Chicago Cubs Veteran Pitcher Bouncing Back With One of Best Pitches in Baseball

Since joining the Chicago Cubs as a free agent ahead of the 2023 season, veteran starting pitcher Jameson Taillon has had some up-and-down performances.

His first campaign with the franchise was an underwhelming one, making 30 appearances with an 8-10 record. He had an underwhelming -0.4 WAR and 4.84 ERA across 154.1 innings with 140 strikeouts.

His ERA+ was not great either at 88.

He was much better in 2024, as his ERA never got above 3.85 during the year. Taillon made 28 starts, going 12-8 with a 2.3 WAR across 165.1 innings with 125 strikeouts.

Despite the success, something still felt off for the veteran righty when he was on the mound.

“A lot of the times I’d come off the field and be like, ‘Something’s a little off. I don’t feel like I’m throwing my fastball the right way,’” Taillon recently said, via Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic (subscription required). “I know how to pitch and get outs. Something didn’t feel like it was quite syncing up.”

He worked tirelessly during spring training to figure out what exactly was wrong and started to feel a little bit better.

But, the 2025 season got off on the wrong foot when he surrendered six runs on nine hits, getting tagged for two home runs in his first start against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Knowing that his mechanics were still not where he wanted them to be, he did some drills with the team’s pitching coach, Tommy Hottovy, and started to feel like he was reaching the level he wanted to be at physically.

The kind of positive results he knows he is capable of producing followed.

In the four starts since, he has a solid 3.22 ERA with a 25.6% strikeout percentage and 7.8% walk rate.

A kick-change has been a nice addition to his repertoire, but it is his four-seam fastball that has helped turn things around.

“I’m seeing things I haven’t been able to do,” Taillon said. “Driving four-seam up and in on lefties, which last year, that was hard for me to do, and I just lived away. I can throw my heater at the top and maintain a good shape instead of forcing it there.”

His fastball usage is way up in 2025, throwing it 44.5% of the time compared to 29.5% of the time in 2024. He is executing it at a much higher level, as well, pounding the top of the zone with his heater, compared to last year when he was living too much in the heart of the plate.

The numbers were good for Taillon, but he knew the execution could be better.

He is proving that in 2025.

This is the most often he has thrown his four-seam fastball since 2021. It likely isn’t a coincidence that the pitch has been even more impactful through his first five starts of this campaign than it was four years ago.

As Sharma shared, his four-seam fastball ranked as the 17th-best fastball in baseball in 2021, via Statcast’s Run Value metric. This season, it ranks fifth amongst all offerings in the game based on the Run Value metric.

“I think I’m commanding it to both sides a little better than I have in the past,” Taillon said of the four-seamer. “Last year, I was doing a fine job of staying out of danger zones. Right now, it’s playing to both sides, especially to lefties. The hitters give you the best feedback. Right now, maybe they’re looking curveball or cutter. But we have enough juice on the heater and good enough shape to be able to throw it a little more. They’ll adjust at some point.”

Overpower velocity has never been Taillon’s game on the mound. But he knows how to command his arsenal, pinpointing his pitches to ensure opponents cannot square them up and do damage.

The improved performance could not have come at a better time for the Cubs, who lost Justin Steele to a season-ending elbow injury and need all the help they can get in their starting rotation.

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