Ivy League Cubs

By: Jake Russell

Porter Hodge was spotted walking into the Cubs clubhouse Friday morning, reported The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma.

In a corresponding move, Colten Brewer has been placed on the IL with a lower back issue.

Brewer had quietly been a pretty good reliever for the Cubs through just 11.2 innings. He had 12 strikeouts, just 4 walks, and a 3.09 ERA. Perhaps some of that has small sample size implications, but it was refreshing to see a solid bullpen arm nonetheless.

However, Porter Hodge is a pretty interesting arm. The raw results look pretty poor when you look at them–he had a 6.55 ERA at AAA Iowa in 11 innings, with an incredible 32.1 K%, but also a 19.6 BB% that served as the biggest reason for the poor results. Despite this, Hodge has some stuff to get excited about. He has a 34.5% whiff% thus far, but struggles to generate chases, which leads to a fair share of walks.

All that being said, there is some upside to get excited about. His fastball profiles more as a cutter, and he gets monster extension at high velocity. On his four-seam, he averages 94.9 MPH, with 7.2 feet of extension (MLB average is around 6.6). What’s more, is that he gets 15.6 inches of Induced Vertical Break–a pedestrian number, at first glance, but it plays more like a cutter. He averages just 0.5 inches of arm-side movement. If we classify the pitch as a cutter, there are just two pitches that have more vertical break–David Robertson, and Kenley Jansen. Both of them throw significantly slower than Hodge, as well. His four-seam–which might as well be a cutter–is a really good pitch.

His slider, on the other hand, is a huge sweeper. He averages 19 inches of glove-side movement on the pitch! You aren’t going to find many pitchers who have that much horizontal movement on a breaking ball of any type–especially considering he throws his slider relatively hard, averaging around 81.5 MPH–for a pitch with that type of movement, that is.

The stuff here is really fun, and Eno Sarris’ stuff+ model grades him out at 119 stuff+. For what it’s worth, that’s 12th among all AAA pitchers. It remains to be seen if he can limit the walks–that’s the question, and it always has been–but there’s plenty of upside here for the Cubs reliever.

One other interesting note is that this continues the Cubs’ trend of developing and acquiring cut-ride pitchers (meaning that their fastballs have very little horizontal movement, while having solid vertical movement). Cade Horton, the Cubs top pitching prospect, is another cut-ride guy, while recently acquired Tyson Miller also falls under that bracket. Steele is probably the most notable Cubs pitcher who falls under this bracket, but Jed Hoyer and Co. seem to love these types of pitchers, who are likely better contact managers. So far this year, the Cubs have a 96 team ERA- (including today’s Kyle Hendricks outing), so maybe the Cubs philosophy will be proven to be right? I certainly hope so.