Cubs MLB Roster

Cubs Organizational Depth Chart
40-Man Roster Info

40 players are on the MLB RESERVE LIST (roster is full) 

28 players on MLB RESERVE LIST are ACTIVE, and twelve players are on OPTIONAL ASSIGNMENT to minors. 

Last updated 3-26-2024
 
* bats or throws left
# bats both

PITCHERS: 15
Yency Almonte
Adbert Alzolay 
Javier Assad
Jose Cuas
Kyle Hendricks
* Shota Imanaga
Caleb Kilian
Mark Leiter Jr
* Luke Little
Julian Merryweather
Hector Neris 
* Drew Smyly
* Justin Steele
Jameson Taillon
* Jordan Wicks

CATCHERS: 2
Miguel Amaya
Yan Gomes

INFIELDERS: 7
* Michael Busch 
Nico Hoerner
Nick Madrigal
* Miles Mastrobuoni
Christopher Morel
Dansby Swanson
Patrick Wisdom

OUTFIELDERS: 4
* Cody Bellinger 
Alexander Canario
# Ian Happ
Seiya Suzuki
* Mike Tauchman 

OPTIONED: 12 
Kevin Alcantara, OF 
Michael Arias, P 
Ben Brown, P 
Alexander Canario, OF 
Pete Crow-Armstrong, OF 
Brennen Davis, OF 
Porter Hodge, P 
* Matt Mervis, 1B 
Daniel Palencia, P 
Keegan Thompson, P 
Luis Vazquez, INF 
Hayden Wesneski, P 

 



 

Minor League Rosters
Rule 5 Draft 
Minor League Free-Agents

Cubs 2007 Pitch Tracking: Pictures Worth a Thousand Curves

One of the latest and most exciting developments in baseball research is the measurement and analysis of individual pitches. For instance, the Pitch f/x system created by the company Sportvision tracks the in-flight movement of pitches from two different cameras, thereby assessing a pitch's velocity, horizontal and vertical movement. A bit less than 1/4th of all pitches from last year were so assessed, and MLB has made the raw contents of that data available at this location. Better yet, there are several bloggers who, unlike me, have the talent and dedication to transform that heaping mess of data into meaningful findings. Most notable, Josh Kalk has been developing player cards, a la what's available at baseball-reference or fan graphs or baseball cube, except with graphs incorporating this incredible new source of information on pitch selection and pitch behavior. He also has developed a remarkable application where you can select any player and any pitch with just about any limiting parameter you could want - say, Bob Howry fastballs to right-handed hitters on 0-2 counts with a velocity above 93 MPH that resulted in swinging strikes - and then view the results on a handy X/Y graph.

As if that's not enough, there's the more user friendly if less revolutionary pitch data commercially available at Baseball Info Solutions which is being applied by the talented folks at Fan Graphs. Fan Graphs now offers data on individual players' pitch selections and velocity, all thoroughly sortable. For instance, Tim Wakefield and Chad Bradford feature the two slowest average fastballs in the major at 74.2 and 78.6 MPH, respectively, while no one threw a changeup with greater frequency last year than Matt Wise, at 54%

There's a gold mine of potential information available at our fingertips, with The Baseball Analysts and The Hardball Times leading the way in this sort of analysis. With far less sophistication than what those guys can offer, let's see what it can tell us about the Cubs' staff.

First, the most basic stuff, drawing from the Fan Graphs info: who has bragging rights for biggest fastball on the Cubs staff? Who wants to conceal the smallness of their fastball in shame? From 2007, Fan Graphs says it's Marmol, at an average of 93.3 MPH, followed by Wood at 92.9. Zambrano doesn't even medel, coming in at fifth. The full results being:

Marmol 93.3
Wood 92.9
Howry 92.3
Dempster 92
Zambrano 91.6
Hart 91.5
Eyre 91
Wuertz 90.5
Marquis 90.4
Hill 89.4
Lieber 88.5
Lilly
88.4
Marshall
86.8
You could win a lot of bar bets on the question of who throws the faster average fastball, between Dempster and Z.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok, who throws the fastball with greatest frequency? This is interesting in that Howry throws his fastball a whopping 18 % more than the second most frequent gas-passer, Zambrano. Howry comes in at 86.2 %, to Zambrano's 68.2.

Five pitchers threw the fastball less than half the time last year - Marmol, Dempster, Marshall, Wuertz and Hart, with Hart at just 31.3% Wuertz and Dempster both throw sliders slightly more than 50% of the time, with Hart and Dempster throwing them a third of the time. To no surpise, Hill throws more curves than anyone, at 27.3 %, with Marshall, Lilly and Hart then following, all in the mid to upper teens. No one else breaks ten percent. Dempster is the only change-up artist of the group, at 20% frequency, with Lilly, Marquis and Marshall just cracking ten percent.

That's all fun and good, but more interesting are observations like the one made at The Hardball Times, which points out that Marmol's use of his slider jumped from 7.1% of all his pitches in 2006, to 51% in 2007. Looking at it further, Fan Graphs' data indicate that Marmol did that at the expense of a change up, which he stopped throwing entirely after using it 11.6% of the time in 2006, and a curveball percentage that fell of the table, if you will, from 19.7 % to 1.3%. It's also interesting to see that he gained about a mile and a half per hour velocity on both the fastball and slider, compared to the prior year. How far does this change in approach go towards explaining his breakout season? How badly does that throw off the legitimacy of the very pessimistic projections listed at Fan Graphs, all of which see last year as an aberration, and have Marmol falling back to earth in 2008?

The change in Marmol's numbers is by far the most pronounced, but there are some other interesting year-to-year differences in pitch compositions.

 

  • Marshall had the next most dramatic change, as he threw his slider 20.1% of the time in 2007 as opposed to just 2.4% of the time in 2006, while his percentage of change ups and fastballs dropped by about 10 and 9 percent respectively.
  • Wood almost completely abandoned his changeup last year, after throwing it just under ten percent of the time in 2006.
  • Zambrano's velocity on the fastball has dropped from 92.8 to 92.2 to 91.6 over the three years of available data, while the average speeds on the curveball and changeup have both increased by one mile per hour, up to 72.6 and 83.5, respectively. That's 2.2 MPH less difference between the fastball and changeup than where he was at in 2005. (In one early demonstration of the analytical opportunities that these new data offer, Lookout Landing has just posted a list of the ten pitchers who gained and lost the most velocity over that time span. At least Z isn't in Jason Jennings territory. Yet.)
  • Hill threw his fastball 10% less frequently than the previous year, with all his secondary pitches showing slight upward ticks.
  • Marquis almost doubled his use of the slider, from 8.8 to 16.4%.
  • Hart is the anti-Howry, throwing 31.3% fastballs, 33.7 % sliders, 15.7% curveballs, 17.5 percent cutters, and a handfull of changeups.

Fun fun fun. But then, there's the Pitch f/x device, which is even more hours of wasted time. It looks like the application still has some serious bugs in it (as does my ability to use it correctly, no doubt) and user-friendliness issues (again, not unlike yours truly), but take a look at this image as an example

These are the data on 254 sliders tracked by Pitch f/x that Marmol threw to right handed batters last year. A few things to note: the service is not yet available at all parks at all times, so it's not a complete sample. You're looking at this chart as if from behind home plate, with a right handed batter standing to the left. And again, there are several hiccups in the system, the most problematic one being that when I enter "lefty" for batter it spits out the graph and charts for "righty" and visa versa.

Let's clean that graph up a bit, and look only at Marmol's called strikes on sliders to righties

 


 

Not much of a pattern here, he's getting called strikes all over the zone. But then, take a look at their data on the swinging strikes off the slider thrown to right-handed hitters

 

 

 

Intuitively, it's exactly what you'd expect - low and away out of the zone. But visually, I still find this a very striking demonstration.

 

As you might have noticed from some of my game recaps, I became sort of transfixed last season with the hypnotic quality of Howry's relief appearances, just drilling one 94 mph fastball after another on the low outside corner to right-handed hitters, until their eventual demise.

Here's the graph of 275 Howry fastballs to right-handed hitters. Again, none of the images below are complete data sets

It seems to show a tendency towards the outer half, but let's clear that up and show just the 28 available swinging strikes on fastballs to righties


Not quite what I'd anticipated, but not surprising either: lots of swings and misses at high fastballs. But what about my low and outside fastballs? Let's try 44 called-strike fastballs to righties.

 

There we go. It's still not as vivid at what I thought I was seeing in person, or as that Marmol graph, but there we have a bunch of outside fastballs to righties. I always like it when my subjective viewing of the game matches up with the data.

 

That's still relatively simple stuff, but the possibilities of this are just mind-numbing, and are keeping me up past my bedtime. Let's flip this, and look at it from the hitter's perspective; Here are right-handed pitchers throwing sliders to Alfonso Soriano

 

Cleaning that up, the 12 base hits Pitch f/x has for Soriano on sliders from righties

 


 

That's some good bad-ball hitting, there. Notice, too, that the two home runs are on the sliders that likely were the biggest mistakes - the one furthest inside and the one highest in the zone. Of course, there's also this chart of Soriano's swinging-strikes on sliders from righties.

 

 

Also about what you would expect. But for me, the most interesting thing I've found, and that I'm almost capable of understanding and applying, deals with pitch movement. For instance, who has bigger curves, Hill or Lilly? You can go to the application (or just look at Hill's player card, which I'll do in a bit) and set it to show you the results of all Hill curveballs by "break" instead of by "location." You're then informed by a chart that Hill's curve averaged 73.85 mph, with a horizontal break of -6.84 inches (the negative meaning it is breaking towards right-handed hitters, or away from lefties) and a vertical break of -8.34 inches. One of the more difficult things to grasp (well, at least for me) is that these numbers are standardized against a theoretical pitch thrown without spin under idealized conditions. So that means that Hill's curve is breaking downward by an additional 8.34 inches than what you'd get with a baseball thrown under these theoretical conditions. A pitch like Zambrano's fastball, which has a positive value for its vertical break, is not actually rising, it's just sinking less than what the normalized pitch would.

If I've lost you, (I may have lost myself), let's go to the image showing the movement on Hill's curve.

 

Again, don't confuse this graph with a depiction of the strike zone. 0-0 coordinates are where that theoretical pitch would travel. You can see that Hill's curve has a sharp down and in break. Now, how does it compare to Lilly's curve?

 

Lilly's chart, also available on his player card, tells us that he threw his curve at an average of 71.57 mph, with a horizontal break of -3.03 inches, or 3.03 inches in to a right-handed batter, and a vertical break of -7.88 inches. Sorry, Ted Lilly Fan Club, but it looks like the answer is that Hill has the bigger curve. Note the cluster of pitches near the center of the chart - they most likely aren't curveballs, but some other pitch that John Kalk's system still struggles with giving a proper classification. Either that, or Lilly throws more hangers. Either way, the result is a curveball with significantly less horizontal movement, and a bit less vertical movement.

 

If you go to the player cards sections, you get all of this and more, but let me take one more graph that you can either create on your own through pitch f/x or see pre-made on the player cards. The first one from Rich Hill, showing the relative momement of ll his pitches

 

And the same for Ted Lilly

 

 

I particularly like how it shows Lilly and Hill's changeups and fastballs share similar movement, in terms of vertical and horizontal movement.

 

Ok, I can't get enough, so one more for your viewing consideration: Is Carlos Zambrano tipping his pitches? You tell me....

 

I wonder how the hell he threw that one sinker that's off by itself, it looks like he must have shot-putted it outward from between his eyeballs. Most likely, it's just a reminder that there are still some serious bugs in the data. But there does seem to be a slight but noticable difference from where he releases the sinker compared to the slider.

This piece started out as a "hey, you guys have GOT to check out the cool things I just found!" piece, and evolved from there. I'd like to hear what sort of studies you can dream up, if you have any requests or thoughts about directions I could take this in future articles. Things I'm missing? Burning issues to address? Fun comparisons to make? Particular players you'd like to see highlighted? How much confidence do you give their data when compared to your own real-world observations? Part of my interest in this stuff relates to my broader real-world academic interests: we have a new series of related technologies being invented, and do not yet quite know exactly how they will be put to use. What future do you see for this?

 

Comments

Trans - really cool - you have my utmost respect. I am not a stathead, sabre guy or Bill James disciple but this is really interesting. What you put together is a tip of the iceberg there are tons of applications. I am really curious at the release point data you mentioned i never really noticed Z tiping his pitches but the two guys that I thought do were Rich Hill and the 06 version of Sean Marshall. This is really great stuff.

Anyone else see the numbers in those dot charts? We think we saw "30" . . . Last time we saw something that confusing, we were on a leather couch and talking about our mothers. . . etc, etc. Don't apologize about Little Richie's "bigger" curve - it's not that surprising. What really matters is how a pitcher throws it and we still think TL does that better than anyone. Best example is a guy like Fransworth or Juan Cruz, freakish velocity or movement but ineffective on the mound. Rich Hill has come a long way since his first few trips to the Show, but he has a long way to go before he's as good of a pitcher as TL.

That's all. Good stuff. I'll be interested to see if Dempster's average fastball velocity decreases as a starting pitcher. I'm almost certain it will. Any differences the graphs can illustrate about Marquis' first half vs his second? Or his better games vs his worse? Thanks again T!

I to recall that there seemed to be a stretch where Rich Hill seemed to be tipping his pitches. He went from getting Tons of swings and misses early. Then he had a strech where even outs were frozen ropes right at people. With no stat to back up any of this off the top of my head. But Rich seems to have the type of repetoire that would be especially prone to pitch tipping.(ie major speed changes in his different pitches. The fact that he only really throws 3 pitches and so often only feels comfortable with 2 of those 3)

Sean Gallagher and Jose Ascanio to the Des Moines roster

Trans- I don't see why you can't be done grading those exams in about 5 minutes and getting on to serious TCR business. Just find the nearest stairwell and fling the exams. Those that fly farthest get best grades. Where's the hitch in that plan?

"That's some good bad-ball hitting, there. Notice, too, that the two home runs are on the sliders that likely were the biggest mistakes - the one furthest inside and the one highest in the zone." another reason i dont buy the whole "soriano has to hit 1st to be effective" thing... the guy sees and swings...what's probably more important in his case is having someone BEHIND him who would allow him to see a possible better mix of "hittable" pitches.

Fantastic, Trans. I am pretty curious about those outlier "curveballs" on both Lilly and Hill's plots. They may be misclassified, as you say, but they're still some pitch or other that break a certain amount over and down, and they're a small cluster out there on their own. I wonder if those are mistake pitches--hangers or some other bad release. Could those handful of Rich Hill's pitches that don't break down at all but are at nearly -15 on the x axis actually be real? Is it possible to get a pitch to break only sideways? Also, what does it tell us that the clusters of Lilly's pitch movement data points are a lot tighter than Hill's (for a given pitch type)? Is Lilly more predictable, or does he just have better control? I wonder about the sample size for those pitch velocity calculations. Cubs starters made no more than 34 starts each last year. Since less than 25% of pitches are assessed, isn't it possible that some Cubs starters only had 5 or 6 outings in pitch f/x-equipped ballparks?

[ ]

In reply to by Andy

Several very good things to point out in there, thank you.  One thing that pitch f/x has trouble with is intentional walks.  It could be that what we are seeing there are intentional walks to left-handed batters.  (But how many lefties would Rich Hill be intentionally walking?  ehh....)    Pitch-outs are also a possibility.  More likely, in my best guess, is that it's some different variant of his curve, or just a bad pitch

 

And another good question about the tighter clusters.  My subjective view is that lilly has better control and more consistent results with the curve.  Stat-wise, Hill had 2.91 BB/9 last year, Lilly was 2.39.  

 

And yes, it's entirely posisble that by random variation of who is starting when and what pitches they were favoring that day, that you could get some weird sampling effects.  That said, doing some digging......  I come up with 1,623 pitches charted by pitch f/x out of the 3,070 that Hill threw last year, and 1,595 out of the 3,240 that Lilly threw.  So there IS a difference in charting, but I can't imagine that it could be a statistically significant difference, when we're talking about a few dozen pitches difference out of thousands. 

[ ]

In reply to by Transmission

Excellent, thanks Trans. That's a lot of pitches charted out of the total, yes, and unlikely to be confounding. I didn't expect that there were that many. Interesting point about IBBs and pitchouts. It makes me wonder how the system figures out movement to the left and to the right. Does it calculate the "expected", movement-free trajectory (that the standard pitch would be expected to follow) based on the pitch's initial trajectory? Surely a given release point can't be assigned a set expected target point, say, at a perfect right angle to a line drawn between 1st and 3rd bases--how could anyone know where the pitcher means to aim? That said, I'd expect that a pitchout or IBB would be assigned very little movement in the x or y directions, as opposed to turning up as a "flat" pitch with lots of sideways movement. Now I'm just being picky. Really, the system appears to be amazingly precise and reliable, even if there are a handful of pitches that don't fall in any of the clusters. What I want to see tracked are those Ankiel pitches in the 2000 NLCS vs. the Mets. Talk about outliers!

You might want to check out my blog, Cubs f/x http://cubsfx.blogspot.com Back in August, I started it to cover the Cubs and PITCHf/x. During the season you'll get pitching previews, hitter profiles, umps and hopefully catchers. Before opening day, each Cub pitcher will be profiled in detail, hitters a little later. If you head over you'll find nearly 100 posts on the topic, amongst others, and you'll get an idea of what kind of stuff you'll see during the season. Thanks Harry

Regarding half seasons - it is tough to do last year, for most guys, since the system was (and is) in the process of being turned on, and tuned. Release point pick-up went form 40 to 55 to 50, and you can see park to park differences (e.g. Fenway is screwed up). Cubs have good data from July onward, too late for a good look at Marquis. Trans, you can go very very far into this worm hole, beware :-) Did you know that Corey Patterson swings at more high fastballs than anyone in baseball? http://cubsfx.blogspot.com/2008/02/high-heat.html

Recent comments

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    Javier Assad started the Lo-A game (Myrtle Beach versus Stockton) on the Cubs backfields on Wednesday as his final Spring Training tune-up. He was supposed to throw five innings / 75 pitches. However, I was at the minor league road games at Fitch so I didn't see Assad pitch. 

  • crunch (view)

    cards put j.young on waivers.

    they really tried to make it happen this spring, but he put up a crazy bad slash of .081/.244/.108 in 45PA.

  • Childersb3 (view)

    Seconded!!!

  • crunch (view)

    another awesome spring of pitching reports.  thanks a lot, appreciated.

  • Arizona Phil (view)

    Here are the Cubs pitchers reports from Tuesday afternoon's Cardinals - Cubs game art Sloan Park in Mesa:

    SHOTA IMANAGA
    FB: 90-92 
    CUT: 87-89 
    SL: 82-83 
    SPLIT: 81-84
    CV: 73-74 
    COMMENT: Worked three innings plus two batters in the fourth... allowed four runs (three earned) on eight hits (six singles and two doubles) walked one, and struck out six (four swinging), with a 1/2 GO/AO... he threw 73 pitches (52 strikes - 10 swing & miss - 19 foul balls)... surrendered one run in the top of the 1st on a one-out double off Cody Bellinger's glove in deep straight-away CF followed one out later by two consecutive two-out bloop singles, allowed two runs (one earned) in the 2nd after retiring the first two hitters (first batter had a nine-pitch AB with four consecutive two-strike foul balls before being retired 3 -U) on a two-out infield single (weak throw on the run by Nico Hoerner), a hard-contact line drive RBI double down the RF line, and an E-1 (missed catch) by Imanaga on what should been an inning-ending 3-1 GO, gave up another run in the 3rd on a two-out walk on a 3-2 pitch and an RBI double to LF, and two consecutive singles leading off the top of the 4th before being relieved (runners were ultimately left stranded)... threw 18 pitches in the 1st inning (14 strikes - two swing & miss, one on FB and the other on a SL - four foul balls), 24 pitches in the 2nd inning (17 strikes - three swing & miss, one on FB, two SPLIT - six foul balls), 19 pitches in the 3rd inning (13 strikes - seven swing & miss, three on SL, two on SPLIT, one on FB - three foul balls), and 12 pitches without retiring a batter in the top of the 4th (8 strikes - no swing & miss - four foul balls)... Imanaga throws a lot of pitches per inning, but it's not because he doesn't throw strikes...  if anything, he throws too many strikes (he threw 70% strikes on Tuesday)... while he gets a ton of swing & miss (and strikeouts), he also induces a lot of foul balls because he doesn't try to make hitters chase his pitches by throwing them out of the strike zone... rather, he uses his very diverse pitch mix to get swing & miss (and lots of foul balls as well)... he also is a fly ball pitcher who will give up more than his share of HR during the course of the season...   
     
    JOE NAHAS
    FB: 90-92 
    SL: 83-85 
    CV: 80-81 
    COMMENT: Was called up from the Hi-A South Bend group at Minor League Camp for the day... relieved Imanaga with runners at first and second and no outs in the top of the 4th, and after an E-2 catcher's interference committed by Miguel Amaya loaded he bases, Nahas struck out the side (one swinging & two looking)... threw 16 pitches (11 strikes - two swinging)...   

    YENCY ALMONTE
    FB: 89-92 
    CH: 86 
    SL: 79 
    COMMENT: Threw an eight-pitch 5th (five strikes - no swing & miss), with a 5-3 GO for the first out and an inning-ending 4-6-3 DP after a one-out single... command was a bit off but he worked through it...   

    FRANKIE SCALZO JR
    FB: 94-95
    CH: 88 
    SL: 83
    COMMENT: Was called up from the AA Tennessee group at Minor League Camp for the day and worked the 6th inning... got the first outs easily (a P-5 and a 4-3 GO) on just three pitches, before allowing three consecutive two-out hard-contact hits (a double and two singles), with the third hit on pitch # 9 resulting in a runner being thrown out at the plate by RF Christian Franklin for the third out of the inning... 

    MICHAEL ARIAS
    FB: 94-96
    CH: 87-89
    SL: 82-83
    COMMENT: Was called up from the AA Tennessee group at Minor League Camp for the day and allowed a hard-contact double on the third pitch of the 7th inning (a 96 MPH FB), and the runner came around to score on a 4-3 GO and a WP... gave up two other loud contact outs (an L-7 and an F-9)... threw 18 pitches (only 10 strikes - only one swing & miss)... stuff is electric but still very raw and he continues to have difficulty commanding it, and while he has the repertoire of a SP, he throws too many pitches-per-inning to be a SP and not enough strikes to be a closer... he is most definitely still a work-in-progress...   

    ZAC LEIGH: 
    FB: 93-94 
    CH: 89 
    SL: 81-83 
    CV: 78
    COMMENT: Was called up from the AA Tennessee group at Minor League Camp for the day and tossed a 1-2-3 8th (4-3 GO, K-swinging on a sweeper, K-looking on another sweeper)... threw 14 pitches (11 strikes - one swing & miss - eight foul balls)... kept pumping pitches into the strike zone but had difficulty putting hitters away (ergo a ton of foul balls)... FB velo is nowhere near the 96-98 MPH it was a couple of years ago when he was a Top 30 prospect, but his secondaries are better...   

    JOSE ROMERO:  
    FB: 93-95
    SL: 82-84
    COMMENT: Was called up from the Hi-A South Bend group at Minor League Camp for the day and worked the 9th (14 pitches - only six strikes- no swing & miss) and allowed a solo HR after two near-HR fly outs to the warning track, before getting a 3-1 GO to end the inning... it was like batting practice when he wasn't throwing pitches out of the strike zone...

  • crunch (view)

    pablo sandoval played 3rd and got a couple ABs (strikeout, single!) in the OAK@SF "exhibition"

    mlb officially authenticated the ball of the single he hit.  nice.

    he's in surprisingly good shape considering his poor body condition in his last playing seasons.  he's not lean, but he looks healthier.  good for him.

  • crunch (view)

    dbacks are signing j.montgomery to a 1/25m with a vesting 20m player option.

    i dunno when the ink officially dries, but i believe if he signs once the season begins he can't be offered a QO...and i'm not sure if that thing with SD/LAD in korea was the season beginning, either.

  • crunch (view)

    sut says imanaga getting the home opener at wrigley (game 4 of the season).

  • crunch (view)

    cubs rolling out the who's who of "who the hell is this guy?" in the last spring game.

  • videographer (view)

    AZ Phil, speaking of Jordan Wicks having better command when he tires a bit, I remember reading about Dennis Lamp 40 years ago and his sinker that was better after 3 or 4 innings when he would tire a bit and get more sink with a little less speed on the pitch.  The key for Lamp was getting to the 4th inning.