One minor Jameson Taillon adjustment led to major 2024 success with the Cubs

The 2024 campaign was arguably the most successful of Jameson Taillon’s eight-year career. When you see a record of 12-8 with a 3.27 ERA, you think that’s pretty good. It’s worth noting that when you’re getting this out of your rotation’s number three starter, you’ll take that six ways to Sunday. He may not be as flashy as the team’s ace, former Cy Young award finalist Justin Steele, or the newest fan favorite and 2024 All-Star Shota Imanaga. Taillon sets a perfect example that any manager and pitching coach dreams of - a more than dependable innings-eater that limits runners from scoring.

What led to this success? Taillon put slightly more movement on his pitches, relying more on his cutter than his four-seamer. According to data from Baseball Savant, he threw his cutter 25.1 percent of the time, up from 11.3 percent in 2022 and 4.7 percent in 2021. For comparison, he threw his four-seamer 29.6 percent of the time, down from 35.6 percent and 49.5 percent in those same years, respectively.

Taking it a step further, Taillon finished 2024 in the top seven percent of the league in walk rate, only giving free passes to 4.9 percent of batters. He also recorded the lowest strikeout rate of his career, punching out 18.5 percent of hitters. He also did not fool opposing offenses to get many swings and misses, as his whiff rate only placed him in the seventh percentile. It’s a sign that he’s really adapted to the Chicago Cubs' brand of pitching, putting the ball in play and allowing a superb defense to record outs behind him.

Looking at year-over-year heat maps of Taillon’s cutters, we can see that he has developed a strategy to throw these over the plate for strikes and either the hitter can lay off them or hit them softly. Against righties, he’s significantly reduced the number of cutters breaking away from the hitter and reigned those pitches to stay within the strike zone or just brushing the edges.

Against lefties however, what is particularly interesting is he reframed his attack to have his cutter break just into the outside part of the strike zone, hoping to have the hitter reach or completely lay off them. The difference is Taillon does not try to have the pitch break in on the batter’s hands and jam them.

His first season as a Cub jumped off to a rocky start, making fans loathe that yet another free-agent acquisition isn’t living up to the price tag. All things considered; his second half was not too shabby. If you eliminate the first couple of months, Taillon threw more like his career averages from June to the end of the season, recording a 4.02 ERA with a .243 opponent batting average.

The past year-and-a-half was electric, with Taillon donning the Cubbie Blue pinstripes. Let’s see if he can ride that momentum into what we all hope will be a 2025 season that results in a divison title and the team's first postseason victory since 2017.