NEWSLETTER
There’s not a whole lot you’re gonna want to take away from last night’s loss to the Atlanta Braves, outside of the first six innings from Justin Steele, which were actually pretty good (just pretend in your mind that he never came back out for the 7th … ).
BUT! There was one moment that was DEFINITELY enjoyable and worth holding onto a bit: Porter Hodge’s big league debut.
Any player’s Major League debut is a fun and exciting thing, for that player and his family at a minimum. But you can’t help but hope it also becomes something fun and exciting for us fans to enjoy, and Hodge’s debut went as well as it possibly could have. Well, maybe one pitch away from being that absolute zenith of perfection.
The righty reliever came in to pitch the 9th inning last night, albeit in as low as the leverage can get – his heart was still pounding, I’m sure. And all Porter Hodge did was strike out Ozzie Albies, Marcell Ozuna, and Matt Olson, in order. Not only that, but he did it in just ten pitches – one away from an immaculate inning.
Hodge, 23, exclusively threw his unique four-seamer in the outing – it has good velocity, good late-carry, and also some cutter movement – and he got six whiffs out of those ten pitches. Here’s my fastball, try to hit it. The guy has an outstanding slider/sweeper, and he didn’t even throw it once.
Hodge was the Chicago Cubs’ 13th round pick in 2019, and started to really break out in 2022 as a starting pitching prospect at the lower levels, but was fairly quickly converted to relief in 2023 after pitching a bit at Double-A (quickly in the sense that I kinda thought he was going to have a longer runway to stay a starter). We are almost certainly seeing the fruits of that conversion this year, with Hodge’s fastball adding velo and looking even more like just a crazy fast cutter, and his slider still being nasty. There’s a reason the Cubs added him to the 40-man roster last fall to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft.
I’m still not sure whether Hodge will stay up as other guys get healthy – there’s probably more development to come – but if he’s got his control locked in right now, why wouldn’t you just ride it to see how long he can go?
Last night should help with the confidence, knowing not only that he can get big league hitters out (three VERY GOOD big league hitters at that), but that his stuff is good enough to just fill up the zone.
