This story was excerpted from Jordan Bastian's Cubs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
CHICAGO -- Ryan Pressly has made a career out of having a short memory and quickly turning the page mentally after a rough outing. That is a part of the skill set that has made the veteran right-hander an effective late-inning arm for over a decade in the Majors.
Even Pressly admitted that was difficult after his disastrous appearance against the Giants last month.
“Oh no, that one sucked. That wasn’t a very fun couple of days there,” Pressly said recently. “Obviously, it was my career worst. It’s unfortunate that Cubbie fans got to see a career-worst, but unfortunately, it happens. The best thing you can do is just be ready to go whenever they call you to go out there and get more outs.”
Since the outing in question on May 6 -- when Pressly was charged with nine runs without recording an out in the 11th inning of a loss to San Francisco -- the 36-year-old has been on a strong run out of the Cubs’ bullpen. In the 16 games that have followed, Pressly has 14 strikeouts and just three walks, with one unearned run yielded in 15 innings.
When Pressly went “back to the drawing board,” the process was less about spotting any mechanical flaws and more about why the Giants were able to attack him in such a relentless and swift fashion. One of the ideas that the Cubs’ pitching group floated was having Pressly get feedback from one of Chicago’s hitters.
Pressly sought insight from Ian Happ. The veteran wanted to know how the outfielder would prepare for facing the righty.
“There’s definitely times where guys will ask, ‘If I throw this pitch in this situation, or this pitch off that pitch, what do you think?’” Happ said. “He wanted kind of like, ‘What would you be looking for against me? How would you game plan for me?’”
“There’s a lot of credit that goes around for that,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “But it’s really just, let’s try to uncover everything we can do to help a teammate. There might have been six ideas that didn’t work, right? But you’re just trying to do everything you can do to maybe get a different way to think about a problem.”
Pressly appreciated that Happ was willing to put together that type of report.
“I added a little bit extra to see if he could help me, and he did,” Pressly said. “He pulled me off to the side and he helped me out a lot.”
One piece of feedback was that Pressly might benefit from altering his pitch usage -- something the righty has adjusted since the start of the season. Pressly has decreased his slider use (28.3% in the first month, compared to 12.2% in June, entering Sunday) and upped his four-seamer rate (32.5% in the first month, compared to 46.9% in June), while also featuring more sinkers and fewer curveballs.
“We were seeing kind of a pattern that I was falling into,” Pressly said. “With the pitch repertoire that I have, we shouldn’t be doing that necessarily. We’ve got to mix it in a little bit more and keep guys off-balance.”
Pressly has seen his velocity tick up -- he had his two hardest-thrown fastballs of the season on June 9 in Philadelphia -- along with his swing-and-miss rate and strikeout rate since the start of the season. While multiple people were involved in helping Pressly get back on track, Happ enjoyed playing a small role.
“It’s really easy to be stubborn and to kind of rely on what you’ve done in the past,” Happ said. “It’s a lot harder to reflect and try to figure out ways to improve continuously. Just a lot of respect for the fact that he was willing to do that and willing to ask questions. And it’s obviously cool seeing just how effective he’s been.”