By law, the Chicago Bears cannot NOT be a mess for more than 9 days ….
Patrick Mooney wrote a great piece that serves as both a profile of Justin Steele, and also a look at if and how the Cubs can crank out more Justin Steeles in the years ahead. That set me thinking on a lot of things:
The player made it happen, but the Cubs now have a template for a homegrown Cy Young Award candidate. Is this an anomaly or the beginning of a larger trend?
“Who knows who the next Justin Steele is? It could be anybody that’s in our system right now.” ⬇️https://t.co/VgsdpXnihM— Patrick Mooney (@PJ_Mooney) October 13, 2023
Something I think about in relation to Steele’s development and breakout: it may feel like the kind of one-off thing that happens only once in 10 years or whatever, but that’s mostly the product of Cubs fans not getting to see this kind of thing too often. That is to say, while Justin Steele is truly unique, getting THAT kind of performance, annually, from guys you developed internally is not. Or it doesn’t have to be. The Guardians and Rays and Dodgers have guys breaking out like this every single year. Mid-round draft picks. Top prospects. Minor league trades. International signings. Reclamation projects. You do it any way you can, but the best orgs seem to have a Justin Steele stepping forward every year, joining the one from the year before, and the year before that (trading some along the way, dealing with the inevitable injury/attrition that comes with the position, etc.). Obviously it’s not easy or 30 teams would be this good at constantly developing pitching, rather than just a few.
Interesting quote from Cubs GM Carter Hawkins in the piece, while thinking about how long he was with the Cleveland organization and the institutional knowledge he probably has: “It’s just a really long path to get to where you want to go. It’s looking at the guys that might have struggled a little bit more, might have been a little bit below what we hoped they would be this year and realizing that’s just one data point in a sea of data points. It’s the (Hayden) Wesneskis, the (Caleb) Kilians, the Keegan Thompsons. It’s saying, ‘OK, the stuff is still there. The components to be a really good pitcher are still there. How do we figure out a way to tap into that consistently? What’s our offseason plan? What are the gaps between where he is and where he wants to go?’”
I find it VERY interesting that Hawkins chose Wesneski, Kilian, and Thompson to make that point. All guys who, like he said, pretty clearly have big-league-caliber components to their game, but just aren’t quite getting there or getting there consistently. I know I’m guilty of being too quick to give up on guys who get a couple chances and don’t show out.
It’s not just about having the tip-toppiest of pitching prospects who come up and succeed, and then get even better from there. It’s also about taking the guys who were notable prospects – on the radar because they had elements that you can see carrying forward in the big leagues – who come up and have mixed results or struggle, continuing to work with them, and THEN seeing them take steps forward at the big league level in the years that follow. That was actually the path for Justin Steele, himself, and that turned into a significant breakout this year.
(Can that happen for any of those three specifically-named pitchers in 2024? I suspect it would take a rash of injuries in the rotation to open up a spot for Wesneski (and then more for Kilian), but I could see it on him, because Wesneski has so many starter traits (he just has to figure out a pitch that gets lefties, period). With Kilian and Thompson, I have to believe any big league future from here is going to come in the bullpen – still valuable and important! – and they’d have to compete in Spring Training and win a job there.)
The Cubs’ 2024 rotation could really go a whole lotta ways from here. We will soon get clarity on Marcus Stroman and Kyle Hendricks, but until that’s known and until we see what route the Cubs take in free agency/trade, it seems silly to predict the precise five-man rotation to open the season, much less who’ll get the most starts. There are a lot of guys I could see getting starts for the Cubs next year, from the obvious guys (Steele and Jameson Taillon, together with Stroman and Hendricks if they return), to the swing guys (Javier Assad and Drew Smyly), to the near/ready prospects (Jordan Wicks and Ben Brown), to the fast-coming prospects (Cade Horton).
Playoff proposal: instead of byes, the top teams get 1.5 runs for every run they score in the first round. This is mostly a joke, but I do think it’s fun to think about other ways to try to advantage the higher seeds (because they earned it over the long regular season), without creating additional delays.
It always amazes me how different a particular pitch looks from our normal TV-watching vantage point, and then from behind home plate:
Fun thing to mess with your brain: first, watch that as a right-handed pitcher throwing in a normal TV view. Then close your eyes and tell yourself it’s a lefty throwing right at you. They both work. And at times, it becomes really hard to see the “other” one. Then suddenly, you see that one, and it becomes hard to see the OTHER one again.
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