It was another disastrous night for Tyler Chatwood, who not only had no command, he absolutely no control whatsoever.
The pitch plot is once again breathtaking:
I have no doubt there are mechanical issues at this point, but the concern is the relationship that those mechanical issues start to develop with the mental side of the game. I’m not playing armchair psychologist here, but I am saying that we’ve seen this kind of struggle before, with each of the physical and the mental impacting each other (in ways both good and bad).
In other words, it’s easy for us to say “just throw strikes,” but it’s another thing to do it when everything has gone sideways.
Each of Chatwood and manager Joe Maddon seemed to concede as much after the game to Cubs.com.
“I really believe in this fellow, and his stuff is that good,” Maddon said. “We just have to get a more stable routine that permits him to control himself when he gets out there. We need to get him more routine oriented, that he has an anchor to hold onto when the ball’s not going where he wants it to. When he’s out on the mound, he’s trying so hard to throw a strike and not to walk somebody, and that’s the issue. We’ve got to get him beyond that. If that’s your focus, sure enough, you’re going to walk somebody.”
In other words, there are physical things that need to be put in place so that Chatwood can stop focusing so hard on just throwing strikes – because that just mucks you up further.
As Chatwood put it to Cubs.com: “It’s a matter of clicking, and once I feel like I’m clicking, then there’s nothing to worry about except executing pitches.”
We’ll see what the Cubs elect to do about this situation, if anything, and how Chatwood responds to his deep control struggles.
A little factoid of yikes:
Tyler Chatwood lasted only 2.2 innings adding 5 more walks to his league high total while making him the first pitcher with 7, 5-walk games in an entire season since Ricky Romero had 7 in 2012. And we're only at Memorial Day. Chatwood has now walked 45… https://t.co/vespWjjVPO
— Jesse Rogers (@ESPNChiCubs) May 28, 2018