Taillon leans on new batterymate to twirl 10-K gem

CHICAGO -- Cubs starter Jameson Taillon was informed that Tomás Nido would be his catcher a few days ahead of his outing against the Mets on Saturday. Nido was only brought into the fold on Wednesday, so the pair had a brief window to get to work on building rapport and a game plan.

“We were kind of just going through a crash course,” Taillon said.

Nido caught Taillon in a bullpen session and then they sat together during Friday’s game to watch New York’s hitters and gain more familiarity with one another. With Nido behind the plate one day later, Taillon then pieced together arguably his most complete performance since joining the Cubs, helping guide the North Siders to an 8-1 win at Wrigley Field.

For the first time in Taillon’s career, the big right-hander delivered a double-digit strikeout total with no walks on his pitching line. He finished with 10 strikeouts over seven innings, limiting the Mets to a solo homer by Francisco Alvarez. New York’s handful of other scoring opportunities were quashed.

Taillon became the first Cubs right-hander with 10-plus strikeouts and no walks in an outing since Sept. 4, 2020 (Yu Darvish).

"He was aggressive. He attacked the zone,” said Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, whose time as the Yankees' bench coach overlapped with Taillon’s years in the Bronx. “I thought the cutter was in play today. That first inning, the cutter was up for a couple of strikeouts. The slider, and the way he used all of his pitches -- he's a good pitcher, and he was on."

Taillon’s cutter usage was at 31% on Saturday, which was a jump from his 22.4% rate on the season. He more than doubled his rate of sinkers, while reducing the number of sweepers and curves compared to his season showing. The righty pointed out that he used a few of the pitches differently against the Mets, too.

Taillon said he has been discussing different looks for his repertoire with the coaching staff and catchers. Some of the adjustments against New York included featuring sinkers to the outside edge against righties, or sinkers that catch the inside edge against lefties. He also tried his curve against righties and went with his cutter inside to lefties more than usual.

Nido absorbed those ideas in the past few days and immediately applied them against the Mets.

“He went out there and followed through with it,” Taillon said.

It helped that the Cubs’ lineup spotted Taillon an early lead.

In the first inning, Chicago sent nine batters to the plate against Mets righty Tylor Megill and struck for five runs. That included a trio of run-scoring hits -- a single (Christopher Morel), double (Dansby Swanson) and triple (Pete Crow-Armstrong) -- with two outs. Two innings later, Morel launched the longest homer of the season for the Cubs (446 projected feet, per Statcast) for his 14th shot of the year.

“That’s the way to start off a game,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said.

The early lead enabled Taillon to embrace an aggressive approach, which plays to his strengths as a pitcher who lives in and around the zone. The righty held New York’s lineup to an 0-for-5 showing with runners in scoring position and a 1-for-8 day overall with runners on base. Taillon generated 15 swinging strikes along the way -- his most since Sept. 22 last year.

“He pitched really well,” Counsell said. “Definitely got more swing-and-miss than we've seen in the last couple of starts. But I thought he was just locked in. I thought Tomás did a really nice job with him and he just controlled counts really, really well.”

Nido, who contributed an RBI double in the sixth inning, spent parts of the past eight seasons as a catcher with the Mets. He was released last week and subsequently signed by the Cubs, who designated struggling veteran Yan Gomes for assignment as part of the transaction.

Nido said getting to catch a pitcher like Taillon was a great place to start with the North Siders.

“That’s huge for me,” Nido said. “To have a guy who can command all his pitches and move the ball around, it makes it a lot of fun to call a game back there and get creative.”

Taillon was impressed with how quickly Nido adapted and executed.

“He was definitely creative back there,” Taillon said. “We did some different things than normal, while also establishing our strengths, so it was a lot of fun. He's fun to work with. I think he'll just fit right in.”