New Cubs FO Hire Tyler Zombro Could Have Simple Way to Boost Pitching Performance

The Cubs recently hired former minor league reliever Tyler Zombro away from Tread Athletics to aid the front office in the acquisition and development of pitchers. A statement from Tread said Zombro will be “leveraging his unique skillset to drive value,” which may taste like just another word salad to many of you. So what does it mean, exactly?

That’s impossible to say definitively, but a recent video from Tread offers a look into how the new addition can boost performance throughout the organization. Among other insights he’ll provide, one value-add might be something as small as helping the Cubs to determine how their catchers should set up based on the pitcher they’re working with.

“Tampa certainly became infamous for having the catchers set up dead middle,” Zombro explained. “But it’s no mistake that they oftentimes have power north-south type arsenals. So a (Tyler) Glasnow, for instance, he is a north-south supinator. So for him — cutty four-seam, gyro (slider), curveball — there’s no reason for the catcher to move, there’s no reason for the glove to get off.

“Because he’s just playing the up-down game and his swing generation is going to be all dictated over the plate, so for him that’s where the catcher middle-middle is really big. But again, you can make this unique to each guy if you know where his miss is so you can filter it accordingly.”

Catcher positioning can be an unlock for improving command. ?⁠
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Performance Specialist Tyler Zombro breaks down how having the catcher set up “middle” can be a command boost for North/South pitchers. ️⁠ pic.twitter.com/ao48OevAVB

— Tread Athletics (@TreadHQ) November 25, 2024

This could be particularly helpful as the Cubs transition from a staff that has consistently been at the bottom of MLB in average fastball velocity over the last several years. The departure of Kyle Hendricks should get them out of the cellar all on its own, then you’ve got the ascension of Cade Horton (please be healthy) and Ben Brown‘s return to health as either a starter or reliever. Maybe Jed Hoyer will even go out and get a hard-throwing reliever or two.

Of course, that’s more of a general strategy and doesn’t necessarily relate to what Zombro discussed above. He’s basically just putting a finer point on the idea of “aim small, miss small” by using data to determine where the target should be set up. At the risk of oversimplifying things or completely whiffing on the point, this strikes me as a way to keep pitchers from getting in their heads and potentially aiming or guiding pitches instead of just throwing.

I can see three areas in which this could be particularly helpful for an organization that has a poor track record of developing arms: identifying underperforming pitchers as buy-low candidates for trades/free agency; hastening the timeline for prospects in minors; and improving performance of the big league staff. My immediate thought is that the first two areas have the most room for improvement, though it’s at least mildly worthwhile to note that Jameson Taillon has been working at Tread to improve his sweeper.

“My best ones I throw (sweepers) are mid-height that take off.” ? – Cubs starter Jameson Taillon pic.twitter.com/H0mpsQQcf8

— Tread Athletics (@TreadHQ) November 21, 2024

Though his sweeper usage and value were roughly the same from his inaugural Cubs campaign to this past season, Taillon generated more vertical and horizontal movement in 2024 while throwing it half a tick harder. A huge improvement in his cutter yielded more break at lower velo, perhaps helping him to better tunnel it with his sweeper to keep hitters from picking either up as well. That could all come back to a mechanical change he implemented in the spring to keep himself from striding and landing too open.

I maintain that incorporating the sweeper at the Cubs’ behest following his signing in the winter prior to ’23 may have led to him pulling open in a subconscious effort to generate more horizontal movement. His strikeouts were up, but his walks also increased and he struggled with consistency. A scatter plot of his various pitch locations from ’24 shows a tighter distribution than in the previous season, so he had definitely found more repeatable results.

Maybe if Zombro had been around two years ago, the Cubs could have better aided Taillon’s performance by changing the way his catchers set up. That probably wouldn’t be from squatting middle-middle because we’re talking about more east-west movement, but it could just be about a small shift one way or the other.

While I’ll grant that a lot of this is just circumstantial, there’s ample reason to believe (or maybe you prefer “hope”) Zombro is indeed part of the key to unlocking more value at the margins. Everything I’ve heard about this guy from people who know ball is that he’s the goods, so it’s easy to get excited about what extrapolating his knowledge across the whole system could mean.

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