{"id":608129,"date":"2026-03-05T17:53:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T17:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/608129\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T17:53:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T17:53:18","slug":"2026-chicago-cubs-player-profiles-daniel-palencia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/608129\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Chicago Cubs player profiles: Daniel Palencia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/go.skimresources.com\/?id=1025X1734621&amp;xs=1&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mlb.com%2Fplayer%2Fdaniel-palencia-694037\" rel=\"sponsored nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Daniel Jesus Palencia<\/a>, the 26-year-old Venezuelan native, is the Cubs\u2019 current closer. It\u2019s his second year in the top spot, and so far he looks like he plans to stay there.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Palencia throws the ball hard and has evidenced decent control of his offerings. Last year, he had a losing record (1-6), but also logged a 2.91 ERA, with 22 saves and 61 strikeouts, in 52.2 innings in 54 games, good for 0.6 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/p\/palenda01.shtml\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">bWAR<\/a> (1.0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fangraphs.com\/players\/daniel-palencia\/27914\/stats\/pitching\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">fWAR<\/a>). He have up 5 home runs and issued 16 bases on balls. That\u2019s good stuff.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Projections generally have him throwing a few more innings but continuing in the same vein, which would be just fine with the Cubs, I would imagine. A 25 plus strikeout percentage, and a 10% or under BB% are other features that Palencia is predicted to gather.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Palencia threw three pitches in 2025, out of five he has on hand. His FB can reach triple digits and sits around 98 mph, his splitter travels around 88, and his slider is around the same. He abandoned his changeup in 2024 and his curve last year. He doesn\u2019t seem to need them. He also throws a very occasional sinker, <a href=\"https:\/\/baseballsavant.mlb.com\/savant-player\/daniel-palencia-694037?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Baseball Savant<\/a> says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Palencia gets his power from his tree-trunk thighs and Cal Raleigh fundament. At 26, he should be able to keep those heaters coming for a while still.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Jesus Palencia, the 26-year-old Venezuelan native, is the Cubs\u2019 current closer. It\u2019s his second year in the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,70392,4245,161,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-608129","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-cubs","11":"tag-chicago-cubs-player-profiles","12":"tag-chicagocubs","13":"tag-cubs","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116177850038789870","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}