Chicago Cubs Not Getting Value From Jameson Taillon

The Cubs were not the biggest spenders of the 2022-2023 offseason, but they made enough of a splash that it was expected they would be at least a .500 baseball team. Their overall payroll jumped by about $40 million from last year, so a significant improvement on the 74-88 record they posted in 2022 seemed reasonable.

That has not happened, at least not quite. The Cubs are 37-40 with 12 games to go until the All-Star break, and a part of the reason for that is the lack of production from Jameson Taillon in the rotation.

Taillon was the second-largest contract of the Cubs’ most recent offseason. He’s in Chicago on a four-year, $68 million deal. And this year’s base salary of $14 million is the lowest of those four years.

What have the Cubs gotten for their investment?

A starter with a 2-6 record, 6.90 ERA, and the highest walk and homerun rates of his career.

Taillon has not pitched enough innings to qualify among all starters in the majors, but his ERA would be the worst among those who have thrown at least 80 innings this season (Taillon has just under 60). Even with a couple of decent starts, he might still rank lower than league-worst Jordan Lyles of the Royals (6.68).

Most recently, Taillon has put the Cubs in 4 and 5-run holes against key opponents Baltimore and Philadelphia. Only once this season has Taillon tossed six full innings in a start, and he has only one scoreless outing so far this year. That was all the way back on April 15.

Taillon’s struggles have come at a surprise. He was stellar for the Yankees in 2022 (14-5, 3.91 ERA), and he has been a steadily good pitcher for most of his career since debuting for the Pirates in 2016. There is still a lot of time this season for him to turn things around, and the Cubs would certainly like it if he did with crucial games against the Phillies and Brewers coming up. And even if Taillon doesn’t right the proverbial ship, it is possible that his 2023 performance will end up being an anomaly.

Even when struggling, Taillon can still show flashes of what’s possible. He gave up 5 runs and two homers to the Phillies on Tuesday night, but he also notched 8 strikeouts. Taillon has kept up a healthy strikeout rate all season (over 20%) and has the lowest hard contact rate of his career, at 28%. There are some signs that he might be suffering from a bit of bad luck; when batters do hit his pitches, they are barreling them at a higher rate than ever before. This season, the barrel rate against Taillon is a career-high 11.8%. It was never much more than 4% when he was with the Pirates, and only about 8% during his two seasons with the Yankees. Add to that the highest BABIP (.339) he has had since 2017, and it’s a wonder Taillon isn’t mad with frustration. Arguably, he has not pitched all that badly, but even his smallest mistakes have been getting punished this season.

So much so that even Taillon recognizes that fans might be getting tired of the way his postgame press conferences are starting to seem like Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day:

Taillon also has the most pronounced lefty-righty splits of his career, something that has changed the way opposing teams are lining up against him.

“It was never a thing until it became a thing,” he told reporters Tuesday. “Now every time I’m going out there it’s against a lineup stacked with lefties.”

Taillon has given up 12 home runs this season, 10 of them to left-handed batters, and lefties in general have a 1.081 OPS against him. For right-handed batters, it’s just .671. To wit, the Phillies had only three right-handers in their lineup against Taillon on Tuesday.

“I thought as a whole, they just fouled off a lot of good pitches and kind of waited me out and did damage on pitches that they should have done damage on,” Taillon said.

The Cubs have just started a stretch of 13 games in 13 days going into the All-Star break. And without any soft opponents: they play the Phillies and Guardians at home before hitting the road to face the Brewers and Yankees. And this just after a fun but grueling travel week that included two games in London.

And despite sitting three games below .500, they are still only 3.5 games back from the first-place Reds and just a half game behind the Brewers, so these upcoming games are all the more important. Taillon is scheduled to make two more starts during that stretch. He has a lot of time to prove he was worth $68 million, but he can get a start on that in the next two weeks.