How Cubs bucked bad reputation for pitching development

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Looking back at Craig Breslow’s efforts to extend his pitching career in 2017 feels like examining a prototype after the product is already on the market.

The prototype has yet to be tested or produced en masse, but its basic mechanics are there.

Breslow, after over a decade of pitching in MLB, leaned on data to try to make his sinker move more like Zach Britton’s and his slider more like Andrew Miller’s.

“Here, obviously our data sets are much, much bigger,” said Breslow, now a Cubs assistant general manager and vice president of pitching, “and we're able to give much more targeted recommendations.”

His basic method as a veteran pitcher  identifying successful pitch characteristics and trying to replicate them  sustained. A series of MLB debuts by Cubs pitchers this season reflect well on the changes Breslow has headed in the Cubs’ pitching infrastructure over the past couple years.

“This is nice proof of concept, that we're on the right track,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said last week. “These four guys have been really successful so far, and I like what we see, but we need to continue to churn out pitching. Hopefully this is a start to that process, not an end to that process.”

The four guys he mentioned are homegrown pitchers Adbert Alzolay, Justin Steele, Keegan Thompson and Tommy Nance. The Cubs’ long-maligned pitching development has produced a string of recent victories, beginning with Alzolay’s emergence as a part-time swingman in 2020.

Now a member of the starting rotation, Alzolay (2-4, 4.30 ERA) has logged quality starts in three of his last five outings.

Steele (2-0, 2.03), Thompson (2-1, 0.00) and Nance (0-0, 0.00) have all made their MLB debuts this season and established themselves as difference-makers in a bullpen that hasn’t been charged with an earned run in the Cubs’ past eight games. Steele landed on the 10-day injured list last week with a right hamstring strain.

RELATED: Nance’s journey to Cubs, MLB reads like fairytale

“There's so many people that impact this organization,” Cubs manager David Ross said. “I don't want to single out any one person. But I'm going to.”

Ross pointed to Breslow, who joined the organization in 2019 and was promoted to director of pitching the next season.

Breslow is quick to pass off recognition not only within his own department, but also to collaborations with the coaching, high performance and research & development departments. He especially credits the players themselves. But his takeover of the minor league pitching infrastructure was a clear turning point.

“The product that's coming out is a real product of his dedication to finding what we needed to change around here in the (pitching) infrastructure,” Ross said, “and put that into a plan, and implement that plan through hiring coaches, hiring staff, data  and continue to map out a different plan of attack for that group. And it seems to be working out really well.”

Breslow’s first step began when he was still the Cubs’ director of strategic initiatives, taking stock of the Cubs’ previous approach to pitching development — an area that had been widely criticized.

“But I think that's probably an unfair indictment of our players,” Breslow said. “As we're starting to see now, there's quite a bit of talent in the organization. I think we just strive to find novel ways to access it.”

Amid a player development overhaul, which also included changes to the amateur scouting department, the Cubs hired Casey Jacobson as pitching development coordinator and James Ogden as pitching performance coordinator ahead of the 2020 season.

“Craig Breslow and Casey Jacobson, James Ogden, and all the coaches, they've done a terrific job and really tried to change the way we think about pitching development, and pitch development, in particular,” Hoyer said. “That's something for me that is really gratifying looking at the pitchers that have come up.”

When Breslow took charge of the minor league pitching infrastructure, the Cubs already had their pitch lab and the technology that came with it. Rapsodo and Trackman pitch-tracking devices had become commonplace among MLB clubs.

So, although the Cubs did release a player development app before last season, a pitching infrastructure shift was going to be less about new gadgets and more about maximizing the tools they already had.

“On a high level, what we did was attempt to bring individual players to the forefront of our development apparatus,” Breslow said. “And so, we tried to individualize and customize development pathways. We tried to be a bit more aggressive in both our minds and our initiatives  whether that be attacking pitch design opportunities and chances to add to a repertoire with additional pitches, or potentially training velocity with guys for whom velocity was a limiting factor.”

Take Alzolay and Steele for example. Both added a slider to their arsenals last year at the alternate training site, and it’s become their go-to secondary pitch. The slider has generated 29 strikeouts for Alzolay already this year and has a 48.8% whiff rate for Steele, according to Statcast.

“At this point, we can identify quite a few characteristics that potentially lead us to believe that someone could or couldn't take on a certain endeavor.”

Compared to Breslow’s 2017 reinvention — when the 36-year-old was trying to replicate some of the nastiest pitches in the game — their success rate is much higher, Breslow said.

Thompson (who also made adjustments to his breaking ball) and Nance added velocity before their call-ups. Neither has allowed an earned run since their debuts on May 2 and 17, respectively.

For Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy, the most impressive part of the Cubs rookie relivers’ development last year was that they made those strides without a minor league season.

“I just think that's a testament to the work that all those guys put in, and the minor-league staff, all the coordinators,” Hottovy said. “And it just shows you that good things happen if you continue to work, and we have focused work.”

The Cubs’ latest series at St. Louis was yet another display of the Cubs’ new pitching talent. Nance’s 1 1/3 scoreless innings included a 10-pitch frame against the middle of the Cardinals’ batting order. Alzolay pitched a career-high seven innings in a 2-1 loss Saturday. Thompson took over for Alzolay in the eighth and finished a scoreless inning by striking out Paul Goldschmidt and inducing a flyout from Nolan Arenado.

MORE: Cubs won’t predetermine date to cut Alzolay’s workload

“There is enough time for us to believe that our methods are proving fruitful,” Breslow said. “But any praise has to start with the players themselves. These guys were talented long before I got here, long before much of our staff got here. They're still talented, and hopefully we were able to access or unlock some of that ability.”

Breslow’s already looking toward the pitching infrastructure’s next steps  or rather, he never stopped looking. He’s still trying to find perfect the balance between individualization and scaling the Cubs’ approach across the whole organization. He thinks there’s a lot more to learn about training command.

The Cubs are using methods developed far beyond Breslow’s personal prototype. But it’s clear that Breslow, like Hoyer, doesn’t see the pitching infrastructure’s recent success as the final product.

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