thinks) he throws. Ask Horton, and he'll tell you he has a four-seam fastball, a changeup, a slider and a curveball, and that he worked in a sinker with some success in 2025. Baseball Savant reflects that. However, Baseball Prospectus has a wider array of potential tags for pitch types, and does a better job of classifying pitches—sometimes even contravening the identifications the hurler themselves assign to their offerings. For them, Horton throws a hard cutter (what he calls the fastball), a sweeper (what he calls his slider), a slider (what he calls his curve), and the changeup and sinker. Horton is such an extreme natural supinator that even though he doesn't consciously throw a cutter or a sweeper, those are the shapes his fastball and slider approach. Everything he throws moves to the glove side more than one would expect, based on his three-quarter arm slot. Only a handful of pitchers in the league are more unusual in this way, and most of them throw from lower slots, so Horton gives hitters a unique set of problems to solve. This should sound familiar. As we've discussed before, Horton is very much like fellow Cubs starter Justin Steele, who has thrived as one of the best pitchers in the National League for the last half-decade with a brace of pitches that won't stop moving toward right-handed batters. He, too, has what he calls a four-seam fastball but what acts like a cutter, and a slider that sweeps so much that Prospectus classifies it that way. There are three key differences, though: Steele is left-handed; Horton is a righty. Steele has largely kept his secondary breaking ball, a true curve, in his holster. He'll throw it, but it's not a major part of his approach to either right- or left-handed batters. Horton is much more comfortable with that power curve (or slider) than Steele is with his bigger breaker. Horton's changeup is a better pitch than any offspeed offering Steele has come up with to date. The first of those three things works in Steele's favor, when it comes to the other two. Left-handed batters are less used to facing lefty hurlers than right-handed batters are to facing righties. Thus, the natural platoon split for a southpaw is wider. When Steele starts, opposing managers tend to stack their lineups with right-handed bats. However, even without the platoon advantage, Steele finds an advantage based on handedness. His stuff profile bullies those hitters, steering everything in on their hands or toward their back knee. It's a set of pitch shapes a lefty batter would be much more comfortable seeing from a righty pitcher, because they have more reps against righties than even righty batters have against lefties—especially ones who pitch like Steele, A lack of familiarity or comfort makes Steele a tough matchup. Horton is unusual, too, but not in a way that stumps opponents quite as thoroughly as Steele can. Thus, whereas Steele can survive (and even dominate) by attacking hitters with that cutter-sweeper mix, Horton has to do more things well. Happily, he's already adjusted to that reality. He throws his curve/slider much more than his slider/sweeper to lefty batters, and he no sooner found this highly effective changeup than made it an important part of his repertoire against them. He has to be more well-rounded and versatile than Steele, but luckily, he's proving to be. It doesn't hurt that he throws about 4 miles per hour harder than Steele does. There's a question worth asking here, though. Horton has that second breaking ball, with more depth and just as much velocity as the sweepier one. He uses it against righties, because righties would (frankly) wreck the sweeper. But he only threw the curve/slider 18% of the time when facing lefties as a rookie. He threw the changeup a bit more, but that still left him going to the four-seamer/cutter 55% of the time. That might be too much. In his first whirlwind tour of the majors, lefties didn't really get to him, but they certainly had a better time of things than righties did. Horton v. RHH: 228 PA, .184/.260/.301, 51 K, 16 BB Horton v. LHH: 248 PA, .251/.302/.361, 46 K, 17 BB If he makes no significant adjustment, it seems fair to say that he's going to experience unpleasant regression against lefty batters in 2026. To avoid it, Horton needs to go to the curve/slider more. There's a minor problem with that plan, though, which we should also talk about: he needs to better understand his own fastball. Here, from a good approximation of a lefty batter's vantage point, are the average trajectories of Horton's three main pitches against them in 2025. You're not a professional hitter, and you're not seeing what those hitters would actually see, anyway, but you're seeing an animated representation thereof. You probably see the issue: The curve comes out of a slightly higher release point and then stays higher than the fastball. One thing Horton does not have, because of the slot he employs and the way his arm works within it, is carry on the fastball or that valuable flatness on the heater at the top of the strike zone. Without that, and with the curve/slider popping out high like that, hitters can distinguish the two offerings fairly early. That works fine if you execute perfectly, and if you've outsmarted the batter. If Horton catches a hitter looking for a fastball but throws them a curve/slider, they're very unlikely to swing. That's bad news if it's a strike-to-ball breaker, but if he throws one that's intended to drop right into the zone and earn a called strike, he'll succeed. If the opponent is sitting on that breaking ball and spots it out of the hand, it might still work, if Horton has thrown a really good strike-to-ball version of the pitch. That's how he can get chases and whiffs with that pitch. However, the fastball's lack of hop means that if a hitter is looking for that pitch and it's not in the zone, they can probably still lay off it. If they're looking for the curve/slider and they get the heater, they're likely to be late, but this is the other problem with his current mix: the fastball isn't always in the right location to properly punish a hitter for being late. For that (and, in general, with a heater that moves toward the glove side, at least relative to almost every other similar fastball), you want to attack the first-base side of the plate. The ball should be boring in on a lefty batter, the same way Steele's hard cutter does. Instead, not quite understanding that he throws a cutter and thinking of it as a four-seamer, Horton mostly keeps the pitch away from lefties. Even without good rising action on the heater, you want to elevate it more than this, to set up the changeup and the vertical breaking ball. You certainly want to attack the inner third with it, at least at times. Horton hasn't found either the right mechanics or the conviction to do that yet. More of that power curve or slider will be vital, for Horton to do as well against lefties as he did in 2025. It'll certainly be necessary, if he wants to improve upon his rookie campaign and prove himself to be the ace of a World Series-caliber team. To properly utilize it, though, he needs to better disguise it out of the hand. That might mean a small amount of specialized mechanical work, but it mostly means practicing attacking the glove side with that glove-side heat, and then having enough confidence to execute a multi-dimensional plan on the mound. He has all the makings of a Cy Young Award contender. If you're expecting him to scale those heights in 2026, though, spend the spring watching how he mixes and locates his stuff to lefty batters. View full article