Why the Cubs might finally, maybe see a breakthrough with their homegrown pitchers There are many layers to this quiet offseason for the Cubs. The buildup of a team that has won 387 games,six playoff rounds and a World Series title across the last four years. Big-money free agents who haven’t delivered enough value. Young players getting exponentially more expensive through the arbitration system. A collective group of hitters coming off a disappointing season, limiting their trade value. A rumored TV deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group that won’t go online until 2020. The operating structure within the Ricketts family trust and a Wrigley Field renovation projected to cost $1 billion. The Cubs are also paying the price for their inability to fully develop homegrown pitchers. Through seven drafts, the Theo Epstein regime still hasn’t selected a pitcher who has turned into a meaningful, consistent contributor. It’s easy to say in hindsight – and impossible to know for certain – but one breakthrough pitcher might have changed the negotiations that led to last winter’s $164 million commitments to Yu Darvish and Tyler Chatwood. Or eliminated the need to pick up Cole Hamels’ $20 million option for 2019. Or completely changed the look of this year’s bullpen. There are also many complexities to this situation. The Cubs used first-round picks on Albert Almora Jr., Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber and Ian Happ between 2012 and 2015. Pitchers are inherently riskier investments and take longer to mature. Packaging Dylan Cease in the Eloy Jiménez/José Quintana trade – the cost of doing business for a contending team – gave the White Sox a premium pitching prospect. Jason McLeod, the senior vice president of scouting and player development, also doesn’t want to make any excuses, knowing this is part of “the reckoning” Epstein predicted for the Cubs in 2019. “There’s an overwhelming sense of urgency throughout the organization,” McLeod said Sunday, echoing Epstein’s comments at Cubs Convention and throughout the offseason. “It’s an urgency in doing something to impact the organization. Not being complacent. Not being safe. Not being conservative. “It doesn’t mean pushing someone who’s not ready for it. But I also think there is going to be more of: ‘Let them show that they’re ready to help us, ’ so to speak. We know exactly where we are with that. And this is probably the first year I can confidently sit here and feel like we have the guys that can help this team in the major leagues this year, if needed.” With a major-league payroll already projected to be in the range of $225 million, Epstein’s baseball operations department is waiting for prices to drop and hoping to find creative solutions for the bullpen, the one area of the roster that really concerns the Cubs. Last year’s free-agent pickup Brandon Morrow has already been ruled out for Opening Day 2019 after undergoing offseason surgery on his right elbow. Pedro Strop rushed back from a hamstring injury to pitch the ninth inning of the National League wild-card game at Wrigley Field. Carl Edwards Jr. didn’t make that playoff roster; the Cubs said the reliever experienced forearm discomfort. Steve Cishek appeared in almost half of the team’s games (80) last season. There could eventually be an opportunity for Dakota Mekkes, a 6-foot-7, 250-pound right-hander with a funky Cishek-like arm angle who finished last season at Triple-A Iowa. Mekkes – a 10th-round pick out in the 2016 draft out of Michigan State – has piled up 190 strikeouts through 147 career innings in the minors. Duncan Robinson – a ninth-round pick in the 2016 draft out of the same Dartmouth program that produced Kyle Hendricks – went 8-4 with a 3.11 ERA in 26 starts between Double-A Tennessee and Iowa last season and can follow the team’s sophisticated game-planning system. That 2016 draft marked a turning point for how the Cubs evaluate amateur pitchers. “As we thought about pitching, we tried to fit everyone neatly into a box,” McLeod said. “‘Do these mechanics lead to what we think is going to be long-term health? And has he thrown enough strikes that we think the prior performance is going to equal this type of performance going forward?’ We put so many checks on guys, I feel that we probably walked by some guys that didn’t meet certain criteria at the time. “We were being probably a little too conservative. We wanted them to check so many boxes: Strike-throwers who we thought were going to be healthy who had this type of performance, whether it be strikeout rate, whether it be walk rate. That probably hamstrung us a little bit.” Around the same time, the Cubs also realized they needed to rewrite some of their protocols in player development. There couldn’t be a one-size-fits-all plan if someone like Robinson could reach his innings total with such efficiency. Within reason, there is value in learning how to pitch through fatigue and discomfort. McLeod mentioned Derek Johnson – the minor-league pitching coordinator who worked with David Price at Vanderbilt and left the Cubs after the 2015 season and went on to big-league jobs with the Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds – being at the forefront of those changes. Adbert Alzolay – a top-100 prospect on last year’s Baseball Prospectus preseason rankings who got shut down after eight starts with a strained lat muscle – should go into spring training without any restrictions. And the organization’s overall philosophy has begun to shift toward a looser, more open-minded approach with young pitchers. “We definitely wanted to err on the side of caution,” McLeod said, mentioning pitchers drafted out of high school like Cease, Paul Blackburn and Duane Underwood Jr. “We were trying to put in such a structured progression through Years 3 and 4 that we probably could have pushed guys in our early days. As we’ve sat here five or six years later, I think that – not to be egregious about anything – but we’ll probably be a little more aggressive.” The Cubs also understand they can’t pin all their hopes on one or two pitchers. Justin Steele – who got a $1 million bonus out of high school in 2014 – has recovered from Tommy John surgery and earned a spot on the 40-man roster. Thomas Hatch – a third-round pick in the 2016 draft out of Oklahoma State – made 26 Double-A starts last year (3.82 ERA) and probably has the most sustained velocity among the organization’s upper-level starting-pitching prospects (sitting at 93-94 mph). The Cubs promoted Keegan Thompson – a third-round pick in the 2017 draft out of Auburn – to the Double-A rotation in the middle of last season. “We’ve got to be better than what we’ve been,” McLeod said. “We know where we are from a major-league standpoint with our players who are getting to their arbitration years. It’s just on us. We can’t just keep celebrating Kris Bryant in the 2013 draft.” McLeod laughed along with a small group of reporters at the Sheraton Grand Chicago, ending the 15-minute interview and another Cubs Convention weekend by saying he had to catch a flight to Arizona to watch the organization’s prospects in instructional league. “It’s so obvious it’s not even an elephant in the room,” he said. “It’s something that drives us every day.” -- やっ..........！！！！！！止めろペイモンこの野郎～～～～～～っ 地狱でいきなり圣书なんえ 読み上げやがってえ~~~~~~~~~っ！！杀すえおっ！！ --

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