Cubs Prioritizing Pitching with ‘Less Dogmatic’ Draft, Development Strategy

Though it’s been evident for many years now, the lack of high-end pitching in the Cubs organization has become painfully obvious in the wake of their myriad injuries this season. A general philosophy of investing more heavily in bats, all the way from the Draft to free agency, has left the system relatively barren at a time when it seems every other team in baseball can just call up a dude who chucks triple digits with a 3K banger of a breaking ball. What’s been most frustrating for those who follow closely is that team leadership openly admitted to these shortcomings all the way back in 2019.

Everything old is new again as the Draft approaches, and Cubs VP of scouting Dan Katrovitz spoke with reporters a few days ago about the club’s strategy for targeting prospects. After years of abiding by more of a best-player-available model, which often prioritizes college bats because of their shorter developmental runway, it sounds like Kantrovitz and the rest of the front office are seeing things a little differently.

“We go into our Draft being pretty agnostic of position player versus pitcher,” Kantrovitz explained. “I think this year, the reality is we’re going to try to probably be a little less dogmatic about maybe sticking to that. And realizing that, practically, to get more good pitching, we just might have to take more pitching. I think that’s just the most obvious lever to pull.”

Look, I totally get that he’s got to say things in a certain way to get his point across without being overly transparent, but it almost sounds like this was a reluctant admission. I mean, they just might have to take more pitching? Pardon my French, but no shit. It’s not like you can just select a bunch of shortstops with big arms in the hope that some of them will wash out and choose to convert to the mound. Or that constantly picking up reclamation projects will eventually yield a young, controllable starter.

The other issue at play here is that the Cubs haven’t exactly been great at targeting and developing high-upside pitchers. While five of their last 10 first-round picks have been pitchers, the most recent of them has pitched more innings than the other four combined. And he’s out for the season following his second elbow reconstruction. Cade Horton‘s 125.1 MLB innings are nearly 20 more than Jordan Wicks (105.1), Ryan Jensen (0), Brendon Little (0.2), and Alex Lange (0) have given the Cubs since 2017.

Lange has at least pitched 222.2 innings of relief for the Tigers and Royals, and Little has logged another 118.2 frames for the Blue Jays over the last three seasons. Of course, Little is currently pitching in Triple-A after being optioned in late June. Jensen remains in the Cubs organization, but his continued control problems have stifled his upward mobility. Wicks appears to be running out of opportunities as well, so it’s entirely possible that Horton will be the only remaining member of this fraternity by the start of next season.

It’s telling that he was by far the biggest risk of the group when the Cubs selected him out of Oklahoma in 2022. He had barely pitched at Oklahoma due to his first elbow surgery, yet they opted to take him with the seventh overall pick. That’s 14 spots higher than any of the other four noted above (Wicks, 21st in ’21), and higher than any other pitcher they’ve taken in the first round since Mark Prior went No. 2 overall in 2001.

That all goes back to the idea that they don’t want to “leak value” by taking a player who’s going to cost more in terms of his development timeline. Hence, more college bats and more pitchers who are thought to have higher floors. The problem is that going with safer picks also typically yields players with much lower ceilings. Wicks stands out as a prime example of that. Same with Lange and Little, both of whom have been serviceable relievers at best. You obviously need those types of players, but not at the expense of a first-round pick.

Given how poorly those investments have turned out, it’s no wonder that Jed Hoyer is far more content to stop in the scratch-and-dent section for bullpen arms. Still, the Cubs can’t let the potential to be burned badly prevent them from taking risks in search of a Jacob Misiorowski or other potential difference-maker on the mound. That’s where VP of pitching strategy Tyler Zombro and new scouting director Kenta Nomoto come in.

Zombro has been lauded for his ability to identify certain pitchers and characteristics that can be developed within the organization’s pitching infrastructure. Having strong collaboration between the evaluation and development departments should help Kantrovitz feel a little more comfortable when it comes to the whole value leakage thing. We’re already seeing that with the players already in the system.

I’m not sure whether Cubs prospect sicko and Baseball America correspondent Bryan Smith caught a little Freudian influence from the Kantrovitz quote above, but his recent tweet about the team’s strategy caught my eye.

“Been grinding Cubs MiLB pitching tape lately, and one overarching player development takeaway: the curveball, particularly the power curve, has replaced the sweeper as Pitch 1A that the Cubs pitching department is looking to add,” Smith said. “But less dogmatic overall than in (Craig) Breslow era.”

Not to take this in a different direction, but I think the Cubs go lucky when Breslow was hired away by the Red Sox. He seems far too formulaic and bound by a more scientific process than what is required to get the most out of a system. For as much as we are able to distill baseball down into the most granular data points, there’s still a great degree of magic involved. That’s what is being lost as we fall further away from in-person scouting.

All the video and metrics in the world can’t tell you who a player is as a person, or what he’s like as a teammate. Plenty of studs at lower levels have washed out at the next stage because they’re unwilling to put in the work or unable to deal with struggling or failing for the first time. Theo Epstein used to talk about how the Cubs liked to draft players who’d experienced setbacks and come out stronger on the other side.

To that end, I think the front office needs to be more willing to see some of their picks fail. Setting the avoidance of risk as the priority, which is more or less what they’ve done by trying not to leak value, means putting a governor on future outcomes. It sounds like that is no longer the case, or that they’re at least more willing to embrace the possibility of more leakage in exchange for a larger potential jackpot.

We’ll see whether and how this comes to fruition with the upcoming Draft, but I like how this revised (again) philosophy looks on paper.