Cubs bullpen coach Darren Holmes waited until Thursday morning to talk through Jack Neely’s debut with the towering right-hander.
“I’m glad that we got him in last night,” Holmes said in a conversation with the Sun-Times. “He threw 22 pitches, and I come in there today and I say, ‘Hey, how do you feel?’ He goes, ‘I’m good. I’m up. I want to be up.’ That tells me something.”
Neely took the mound in the ninth inning of the Cubs’ 8-2 loss to the Tigers. A leadoff walk came back to bite him, extending his inning. And against the top of the batting order, he gave up a pair of two-out singles and a home run, for four runs in all.
“It’s a dream come true,” he said after the game. “Every kid that’s ever played baseball has wanted to debut. Didn’t go the way we wanted, but hopefully the first to many. Keep rolling from here.”
Neely estimates he had a group of “at least 20-something” family members and friends at Wrigley Field when he was called up Tuesday. And they were able to adjust their travel plans to be there when he debuted the next day.
“The Neelys travel pretty large,” he said.
Those were the first earned runs he’d allowed since the Cubs acquired him from the Yankees at the trade deadline, making six appearances for Triple-A Iowa before his call-up.
“That’s like a little bit of an out-of-body experience,” manager Craig Counsell said of debuts. “You almost take, ‘I did it, it’s over, let’s just go back to pitching.’ Don’t take too much from it, good or bad, would be my advice in your first big-league appearance.”
Neely already identified a mechanical tweak coming out of the outing.
“The thing that I think Jack’s gotten better at this year is just flat out throwing strikes and being competitive with his pitches,” Counsell said. “And you probably saw that escape him a little bit last night. And so that’s really most important. I think his stuff has proven to work when it’s executed.”
His two-pitch mix includes a riding fastball and a slider with downward movement, as opposed to the sweeper that has become so popular in recent years. But the Tigers weren’t chasing his slider out of the zone. And he only put three over the plate, generating two swings.
“He’s got good stuff,” catcher Christian Bethancourt said. “… And he’s going to learn from it, and he’s going to get better.”