Welcome back to another edition of the Cubs on Tuesday podcast.

We have assigning the cub signed Phil Maton to a two year contract.

We don't know the numbers yet, but the believed salaries in the teens.

Hopefully we find out soon in the next few days here, But Cubs are getting started early in rebuilding that bullpen that is likely going to depart in free agency or at the very least maybe considering other teams including Caleb Teelbar Brad Keller, Andrew Kitchridge is back in Baltimore, and so the Cubs need to find a way again to build a bullpen from a group of guys who may not be either well known or they don't have the track record of long term success.

For Mayiton, he does have some long term success.

So over the past four years, he's been durable number one twenty twenty one, sixty six Indians pitch twenty twenty two, sixty five Indians pitch, twenty three, sixty six Indies pitch, twenty four, sixty four Indies pitched in twenty five sixty one Innies pitch.

That's actually five years, not four years.

The ra last year was two point eight.

The year before three point six, the year before that in twenty twenty three three, and the year before that in twenty twenty two three point eight.

So this is a guy on average who's putting up eras in the high twos to the mid threes over the past four years in a sixty plus inning year to year basis.

On the surface, it makes sense why the Cubs would want some stability with that profile now with relievers, though it always begs the question, well, he's had this success, but how stable is it?

Actually?

What?

What does Phil Mayton throw that inspires confidence for a front office to give out a.

Multi year deal.

In the first half of this episode, we're gonna talk exactly what separates out Mayton from the rest of the Free Asian pool, and then we're gonna use some of that discussion to pinpoint.

Okay, who else made the Cubs target that is not as well known as Mayton.

Maybe a non roster in vit in spring training.

Maybe it's the brad Kellers of the world that they targeted last offseason and ultimately who they had success with.

So let's start with Maton here.

What does he throw first or foremost?

Get familiarized with the curve ball.

He throws his curveball more than any other pitch type.

His second most used pitch is a cutter.

He doesn't even throw a four seam fastball.

So we're talking about a guy who throws a curve ball nearly forty percent of the time, and then the other forty percent of the time he throws a cutter.

Every now and then he'll throw a sweeper, and then I'll finish off batters with a sinker.

Think about this, A reliever with that track record of success doesn't throw a four seam fastball.

Think about all the relievers over the years.

The first that come to mind are the ones who throw ninety eight to one hundred miles per hour with the foreseam fastball.

Film Mayton does not even throw a four seam fastball.

That in and of itself makes him unique.

But what about those secondaries?

What is it about the curve ball and really his entire profile that makes him stand out?

So when the Cubs signed him, this was a question I wanted to dig into.

The way I addressed it was I downloaded all stackcast data for every single pitch thrown and every single pitcher of course, in Major League Baseball.

Last year.

Then after I did that, I clustered all pitch types by similarity.

I'm looking for clusters of similar pitches, and when I found those clusters, I was able to find pitchers who don't really fit the mold.

We can assign a score to that those outliers, if you will.

And among the biggest outliers in this bunch of free Asian relievers was Phil Maton.

Now what makes them stand out is that curveball.

It crosses home play at a super sharp angle.

Most guys don't throw curve balls with that amount of horizontal break, and it's in part due to the way he can spin the baseball.

Now, for all Usico's out there, you may remember a guy named Tommy Nance.

Tommy Nance, I believe it was what twenty twenty one, maybe it was the COVID season, but he was spinning curveballs in a few audience at a thirty three hundred rpm piace.

It was among the highest in the league.

And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, Tommy Nance, who is this guy?

Where did they find this guy?

He fizzled out, spin brate went down.

But Phil Maton's spin bray is actually near what Tommy Nanz's top tier spin was during.

That brief stretch.

This is a guy who's able to spin the ball but also maximize that spin in a way that generates elite horizontal break that you typically just don't see.

So it's the signatures that I'm trying to find.

I want to find other pitchers like Phil Mayton, but as a front office executive, you don't want to spend fifteen million dollars in every single reliever.

You want to be able to find guys who have similar uniqueness.

But for whatever reason.

It hasn't clicked.

Maybe it's not maximizing the spin, maybe the shape is a little bit off, maybe there's a mechanical tweak.

I'm not sure.

Frankly, that's not for me to figure out.

But what we can do is we can find in the data guys that are just weird, guys that are just unique.

You bring them in, you work with coaches to make the most out of that uniqueness, and hopefully you find a guy like Brad Keller who's closing games and playoff wins, who is your most stable reliever in the entire season.

So, for Phil Mayton, his uniqueness score on a scale of zero to three, with around anything over one point five being rather unique.

If you're over two, you're really unique.

If you're close to three, there's really no one like you.

Phil Mayton was a two point eight.

There's really no one like them, and that's principally the reason why he's now a Cup.

Let's apply the same logic to existing free agents.

Now, let's use that logic only on four seam fastballs.

You can apply this logic to curveballs like we do with Maiton.

In this case, I want to keep it simple.

I want to apply this logic only to four seam fastballs.

There's a reason for it.

Last season, the Cups made several signings.

Some didn't work, many did work, including the Brad Keller example.

But they made signings with similar characteristics among the group, and those characteristics were in part driven by two main features.

Number one, they were unique.

Number two, they tended to have straighter fastballs.

Not every signing is like this.

It's not even to say the Cubs are explicitly targeted fastballs with a straighter maybe a little bit more of a cut profile.

But at least in the last offseason, those were the guys they signed.

They include Ryan Presley in a trade didn't work out.

Brad Keller was one guy who did work out, Chris Flexen, Phil Bickford, who spent most of the year in Iowa.

And just to be clear, it's not to say every guy they're going to sign or a choir is going to have the exact same pitch.

No, absolutely not.

But just given their precedence for going after guys with that profile and having success with them, even they're internal guys like Justin Steele, Porter Hodge and of course Kate Horton, that tends to be a profile that they just like.

Okay, so what do we do here?

Number One, we go in, We get every single free agent.

Doesn't matter if they pitched in the big league, doesn't matter if they pitched in the mind of leagues.

We're looking at every single free agent.

Next, we're looking at the outliers.

So I'm going to download all the guys that have a uniqueness score over one point five.

Again, this is from a zero to three scale.

Zero to one is you know about common.

One to one point five is a little unique.

Over one point five, you're getting pretty unique.

The more closer to three, the more unique you are.

Here are the guys that had uniqueness scores over one point five that tended to have a straighter fastball.

Number one for uniqueness on this list is Peter Fairbanks.

Now, this is someone who's going to demand a lot of money, so it's not fair.

It's it's obvious that he's good.

I don't need a uniqueness score to figure out if Peter Fairbanks is a successful pitcher.

However, number two on this list, and if you knew who he was, I'll give you a million dollars.

No, I won't, but if you knew who he was, I will give you some credit is Taylor Rashi.

This is someone who pitched for the Diamondbacks last year.

The reason that his uniqueness score, which is really high, is a three.

This means there's hardly any pitchers like Rashi.

The reason is he has a very high release point.

We're talking catapulting pitches over here.

Think of this as like Chris Flexen.

Now you may be thinking, oh my gosh, I don't want Chris Flexen again, But they ended up signing Chris Flexen because he had a similar unique profile in that his fastball was straight and he had an over the top release point.

Taylor Rashie has exactly that profile.

He pitched for the Diamondbacks last year.

He's twenty nine years old.

In sixteen innings, he had a four point four year ra and he threw a forcing fastball, a splitter, a nose twelve six curve, and a slider.

Those pitch types to splitter, slider, curve.

Maybe room for optimization the forcing fastball at ninety miles per hour.

Maybe he gets another tick or two on the velocity.

And he looks like someone who is promising next year.

But this is someone who I didn't hear about until I literally just downloaded this list.

Number three on this list is Colin Snyder.

He has a uniqueness score of two point nine.

Few guys are like him.

Snyder is unique because he has a low arm angle.

But what's weird about him is that his fastball doesn't have run, which is what you commonly see with low arm angles.

Weirdly enough, his low arm angle generates a relative cut right fastball, and then he throws a sweeper off that in the same window, a cutter and that slower, slurvy looking pitch.

He had success in twenty twenty four with Seattle.

In forty one innings, he had a one point nine to four ear ray, but last season did not have a good year, a five point five earray in twenty six innings.

The Cubs may see someone who they can sign on a minor league deal and say, hey, you're arm angles unique.

It's weird how you're generating that cut right profile.

We've had success with that.

Maybe we take that pitch, we mold it into a repertoire that's more likely to have success, Maybe tinker with the cutter or whatever it is.

Right, those are what the coaches are for, but what we do know is looking at some of this underlying metrics, he's someone who has very unique stuff.

Guess who's next.

Two guys on this list, Ryan Presley and Brad Keller.

So let's think about this for a second, right, So I downloaded this list, and I'm just filtering by a handful of guys with straightforcing fastballs and uniquenesscores.

And I just happened to pull apart three of seven guys who the Cubs signed last year already.

So fifty percent of this excel sheath that I'm looking at the Cubs had already signed last year.

To me, this signifies that the Cubs are looking for weird pitchers with at least some of these characteristics.

After Presley and Keller, you have a pitcher named Sean Anderson.

Sean Anderson was not effective last year.

He had a ten point three year array in almost twelve Indians pitched.

The year before that he had hit US eight point three year ray and sixteen innings pitched.

Has not had a good.

Start to his major league career thirty one years old.

But he's unique.

What stands out for him again is that he has that more cut looking fastball.

He is a sweeper that sweeps a slider in between, and he has a change up to do.

But for some reason, it just has not clicked for him, even though he has on paper like a movement profile that really stands out, but something has not clicked.

He is unique, though, and as the Key warred this entire podcast, wouldn't make sense for the Cubs to invite him to spring training and work with the coaching staff find what clicks for him to make the most out of the underlying stuff.

I could see that fitting for sure.

All together, that's three guys.

That's Taylor Roshie, that's Colin Snyder, that's Sean Anderson.

Those three guys in some respect fit the mold that the cub signed last year.

Again unique in the fastball that tends to have have a straight profile.

This doesn't exclude the fact that the Cups will still be interested in signing guys with stable track records.

It's not to say, oh, forget those guys, let's go sign these non roster invitees and get the next Brad Keller.

That's a really risky business.

But when you match the riskiness of that with the stability of spending money in the freeation market, that's how you have this booming bullpen.

Mayton represents the first piece to that bullpen puzzle.

The reports are they're still engaged in the free Asian market.

Maybe by this time next week we're talking about Peter Fairbanks being signed.

Maybe we're talking about Ryan Hessley being signed.

Maybe we do get a starting pitchers signed in an ambitious cycle.

I wouldn't count on it, but what I would count on is that at some point we're gonna be talking about pictures who we never heard about.

We did it last year.

We've done it over the past several years, but more than ever last year we didn't even talk about Brad Heller.

I'm sorry, Ben Heller.

You know Brad Keller.

Ben Heller Ryan's and messes me up.

We didn't talk about the Festa signing last year, who, by the way, he has some success.

That's the Cubs d Fadam when they signed it for a few days last offseason.

They're going to be toying around with these guys, and it's up for those coaches and the front offices and the executives all in the front office to be on the same page.

They have to replace Brad Keller's value if they don't resign them.

They have to somehow find a void for Andrew Kittridge.

They have to replace Caleb Thielbar's value.

They have to replace dozens of Innians from guys who, although they were not on the playoff roster, they still provided value.

Chris Flexen provided dozens of Innians of value last year.

Ryan Brazier in his brief spell injury riddle to year granted, but when he was pitching, he provided bulk innings and value.

They will have to find ways to eat innings.

And what I wanted to do throughout the off season is find guys that can accomplish that the signings will be obvious, the big splash signings hopefully will be obvious.

But I'm really interested in how they continue to evolve because we get a glimpse into what they're thinking.

Right, we got a glimpse into what they were thinking with Brad Keller last year.

He came over.

He was grown much faster.

They developed a change up with them.

By the way, James and Tayon also developed a similar change up, that kick change up variety that we've heard Lanz Berestowski and other guys talk about in the pitching world.

It's a window into what they're thinking about.

So if we can borrow their past thinking processes and apply it to this offseason, will it just allows us to anticipate better.

I think also it's more interesting.

I mean, listen, if you're interested about Taylor Roshie and Sean Henderson and Colin Snyder, you're a little bit sick.

I'm not gonna lie, But for modern day baseball, this is how it works.

Modern day baseball is defined by gaining every ounce of value out of all pitchers on your team.

You want the Cubs to beat Milwaukee.

You want the Cubs to be the juggernaut of that division.

This is required.

It's equally important for the Cubs to spend money in free agency as it is to develop the non roster invitees to have an organization top to bottom where are getting the best out of every single guy.

And by the way, that has a trickle effect, because what if you're a thirty year old who has not had success.

What if you want to rejuvenate your career and you have a few options.

You have teammate and you have Team B, and then you have the Cubs.

The Cubs having a track record of turning guys around where they're turning into million dollar contracts, is going to lure in the next crop of pitchers who need a boost, And to talk about it, I think is interesting.

It is also an absolute necessity going for us.

So we'll continue doing this forout the offseason.

And we took a break this week from player breakdowns, but we'll apply some of this uniqueness strategy to other pitch types.

What's encouraging is that there's a lot of guys on this market both who will demand money and who will demand maybe a flyer type deal that makes sense, And I'm encouraged because the Cubs did it last year, and I see signatures and trends in this market that would allow them to take the same process and hopefully have success yet again.

Talk to you guys next week.

By the way, have a great Thanksgiving, enjoy the food, enjoy the time off.

We'll come back next week.

We'll continue talking cups, Baseball, Go Cups.