NEWSLETTER
After missing all of spring training and the start of the season with a back injury, Jameson Taillon returned to the Chicago Cubs rotation yesterday against the Marlins in impressive fashion: 5.0 IP, 3H, 0BB, 4Ks. He looked good, he got results, and, most importantly, he felt good after the game.
You can watch his post-game interview right there at the top of this page, but I found the comments on his back and how that recovery went especially compelling (bolded emphasis mine):
Jameson Taillon is Feeling Good
“I thought the last rehab outing I had was pretty good and I felt like I was trending in the right direction. Obviously, just a big league game is different, so you never how it’s going to be until you get out there, but I felt good…I mean honestly the back thing hasn’t been a problem since it really happened. Like, it was pretty acute. It just happened, it stung for five days and then the reason my season was delayed was just the build-up part, the back really isn’t a problem.”
Even though we generally knew the initial build up is what primarily delayed him, that’s the first I’ve heard of Taillon’s back problem not lingering more than just five days. That gives me some confidence that it was more of a random, one-time flare up and not something chronic about which we might have to worry the rest of this season (or either of the next two years he’s under contract with the Cubs).
Taillon continued to explain that yesterday’s start was a success from a rehab perspective because it was the first time in the process he did “five ups” (i.e. got up and down for 5.0 innings). That’s a good way to think about how much more stretched out he can be his next time out. And it’s more comforting than the modest increase in pitches from his final rehab start (68 pitches) to yesterday (73).
Craig Counsell said something similar after the game: “I think five innings was as much as we could have hoped for for sure. I think that’s the first time he’s been up five times. So getting him up five times was ideal to stretch him out from that perspective. So nothing but positives from Jamo’s start.
As for Taillon’s performance, what’s not to like? A wonderful 54 of 73 pitches fell in for strikes, he netted 12 whiffs, and he started 17 of 18 batters faced with first-pitch strikes. That’s insane. Generally speaking, the Marlins are an aggressive team, but that’s still a 94.4% first-pitch strike rate compared to their season average of 62.7%. That’s how you set yourself up for success, especially on a really windy day at Wrigley FIeld.
Taillon also mixed in all six pitches, topping his fastball and sinker out over 94 MPH and dropping some serious hammers:
Jameson Taillon, 80mph Hammer. 🔨 pic.twitter.com/GedAt9YKms
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 19, 2024
“It just helps confirm a little bit some of the things we worked on and some of the things we thought went right in the second half,” Taillon said via Sahadev Sharma at The Athletic. “Just confirms it’s not luck. We feel like we have a real formula for when I’m at my best what it should look like. In the first half (of 2023) we weren’t seeing that. I don’t think they knew what I looked like at my best, I don’t think the catchers did, I kind of forgot what it was like.”
It’s easy to forget because his first half was so awful, but Taillon was a good pitcher in the second half of the 2023 season, and was coming off a successful campaign in New York before the Cubs signed him (32 starts, 3.91 ERA). I don’t think any of us were really counting on him to be more than a useful back-end starter this season (guard those hearts and all), but the Cubs didn’t give him $68M for that. They think he can be even better and yesterday was, hopefully, the first step in that direction.
