NEW YORK — The day after Jameson Taillon’s starts, you can find him with a notebook in hand, his phone — maybe propped up in his locker — playing video of each batter he faced the day before.
He hasn’t been happy with the way he has introduced himself on the mound to his new club. But he has tried to trust the work between starts. And Taillon’s teammates and coaches have noticed his diligence.
It paid dividends in the former Yankee’s return to Yankee Stadium as the Cubs pulled off a franchise first. They beat the Yanks 3-0 on their home turf. Before Friday, the Cubs were 0-12 all time against the Yankees in New York, including the 1932 and 1938 World Series.
“Everyone thank Jameson Taillon,” manager David Ross said.
Taillon limited the Yankees to one hit in eight scoreless innings, by far his best start as a Cub.
“I feel like I’ve been trending in the right direction for a while,” Taillon said. “So it’s nice to see what we’ve been working on, what we’ve been working toward. It’s nice that the results finally back it up a little.”
The main focus of Taillon’s mid-week work — with pitching coach Tommy Hottovy, assistant pitching coach Daniel Moskos and bullpen coach Chris Young — has been the shape of his four-seam fastball.
“You see flashes of it,” Hottovy said in a conversation with the Sun-Times last week. “What’s made him so good in the past is his ability to create some cut-ride profile with that pitch. And it’s there, but it’s just not consistent enough. He’s doing a really good job of replicating that in bullpens. And then it shows up in games, with just not every pitch.”
Taillon has numbers he’s targeting for that perceived cut and ride. His four-seamer is most effective when it’s getting 17 to 20 inches of vertical movement and six or less of horizontal movement. This season, the vertical movement has been inconsistent, and entering Friday, he was averaging 7.1 inches of horizontal movement.
“I’m flashing really good ones, but it’s been a little bit all over the place,” Taillon said in a recent conversation with the Sun-Times.
He’d pick out his best fastballs — like a first-pitch strike low and away to Bryce Harper two starts ago — and ask, “How can we bottle that up? And how can you repeat that delivery?” The coaching staff gave him drills, points of emphasis in catch play, reps in the bullpen.
“When I’ve been really good at something, I don’t even really think about it,” Taillon said. “So, hopefully, we just get to a place where it’s repetition, and it just becomes a habit again.”
It wasn’t quite to that point Friday, but it felt good.
“They have the metrics on the board,” Taillon said after the game. “And I noticed the forcing wasn’t quite as [vertical] as normal, but it was less horizontal, which is something we’ve been working toward.”
He generated five whiffs — some up and out of the zone — and six called strikes with the pitch. And he noticed another important development.
“I feel like tonight I had a good feel of my good four-seam and my bad four-seam,” he said. “When I threw a bad one, I could adjust and get the good one back.”
When his fastball is working well, Taillon doesn’t have to be quite as fine with his other pitches, creating a ripple effect.
“Giving up one hit, there isn’t a whole lot of conversation,” Ross said. “I’m not taking you out until you get to the max number.”
