Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Examining the struggles of Jameson Taillon, Shota Imanaga this spring

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Marshall Harris discussed the struggles of Cubs right-hander Jameson Taillon and left-hander Shota Imanaga early on during spring training.

Rahimi Harrison Grody, Middays 10 to 2 on 104 3 The Score. Hey, everybody. Would you like some NFL news and notes first? Because today is the deadline for the franchise and transition tags. Tag them. Wait, no, not necessarily. Who do you want to tag? Oh, I just thought you were going to tell me somebody's getting tagged.

Yeah, that's happening. So according to Jordan Schultz, uh, Brees Hall is getting tagged. He ain't never leaving. bag him and tag him. That's so unfortunate for Breeze Hall. Sources, the Jets are placing the franchise tag on running back Breeze Hall. It's for $14.29 million.

Both sides are motivated to get a long-term deal done, but this now takes Hall off of the free agent market. That's why I think the franchise tag is dumb. Like, it's like, hey, here's a random year of your contract that we just up and created. I just, in trying to understand. understand the decisions teams make to tag and not to tag? I don't always understand it. Well, Brees Hall had value. I mean, we talked at one point about the possibility of him coming to the Bears. Now, it's been a while. That was over a year ago, but that was something that, you know,

was out there, was in the ether, so to speak. So. Do you think Bruce Hall wants to play for the newer Jets? I didn't think so. I'm kind of surprised at a long-term deal as part of the discussion here, because I thought that that guy wanted out of there. You know it's worse than playing for the Jets? not getting paid. Being on the franchise tag? Well, that too. So Jordan Schultz speculated that Breeshall would have done really well in the open market.

Would he have done better than 14.29 is the question. Here's another one from Jordan Schultz. The commanders are not planning to tender kicker Jake Moody as an RFA. He will become a free agent. So, you know, he had time here with the Bears and then he also was with the commanders.

And there's a couple of more that are notable before we get back into baseball talk as we have discussed. This is from Adam Schaefter. This is the surprising one. The Seattle Seahawks are not expected to tag Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker the third, who is now poised to become an unrestricted free agent with the new league year opens. With Kenneth Walker not expected to be tagged, there is a chance that he could become just the fourth player to win Super Bowl MVP

and begin the following season with a different team. The other three are an interesting list. Give it to me. Larry Brown, Desmond Howard, and Dexter Jackson. That is an interesting list. Yeah. It's always the usual unlikely Super Bowl MVP. Right, because if you were a standard Super Bowl MVP caliber player,

you would be kept, of course, by your team. Unless you were dealing with some cap issues, which Seahawks have decisions to make. Right. And Dexter Jackson was in 2003. So it's been a long time since anything like that has occurred. But something to keep a note of. So we will continue to monitor these and let you know what's happening on this tag deadline day in the NFL. You're it.

In the meantime, you didn't get to talk about this. And I know it's been something that you have very much been watching and monitoring is the propensity for Shodi Imanaga to give up home runs. and I know you were doing girls high school basketball last night for the you. But the night before, you were paying attention. And every time I texted you about the Shodimanaga home run alert, you were on top of it. And then it didn't get exactly better the next day when we saw yesterday, James and Tyone, who had already allowed a couple of home runs in spring training play,

continued that trend. So James and Tyone gives up a bevy of fun. home runs yesterday. Two, he also struck out to, but he walked to. He gave up six earned runs total in just two and two-thirds innings against the Cincinnati Reds. And there's a discussion that's ongoing about how seriously you take pitching performances in spring training. But I think that you shouldn't worry about Jameson Tayaon as much as you should with Chaudi Imenaga. Some numbers mean more than others. Tion has shown you that he will let a couple of home runs fly and he will do so at a decent clip even last season.

But he's usually working on multiple pitches and he will rectify what the problem is. His home run rate went down toward the end of the year compared to the beginning of the year last season. You can't say the same for Imanaga. Unfortunately, this feels like more of the same even though he's trying to mix in a new pitch and increase velocity.

If pitchers are able or if hitters are able to turn on something with confidence like they were with Shoda, where even some of the balls were outside of the zone, That gives me a little more concern than a James and Tyone who's shown you. He will work on pitches, bring Arsenal back in that he didn't have the year before, for example, like a sweeper, and that he will ultimately lower his home run number. What was interesting is in the first half of last season, in 17 starts, he gave up 22 home runs to James and Tyone. In the second half of the season, now he only made six starts because, you know, he was hurt part of that time.

But he only gave up two home runs when he came back in those six starts. So two home runs in 131 plate appearances versus 22 home runs in 388 plate appearances. You see the stark difference there in the percentages. And I think with Tyone, we just know him as a guy who's working with 10 pitches trying to figure out what do I want to make

like my main five or six pitches this year. Correct. And despite his velocity being down a touch his last time out or really just over the course of the spring, it's only been three starts, the 19.50 ERA doesn't scare me in the same manner that showed him in a managas anything scares me because here's the honest truth

because of the way last season ended with him not even be able to take the ball and his last availability when he could have taken the ball against the brewers it tells you where the cubs were with him and where he was with the cubs and we don't need to get into the qualifying offer and how he's getting paid a whole lot of money this year

as much as we need to understand if the cubs are going to be as good as we all think they're probably going to need something more than what we saw in the same second half when Imanaga, his last 11 games, was giving up bombs every time, every time, guarantee giving up bombs. Well, and it's why Jed Hoyer and Craig Counsel focused on pitching in the offseason.

They said they wanted to focus on pitching. I was like, yeah, you guys need to do that, but don't ignore the offensive hole that Kyle Tucker's going to leave because when that guy was healthy, he's the one who helped you get to that really nice lead in the Central before the Brewers decided to tear it down. But at the same time, I think that you can know that James and Tyen home run numbers in the spring are usually what we said. It's him bringing back a pitch that maybe didn't work for him the year before. He's going to try to bring it back in.

He does that during the season as well. He is a work in progress when it comes to that. Or, for example, in this case, you know, Shode Imanaga is working on stuff. But it's about how the hitter is seeing the ball. And if the hitter's still confident, even based on the pitch mix, which leads me to believe that tipping pitches is still an issue for him, then that's another issue altogether.

Regardless, it's ended up in the same result, which is runs. So how are you going to stop that? And how are you going to manage his outings in a rotation moving forward? I've been going back and forth on how I'm watching the World Baseball Classic. You know, James and Tyones pitching for Team Canada, that's where he's scheduled to make his next spring start, like non-regular season start. art. And so will I judge that a little bit differently than what I've seen in these exhibition

games? I think so, just because there's more on the table. It means more than I'm tinkering with things. You're trying to survive in advance and have Team Canada in out of pool play. So I will judge what I see from him a little more harshly, but at the same time, I have so much more confidence in him regaining his form the best of what he was last year, then Imanaga regaining his form and the best of what he was last year. Not saying it's not possible, I just don't think those two players are a great direct comparison because of the way they handle things and the styles of pitchers that they are.

Well, and yes, spring training is for this time. Spring training is for making mistakes. Spring training is for working on stuff. And theoretically, we should judge the two of them with that leg. It's just we have proof of one using it for that purpose, and we unfortunately don't have proof of another. It doesn't mean show to Imanaga can't do it. But when you don't get the break to break like you wanted to on a breaking ball, when you're leaving stuff up over the center of the plate, are you leaving it up too high, and the ball takes just too much time over the plate and the right part of the strike zone for a hitter to see,

it's just hard to know when does this turn. And Russ Dorsey said he's not worried because he knows that there are pitchers like Zach Granky who have used an entire spring training start to just throw fastballs just to see what's going on there. Absolutely. Like they'll use it as a way to test their stuff to that extent because they don't care.

They don't have to wear these numbers. Is it bad that I don't feel like that's what's happening with Amanaga just because of his experimenting with the pitchcom and trying to make sure the communication is good? It seems like he's experimenting with different types of things than maybe some other pitchers do at this point in the spring. I think he got a directive and it was, you need to throw harder. And so he's doing that. But it's a matter of at what cost to the accuracy and the command.

Cubs have a lot riding on whether or not Eminaga can be a valuable part of their staff and can make, I don't know, 25 plus starts. That's it. He's still an important piece of this as long as Justin Steele is out. and when Justin Steele says May or June, I tend to believe June as a possible return. I think that's realistic, understanding he was just clear to go about his business and you still got to build it up and everything else. And there should be no rush.

The premium starts for Justin Steele happen in the back half of the season and into the playoffs. So having a fresh arm like that injected, that could be really good for the Cubs. Yeah, I just don't want to be hopeful for June the entire. time leading up to his return. Like I don't want to get into the framework of, whoa, when the Bulls get Lonzo back. Oh, no, no, no. We're not doing that.

No. And there are two different scenarios, but you just don't want to have to rely on one person to come back to fix a lot of problems, especially one that only pitches every five days. You know, that's the hard part too. So I factor all of that in. But I say all of this to reiterate, James and Tyrone has earned our trust when it comes to knowing what the range of how much he's going to give up a home run ball and how it matters.

And he's good for a clunker or two in the regular season. There's no doubt. You just have to accept it sometimes. Most pitchers are. John Lester was always good for an August clunker. Knowing your body, knowing your clock, and knowing where you are and when you need to be pitching your best. I think that's a real thing. So I feel like in this case,

still be watchful on what Shodimanaga does, especially in important games of the world baseball classic. But I don't think you have to worry as much about James and Tyone, at least not yet. No, that's my overall message. James and Tyone, good to go. Shoda, I don't know. And I don't think they're in the same vote at all.

Yeah. And in the meantime, like we said, we will keep track of all of the tag news going on in the NFL. We'll tell you who's it, who didn't get tagged, and what might happen next. So we'll keep track of that as well. Coming up next here on Rahimi Harrison Grotie, it is time for halftime.

What you got? There has been a shot fired at our city that I don't think is fair. And I'm kind of surprised who it's by. Yep. Them's fighting words. We'll get into it next.