Porter Hodge and the Curse of the Bad Inning

To paraphrase a Mae West quote, but then completely change the meaning, when Porter Hodge is good, he’s very good, but when he’s bad, he’s ****ing terrible. If he were brought back to the majors when roster expand, what kind of performance can the Cubs expect from the guys who finished as their closer in 2024?

In both his time in Chicago and Iowa, Hodge has generally been very good, with his mix of high 90s fastball and his sharp slider, producing lots of strikeouts and making him unhittable at times. Unfortunately, his good efforts have been counterbalanced by some absolutely terrible games, where teams teed off against him.

He has pitched in 40 games this year across AAA and the majors, and the stats are not pretty. 30 Earned runs in 38 innings has led to a combined ERA of 7.11. But of the 30 earned runs given up, an amazing 25 have occurred in only 5 games:

• 3/18 vs AZ (MLB) – 0.2 IP, 4H. 6ER, 2BB, 1K, 1HR
• 5/11 @NYM (MLB) – 0.1 IP, 3H, 3ER, 0BB, 0K, 1HR
• 6/20 @NAS (AAA) – 0.1 IP, 4H, 6ER, 2BB, 0K, 0HR
• 7/8 @ MIN (MLB) – 0.1 IP, 5H, 6ER, 1BB, 0K 3 HR
• 7/29 vs IND (AAA) – 0.1 IP, 2H, 4ER, 2BB, 1K, 0HR

The games combined are 2IP, 18H, 25ER, 7BB, 2K, 5HR . This is a 112.50 ERA and a 112.50 WHIP.

But subtract these 5 games from his stats, and he would have:
35G, 36 IP, 21H, 5ER, 18BB, 46K, 2HR, 1.25 ERA, 1.08 WHIP

Of course, dropping out the worst games would really improve the stats of any pitcher, but I doubt we’ve seen a pitcher with this much variance between good and bad. One thing I noticed in his poor outing against the Twins was that his fastball velocity was down a couple of MPH, and his was immediately put on the IL afterward.

Here is a chart of his pitch velovity during the season, and you wil notice the downturn in July:

Unfortunately, we can’t see the same data most recently from Iowa, but here are all the FB velocities from his most recent game on 8/22: 95.4, 96.9, 96.3, 96, 96.2, 96.3, 96, 96.2, 96.5, 96.9, 96.4. That looks much better than his number against the Twins in July.

I think his biggest question mark on whether or not he will come back is his control. While he’s pitched much better for the Iowa Cubs in Aust, he still has allowed 7 walks in 10 innings, and walks are the thing you really do not want to see from your relievers in a pennant race.

It will be interesting to see if the Cubs decide to see if Hodge can be brought back into the circle of trust for relievers, or whether they will go with a different option when adding an extra arm — especially until Javier Assad is eligible to return to the majors.