The Rundown: Cabrera Is Gross, Maddon Still Salty, Team USA Opens WBC Pool Play, Czech Pitcher Shoves with 78 MPH Heater

I really wish the sun were a little more visible today, but I’ll gladly accept temps in the 60s and even 70s all day and through the evening. It helps that it’s Friday and I took PTO so I could bring my daughter back home from college and just sort of enjoy a bit more leisure than usual. There will be a lot to keep me entertained tonight, and I’m thinking the weather will be perfect for a little fire out on the patio.

Speaking of fire, how about new Cubs starter Edward Cabrera throwing a power change with such sharp, unexpected break that it made Brewers leadoff man Sal Frelick lose his helmet. Cabrera’s average changeup last year was 94.2 mph, or almost a full tick harder than Cubs starters’ average fastballs for the season. He told fans at Cubs Convention that he’s thrown the “offspeed” pitch as hard as 98, which almost broke my brain.

It almost broke the brains of the team’s pitching infrastructure, both because the pitch is so different from the norm and because his 97 mph sinker and slider are both ass. His -12 run value on fastballs last season was in MLB’s 4th percentile, and it looks worse when considering that he threw them only one-third of the time. You would expect guys who pitch backwards to be soft-tossers, so Cabrera’s MO has forced the organization to rethink the way they view pitching.

“It’s his fourth pitch, that’s how you look at it,” Craig Counsell said about Cabrera’s sinker. “You just have to think about him differently. It’s hard to think about — ‘Oh, you can’t have your fastball be your fourth pitch.’ But it’s just different with him.”

Would it be nice to see him tweak the sinker and/or four-seam to keep them from being meatballs? Sure, but there’s a point at which you have to understand that any effort put into improving a weakness is effort that can’t be put toward building a strength. In many cases, raising the roof will bring the floor up with it.

Even without making any changes to his repertoire, Cabrera may benefit from his new team making him even more of an outlier. The Marlins lacked the Cubs’ pitching depth, but they also had a great deal more velocity with more guys throwing a changeup similar to Cabrera’s. Marlins starters averaged 95.8 on their collective fastballs, the hardest in MLB last season, so Cabrera wasn’t unique.

Between a new team and what should be a more exciting, competitive atmosphere, the big righty could break out in 2026.

Maddon’s Name More Fitting Than Ever

If you’ve been paying any attention to Joe Maddon over the last few years, you’ve probably noticed how all of his interviews sound the same. He’s clearly got an axe to grind with the Angels, and he’s become very curmudgeonly about the modern game in general. The writing was on the wall at least as far back as 2018, and perhaps even earlier, as the Cubs stopped winning enough to outweigh the idea that he was an old man shaking his fist at numerous clouds.

I remember saying at the time that it would have been a good idea for Maddon and the Cubs to part ways at least a year before his five-year deal was up, but they stuck it out through 2019. While he’ll still get a hero’s welcome from Cubs fans, understandably so, there’s a growing sentiment among many that he wasn’t the driving force behind the team’s unprecedented run of success.

I won’t go that far, as I still believe he was the right man for the job when he first came to Chicago. The trouble is that the effectiveness of his little sayings and quirks quickly burned out in the wake of winning the World Series. His methods grew stale and he either refused or was unable to adapt as attitudes and expectations changed.

His return to the Angels, where he’d spent three decades as a player and coach before getting his managerial break with the Rays, ended in ignominy when he was fired in June of 2022. He’s spent the last four years telling anyone who’ll listen about how things were better back in the day, and that was the case during his recent appearance on Halo Territory.

“You don’t belong in a clubhouse,” Maddon said about the intrusions of front office members. “You don’t belong in a meeting room right next to the coach’s room.”

He added that today’s managers have been “kind of castrated to a certain level” and that most of the rule changes being implemented have taken away from baseball’s integrity. While I can understand some of his gripes in a general sense, he continues to sound like someone who is bitter about the game passing him by. Even if things didn’t end particularly well in Anaheim, the dude might want to stop sipping that whine and revel in the fact that he did what no one believed could be done.

WBC in Full Swing

The World Baseball Classic officially opened last night, and there’s a full slate of games today. The US opens pool play against Brazil at 7pm CT on Fox, with Logan Webb squaring off against noted Brazilian…Bo Takahashi? Sure enough, Rodrigo Hitoshi Kaimoti Takahashi is a Brazilian native of Japanese descent. Whatever, I’m just excited to watch meaningful baseball.

Today’s action kicked off with Japan cruising to a 13-0 victory over Chinese Taipei, which is without Jonathon Long after the Cubs prospect opted to skip the event due to an elbow issue. Leadoff hitter Shohei Ohtani was 3-for-4 with a double, a grand slam, and five RBI, while three-hole hitter Seiya Suzuki picked up a hit and scored two runs.

More News and Notes

• The Cubs have a rare night game against the Padres, which is too bad since it starts as the same time as Team USA’s game. Ben Brown is on the bump and MLB Network has the coverage.
• Counsell was one of the last to know that his son, Brady Counsell, would be suiting up for the Diamondbacks against the Cubs at Sloan Park. The 10th-round draft pick out of Kansas is actually bunking with his old man this spring, and he called his mom to let her know about the game. Dad had to find out when he saw the opposing roster.
• Brady entered the game at third base in the 7th inning and drew a walk to lead off the 8th. It would have been an awesome moment regardless, but it had to have been even more special because of how much of Brady’s baseball career Craig has had to miss due to his own obligations.
• “It was a thrill,” the Cubs manager said afterwards. “You go over his life. I really wish my dad could have been here to see it, for sure. Probably thought of that first. But I’m happy for him, proud of him and thankful that I got to witness it.”
• Angels team president John Carpino is retiring after 23 years with the organization, and will be replaced by longtime senior VP Molly Jolly.
• Pat Hughes will be on the radio call with Ron Coomer for The Score’s coverage of games on Saturday and Sunday.
• Ondrej Satoria, the electrician-turned-Czech Republic pitcher whose FB tops out at 78 mph, tossed 3.2 scoreless innings with three strikeouts, one walk, and just one hit allowed in his country’s 5-1 loss to Australia on Thursday. That is WILD to me because it’s tough to make JV around here if you’re not throwing at least 85 mph.
• Based on what I know or have heard, our high school — which is up to 3,464 students — has at least four guys throwing 90 or higher. And while there’s a big difference between merely throwing hard and being able to pitch, there’s a tendency to prioritize the potential over velocity over the reality of results.
• I saw a post yesterday about a prep lefty who had recently reclassified to 2026 and was drawing a lot of scouts. He is 6-foot-3 and 185 pounds with a fastball that topped 95 mph, so you can understand the interest. But the line of 3.2 IP, 3 hits, 4 walks, and 1 strikeout is wildly underwhelming even when you consider all the nuances.
• As with so many other aspects of life, much of it comes down to timing and opportunity. To that end, bigger numbers on the radar gun beget more opportunities.

Trailer Time

DC continues to lag far behind Marvel when it comes to screen adaptations, and that’s particularly true for television. The tide could be turning ever so slightly with James Gunn overseeing things, with Peacemaker standing out as a shining example of the comic company’s new direction. DC no longer takes itself too seriously, and that has given its recent projects more appeal.

The latest of those is Lanterns, starring Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre as Hal Jordan and John Stewart, which drops in August on HBO Max.