Cubs working to cultivate more pitchers
Homegrown arms not exactly plentiful on the North Side.
Dylan Cease didn’t advance very far in the Cubs organization before they traded him to the White Sox. But he hasn’t forgotten the special care the Cubs gave him after his Tommy John surgery five years ago as he prepares to play a prominent role in the Sox’s promising future.
“At the time, (I was) doing what I was told to do,” said Cease, a 23-year-old righthander. “With the White Sox, they’ve definitely taken the reins off more, and that kind of gives me more opportunity to maybe fail and more opportunity to experiment with things.
“But I have no regrets with how (the Cubs) handled me.”
The Cubs traded Cease and slugger Eloy Jimenez to the Sox in the Jose Quintana deal in July 2017. Trading Cease highlighted two sore spots in the Cubs’ player development department:
Cease’s departure further drained the already shallow pool of pitching prospects from the first four drafts of the Theo Epstein regime.
Cease was still in low Class A at the time —- two full seasons after returning from surgery.
The Cubs have been open about their failure to develop a deep pool of homegrown pitchers despite an abundance of candidates, and they’ve vowed to push those pitchers harder than in the past.
“We have to re-evaluate what we’ve been doing because it hasn’t been working,” Jason McLeod, the Cubs’ senior vice president of scouting and player development, said last month at the Cubs Convention. “It’s really that — looking at ourselves and looking at some of the things we can do to change that.”
Given the age and cost of their projected 2019 rotation, the Cubs have an urgent need to develop young starting pitchers. Cole Hamels (age 35), John Lester (35) and Yu Darvish (32) will earn $62.5 million in base salaries, with Hamels scheduled to be a free agent after this season and Lester after 2020 unless he meets certain innings benchmarks.
Cease, one of seven pitchers the Cubs selected in the first 10 rounds of the 2014 draft, isn’t the only pitching prospect they have traded for veteran help. They dealt 2013 10th-round pick Zack Godley to land catcher Miguel Montero in 2014. And they traded 2012 supplemental first-round pick Paul Blackburn in a deal for Mike Montgomery in 2016. The result has been a reliance on the free-agent and trade markets to fill their rotation at a high cost.
“I don’t know if surprised is the right word,” Cease said of the lack of drafted pitchers to make their debuts with the Cubs. “It is a hard game. Most guys aren’t going to make it. So surprised? No. But it was fun playing with those guys, and I wish them the best.”
Changes to end the pitching drought started late in 2015, shortly before minorleague pitching coordinator Derek Johnson left to become the Brewers’ pitching coach. McLeod said Johnson wanted to loosen restrictions on pitchers, and they followed through by allowing right-hander Thomas Hatch, who missed all of 2015 at Oklahoma State because of a strained ligament in his right elbow, to make 26 starts in his first full professional season at Class A Myrtle Beach in 2017.
“You definitely can get into a rehab mindset,” Cease said of the protection he was given. “It’s almost like a noncompetitive mindset because you’re so limited sometimes. When the reins are off, you’ve got to take accountability for yourself, and it’s game action. That can definitely help build players up.”
The other noticeable shift occurred in 2017, when the amateur scouting department began to put a greater emphasis on pitchers with a dominant strikeout pitch over those with sound mechanics and strike-throwing ability. And they worried less about giving pitchers with a tender arm extra rest, particularly those drafted and signed out of high school.
“Maybe we’ll add a skipped start to get through a whole season because ultimately we want guys to learn how to pitch when they’re tired,” McLeod said.
Evaluators from three organizations told the Tribune they recognized and understood the Cubs’ past policy but thought the Cubs drafted some pitchers much higher than their talent warranted.
Conversely, Godley blossomed into a 15-game winner with the Diamondbacks despite the Cubs drafting six pitchers ahead of him in 2013. “As we sit here five to six years later, not to be egregious about it, but we’ll probably be a little more aggressive,” McLeod said.