Interesting, thanks, Robb. Agree, having Johnson emerge as a viable decent rotation option would really help. Whether for injury, or Hammel 2nd-half decline this year. Or for 2017 when Hammel no longer has a guaranteed deal, or for that matter for 2018 when Lackey's is done. Would be interesting to see what Johnson did if he was and stayed healthy all spring and into the summer.
Interesting that he speaks positively about his change development, as if that's new and was heavily incorporated.
Sahadev Sharma had a Johnson report in Vineline just this week. Instead of talking about the change, he said that Johnson had developed a cutter during 2014, and that in 2015 he relied heavily, perhaps excessively, on his cutter. Suggested some Cub people thought he hadn't used his fastball enough, and that the increased reliance on the cutter perhaps led to Johnson's drop in K's.
If he had a *good* fastball and slider, and then added in good cutter plus also a good change, that would give some tools to win with. The flip is that his fastball command has often been scouted as inconsistent. May be that having four pitches, several still in the development mode, might work against consistent command of any of them. Hopefully he'll be a nice development story, guy who needed to add some weapons, and over time masters them and ends up succeeding.