Cubs Need to Rewrite Book After Seeing Increased Number of Breaking Balls
The Cubs feel kind of like a bizarro version of the Indians from Major League, and there’s more to it than just starting with a bunch of wins before looking like hapless losers. They’re almost as if Pedro Cerrano was a team unto himself, as opponents figured out that the key to beating them was to throw more breaking balls. Even with spin being up on the whole as hard stuff falls further out of vogue — which seems counterintuitive given the rise in velocity — the Cubs are in a different stratosphere this month.
As MLB.com’s Mike Petriello covered recently, the Cubs are seeing 37% breaking balls in May. That’s the most they’ve ever faced in a month, and the second-most of 3,100 separate team months in the pitch-tracking era. There are five Cubs among the 10 hitters who’ve seen the highest percentage of spin this month, with Seiya Suzuki (47.9%) and Dansby Swanson (47.8%) topping the list. Miguel Amaya (43.4%, 5th), Alex Bregman (42.9%, 7th), and Matt Shaw (41.6%, 10th) are the others.
This steep increase is undoubtedly a major factor in the team’s offensive struggles in May after looking like the best team in baseball last month. The issue isn’t so much that the Cubs have been bad against breaking stuff, but that they aren’t as good against those pitches as they are against fastballs. Which, no shit. However, the extreme shift in the types of pitches they were facing meant far fewer opportunities to do damage against fastballs.
The offensive struggles over the last few weeks have stoked the calls for hitting coaches Dustin Kelly and John Mallee to be held accountable, but such thinking really only makes sense if those guys are taking all the hacks. That isn’t to say the coaches bear no responsibility, only that the players have to execute. Where the coaches come into play is helping to game-plan and prepare their hitters for what they’re going to see, and then how to adjust to the greater number of breaking balls.
Remember, this isn’t just a matter of seeing a slight uptick in breakers. Nor is it a matter of having some random junkballers dial back on their low-90s four-seams. In addition to facing hundreds more breaking balls in place of fastballs, the Cubs have gone up against the likes of Jacob deGrom, Chris Sale, and Paul Skenes this month. Being able to time up a high-90s fastball is difficult enough when you expect to see them 60% of the time, but doing so against an increasingly varied pitch mix is why batting averages are so much lower these days.
So does this mean the Cubs are doomed? Hardly. It simply means they need to continue to tweak their collective plate approach to better protect against the heavier percentage of breaking balls. That might mean getting more aggressive early in counts, which runs counter to what tends to be a greater degree of patience. Maybe it’s about ensuring the lineup doesn’t stack those aforementioned players together, which Craig Counsell has been doing of late.
Definitely something to keep an eye on this weekend as the Cubs face three pitchers who throw their four-seamers no more than 32% of the time. Andre Pallante‘s breaking-ball run value is in the 93rd percentile, and he’s also tweaked his mix against righty batters in particular. Kyle Leahy‘s trio of breakers accounts for 42% of his repertoire with subpar outcomes, and lefty Matthew Liberatore has gotten terrible results with the slider and curve that make up nearly 40% of his pitches.
This series strikes me as a litmus test for how the Cubs have adjusted to the way they’re being pitched, and my prediction is that they’re going to force advance scouts to amend their books.
