Because the onslaught of pitcher injuries this year for the Chicago Cubs has been so severe, there’s relatively little debate about whether the team is better off with or without Jameson Taillon. After more guys return? Eh, you could probably start beefing, particularly about his role, but for now, the Cubs need his innings.
And, on a strict pitch count, Taillon last night gave the Cubs 3.1 very good innings.
The problem?
There was this other inning. The first inning. And it was very bad:
RILEY WASTES NO TIME ‼️ pic.twitter.com/BiLgi3CDIp
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) July 21, 2026DING WANTED IN ON THE FUN pic.twitter.com/VPzPTYOZ6c
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) July 21, 2026A little rust from his hamstring absence? Maybe so, but Taillon himself declined to take that excuse.
“I mean, I’m glad I could settle down and at least put us in a position to cover some innings and stay in the game,” Taillon said, per the Tribune. “But going down four in the first obviously isn’t ideal. … I don’t think it’s just rust. It’d be nice to just chalk it up to that, but homers obviously have been a problem this year.”
Indeed. The homers. That is a longstanding story that well precedes the hamstring injury, and, again Taillon said it best himself.
“I’ll just keep working behind the scenes and try to figure out the homer thing because it feels like that’s the snake bite for me. I’m giving up a ton of hits in a row. It’s just the untimely homers. So we’ll keep working to figure it out and clean that up, and hopefully I can impact this team down the stretch.”
After last night, Jameson Taillon’s HR/9 is an eye-popping 2.75, by faaaaar the highest in baseball. For additional context to make your jaw drop, no qualified starting pitcher last season had a HR/9 higher than 1.90(!!!). So, yeah. The home runs have been a problem this year.
At a superficial level, it’s not difficult to see the issue: Taillon is giving up a whopping 50.5% fly ball rate (by far the highest of his career), and a whopping 20.4% of those fly balls are leaving the park (by far the highest of his career, and tied for the highest mark in baseball). He’s allowed a 14.4% barrel rate, again, the worst in baseball.
In other words, at a superficial level, the reason Taillon is giving up a ton of home runs is that he’s getting clobbered. Pretty simple.
But why is he getting clobbered this year? Harder to say, though it looks like a lot of things are adding up. For example, each of his pitches is moving just slightly less than last year, his velocity is down slightly, his walk rate is up slightly, etc.
If I had to point to the issue behind the issue, though, I’ve gotta believe it’s command. The dude just isn’t throwing enough strikes.
This is a guy who is all about pitchability – command and control across a wide range of pitches – and his first strike rate is down ELEVEN percentage points this year (so he’s starting out behind the 8-ball way more often), and his zone rate is down SEVEN percentage points. Too many balls. Too many noncompetitive pitches. Too many mouthwatering opportunities for hitters.
Jameson Taillon is not a guy whose stuff is nasty enough for him to work outside the zone a whole lot. So the more he pitches outside of the zone, especially early in the count, the more often he sets himself up to get creamed by hitters who are ahead in the count and in attack mode.
A clue that precisely that is happening? The fast swing rate on Taillon this year – i.e., the percentage of time hitters are going with their ‘A’ swing, so to speak – is up nearly 33% this year! That’s not exclusively about the count, mind you, but I guarantee there’s some signal there. The more often guys can swing out of their shoes when ahead in the count, guess what? The more home runs you’re going to give up.
I won’t pretend I have a mechanical or grip solution here. I don’t know the story behind the story that I can see in the stats and when I watch the games. It’s never as simple as we think looking from the outside.
… but if you *FORCED* me to make things simple, then I would simply say: Yo, Jamo, throw more strikes. Force guys to hit you early in the count. Stop falling behind. The end.
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