Iowa
Reliever-ish Returns at Iowa: Hughes, Burdi, Brown – Bleacher Nation
A few very notable pitcher returns at Iowa last night, with each of Ben Brown, Brandon Hughes, and Nick Burdi throwing a scoreless inning.
The charts for Brown and Hughes:
Ben Brown goes strikeout, strikeout, double, line out in his return. Numbers below (tho remember the algo is wrong – slider is curveball, cutter is slider).
Fastball was 94.9-96.6, breakers played well. Good first step back. pic.twitter.com/nrOp3ZovHq— Cubs Prospects – Bryan Smith (@cubprospects) September 4, 2023 Here’s a look at Brandon Hughes’ scoreless inning (H, BB, K) in his return to action with the I-Cubs.
91.8-93.3 with fastball, strikeout and hit both on changeup, similar as we remember movement on slider. pic.twitter.com/m2AakdXydz— Cubs Prospects – Bryan Smith (@cubprospects) September 3, 2023
With Hughes, he’s going to be back up with the big league team as soon as he’s fully-healthy and fully ramped-up, so long as the stuff more or less looks like the guy the Cubs know. They need that lefty arm available, and Hughes will be getting a look, together with Luke Little.
With Brown, who missed a little over a month with a lat strain, it’s really going to be more of a question about whether they think he can impact down the stretch. Long-term, he’s still a starting pitcher, but if this is a way to get some impact and also get him some big league exposure? You’d like to see the Cubs jump on that, too. It kind of depends on how well/quickly Brown adjusts to being a reliever.
Nick Burdi also had a scoreless frame with a strikeout, though of note on him, the fastball was only 96-98 mph (he had been in the 100 mph range earlier this year), so he may have some build up yet to go. Interestingly, his slider was way down in velocity with a whole lot more horizontal movement – borderline sweeper territory. Which would be kind of odd for him to pick-up midseason while rehabbing, especially when his gyro slider had been – if I remember correctly – quite nasty and productive. Maybe it was a fluke?
In any case, Burdi is perhaps slightly less likely than Brown or Hughes to come up in September, but it’s certainly not out of the question. The Cubs may cycle a lot of guys through as they aim to calm down the usage on the highest-leverage guys, and also see if anyone can get on a real heater in advance of the postseason.