Cubs closer Ryan Pressly was at Wrigley Field at 8 a.m. Wednesday, ready to go out to the bullpen for “dry work,” according to pitching coach Tommy Hottovy.
After throwing 26 pitches the night before and being charged with eight earned runs without recording an out, throwing off the mound was off the table. But that wasn’t stopping him.
“For him to take that rough night last night,” Hottovy said before the Cubs’ 3-1 loss to the Giants, “he’s like, ‘I didn’t sleep anyway, let’s get to work.’ As a coach, that’s a cool place to be.”
In general, the Cubs’ bullpen has solidified recently. But relievers will be tested over the next several weeks — as long as left-handed starter Shota Imanaga is out with a strained hamstring.
The injuries to Imanaga and Justin Steele — the Cubs’ top two starters entering the season — don’t just affect the pitchers who fill in for them. They can lead to shorter starts and put pressure on the bullpen. That was in play as the Cubs lost a three-game series to the Giants. So they need Pressly to rebound.
Before Tuesday, Pressly had been getting good results. He hadn’t given up an earned run in his previous 10 appearances. But compared to last year, his whiff rate was down on all of his pitches except his curveball.
While continuing to address some of the mechanical issues that plagued him last year, Pressly is focused on posture and the strength of his front leg.
“I believe in deception factors that don’t maybe show up in normal mechanical breakdowns or even in pitch data,” Hottovy said. “He could have good pitch data, but I do believe that there are some mechanical things that hitters are just seeing the ball a little early. And you can have good pitch data, good velocity, but if the hitter sees it a tick early, whether it’s subconscious or they’re actually picking it up, it just gives them more time.”
For Pressly, that happens when he opens up early, something the Cubs have been aware of since at least spring training.
“There’s minor, minor things,” Hottovy said of Pressly’s mechanical progress since then. “Maybe how his hands are breaking, or how his lower body is, just the timing of his delivery. I liken his mechanics more to a timing issue than a movement pattern issue.”
Pressly also had his progress disrupted by a knee issue. Two weeks ago, he had his right knee drained.
“Usually when it is a lower-body injury or there’s something that’s not quite right, you tend to change up your timing to protect it,” Hottovy said. “So just getting that timing back, that’s it.”
When Pressly’s mechanics are off, he tends to yank his fastball down. Locating that pitch up in the zone is key to his success.
“When everything is down in one location, command may be good, but it tends to lead to more contact, foul balls, weak contact, than it does the swing-and-miss,” Hottovy said. “When you understand you’re not getting swing-and-miss, some guys try to get swing-and-miss from the first pitch. Which I would say all the time, swing-and-miss matters with two strikes more than anything.”
Pressly also went four days between appearances due to a lack of save situations.
“There’s going to be opportunities where it’s like, ‘Hey, if you haven’t thrown a couple days, we need to get your work day in; it might not be a high-leverage situation, but we need to get the reps,’ ” Hottovy said. “Because he’s going to be better down the road by pitching more, and we’ve just got to figure out how to navigate that in the series.”