The Michael Fulmer Is Useless and/or David Ross is a Moron Thread

[apete6]

Why is this guy pitching in the 9th inning? Every other team in the league is closing with a guy who throws 99 and has a wipeout slider and we're trotting out a soft tossing crafty veteran who is trying to pitch like Mariano Rivera and failing spectacularly. Fire this guy into the sun (or the 6th inning). 

[Andy]

I just looked up his numbers on Baseball Savant and holy crap are they disgusting. By far career worsts in barrel rate allowed, xBA, xSLG (over .600!) and basically every other stat you could imagine. Throw Alzolay in there and see what happens. Can't do any worse.

[Bertz]

Fulmer averaged 96 last night and has a Wipeout slider

[apete6]

1 minute ago, Bertz said:

Fulmer averaged 96 last night and has a Wipeout slider

He has thrown more than 1/2 of his pitches this season as cutters that average 89.6 mph. Also, 96 is basically every single relief pitcher in baseball in 2023. He shouldn't be pitching in high leverage situations for a decent team. There's a reason he was signed so late. 

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/michael-fulmer-605242?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb

[Irrelevant Dude]

7 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Fulmer averaged 96 last night and has a Wipeout slider

Then why hasn't anyone been wiped out?

[Bertz]

Just now, Irrelevant Dude said:

Then why hasn't anyone been wiped out?

28.9% strikeout rate

2 minutes ago, apete6 said:

He has thrown more than 1/2 of his pitches this season as cutters that average 89.6 mph. Also, 96 is basically every single relief pitcher in baseball in 2023. He shouldn't be pitching in high leverage situations for a decent team. There's a reason he was signed so late. 

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/michael-fulmer-605242?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb

I don't get your point here?  Because his cutter/slider is in the 80's he's soft tossing now?  You know how silly that is right?  Is Justin Verlander soft tossing because his curveball is 79?

Fulmer had a 3.38 ERA and a 3.09 xFIP before last night's blowup.  He had a disaster outing, and we're early enough in the year one of those can nuke your numbers, but he's been quite good.

[Derwood]

13 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Fulmer averaged 96 last night and has a Wipeout slider

And all his pitches were a foot outside or right down he middle 

[Tryptamine]

10 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Fulmer averaged 96 last night and has a Wipeout slider

He also seems to get squared up on almost everything in the zone. He's already almost half way to his entire season's barrel total in 2022, allowing a ridiculous 12.5%. That's like facing Freddie Freeman every at bat.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

16 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Fulmer averaged 96 last night and has a Wipeout slider

Fulmer's slider:

[apete6]

3 minutes ago, Bertz said:

28.9% strikeout rate

I don't get your point here?  Because his cutter/slider is in the 80's he's soft tossing now?  You know how silly that is right?  Is Justin Verlander soft tossing because his curveball is 79?

Fulmer had a 3.38 ERA and a 3.09 xFIP before last night's blowup.  He had a disaster outing, and we're early enough in the year one of those can nuke your numbers, but he's been quite good.

Does Verlander throw 60% of his pitches at 79 now? 

The old 1.80 WHIP is looking awesome. Guy was afraid to throw a strike to Jason Heyward in the year 2023. 

[Irrelevant Dude]

17 minutes ago, Bertz said:

28.9% strikeout rate

I stand corrected.

Michael Fulmer wipes some guys out, but when he doesn't wipe them out, they wipe him out.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

54 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Fulmer averaged 96 last night and has a Wipeout slider

To that end, during the outing I was looking at Savant because it didn't look to me like he was throwing a slider, at least not the sweeper we're led to believe he's trying to add.  JD was calling one of his pitches a slider but it had so little movement Savant calls it a cutter, he hasn't thrown something classified as a sweeper since the 12th.

The knock on Fulmer is that he doesn't miss enough bats, and so he's going to be prone to getting BABIP'd, which is what happened to him in Los Angeles.  Last night he just didn't have his stuff and got knocked around, it was the first time he'd given up multiple 95+ mph EVs in an outing.  He needs to find the feel for that sweeper so he can miss more bats and so he can not be so reliant on the cutter/bullet slider that is the pitch most prone to getting hit hard(9 of his 12 hardest hit batted balls are on the cutter despite it being thrown 42% of the time).  In the meantime I wouldn't consider him the guy you want facing the heart of an opposing order and I would definitely try to avoid having him face too many LHH, but he should be higher up the food chain than Merryweather/Rucker.  With Taillon hurt and the weather warming up, there's gonna be more late inning appearances that start happen by necessity, especially with the 16 games in 16 days starting on Tuesday.  I'm not gonna be terrified if Fulmer is throwing in the late innings, but I really want to see the sweeper show up as an effective option for him.

[gflore34]

Don't know what this Cubs is but, I do know every permutation of 2023 playoff contenting Cubs does not have Fulmer being leveraged in high pressure situations.  Middle inning, mop up fine, but, when you need a big out or outs not a chance.  Is his contract guaranteed?  I know it's a one year deal, does he have options or can he be released?

[Hairyducked Idiot]

The difference between Fulmer being right in line with previous years is literally one swing of the bat.  It's too early to make big sweeping pronouncements on him.

If you wanna start eyeing someone else for 9th inning duties for awhile that's fine but I don't really think it solves anything.  This bullpen seems full of a lot of interchangeable parts.  I wish it was constructed in a way that made attacking matchups easier.

Re: ross, I don't have any problems with him.  I don't love every single decision but it's still baseball, where most of the decisions don't end up mattering as long as you don't Dusty-nuke your pitchers.

[Irrelevant Dude]

47 minutes ago, Hairyducked Idiot said:

The difference between Fulmer being right in line with previous years is literally one swing of the bat.  It's too early to make big sweeping pronouncements on him.

I agree somewhat with the second part of your statement.  We may be overreacting to a few bad outtings and prematurely writing him off, since it is still relatively early and we have a limited 2023 sample.

Where I disagree is that the difference was with one swing of the bat.  His whole outing was a mess yesterday, and that one swing of the bat was the result of everything else that came before it.

[UMFan83]

I didn't mind at all the idea of signing Fulmer and putting him a high leverage role.  And I still think Fulmer will be fine.  Just move him to a 7th inning role and let him get right.  Just not sure who closes games for the Cubs/pitches in their highest leverage situations.  

[apete6]

No words from the Fulmer supporters after another bad outing on Sunday in a less pressure (but still relevant) game situation. It's bad. Real bad. Guy doesn't need to see any part of a close game until something gets figured out. 

[Bertz]

5 minutes ago, apete6 said:

No words from the Fulmer supporters after another bad outing on Sunday in a less pressure (but still relevant) game situation. It's bad. Real bad. Guy doesn't need to see any part of a close game until something gets figured out. 

People who take the long view on player performance tend to not breathlessly give updates on a player after every game?

[Transmogrified Tiger]

18 minutes ago, apete6 said:

No words from the Fulmer supporters after another bad outing on Sunday in a less pressure (but still relevant) game situation. It's bad. Real bad. Guy doesn't need to see any part of a close game until something gets figured out. 

Nothing has really changed.  Here's Fulmer's Sunday outing in terms of xBA:
 

• .090 (fly out)
• .090 (fly out)
• .930 (bloop single at 75 EV)
• BB
• .290 (double)
• K

 

He had a very bad outing sandwiched by two outings that were more unlucky than bad, and 4 of his last 5 outings were against the best offense in the NL (non-Cubs division).  Until he gets a better feel for that sweeper, he's gonna be prone to more unlucky outings than you want in a closer, and that's part of why no one is clamoring for him to get every save opportunity.  But he's not useless as the thread title entails, and he's likely to be plenty fine in middle relief/setup situations as needed too.  I'm encouraged that he was trying the sweeper again on Sunday, though with no whiffs yesterday and only a 25% whiff rate in 23 pitches this year it clearly still has some work to do if it's going to be a weapon.

[apete6]

1 hour ago, Bertz said:

People who take the long view on player performance tend to not breathlessly give updates on a player after every game?

The guy has gotten worse both of the last 2 years prior to this one and the 2nd half of last year on the Twins was worse than the 1st half with the Tigers. It's more than a this year thing. Obviously I wouldn't expect him to have a 8.68 ERA and 1.93 WHIP all season, but combined with the previous couple of years of performance, I don't really know why it was ever expected that he would be a major part of a competitive bullpen. For a team that is probably going to be tracking within 1-3 games of making/missing the playoffs, every game that he pitches in could be the difference in the season outcome. Same with Hosmer and Torrens on the offensive side. This isn't like Juan Soto having a rough April.  

[squally1313]

Is there some clear alternative that you're pining for that doesn't carry a mathematically similar risk in a 9 inning sample of blowing up? 

Like, you're telling me that the guy who had a 3.17/3.51/4.15 ERA/FIP/xFIP over 133 innings the last two years shouldn't have been 'expected to be a major part of a competitive bullpen'. A 3.17 team bullpen ERA would have been second in baseball last year. It's late April, no one has learned anything of importance yet from 9 innings. 

[apete6]

Fulmer was good yesterday!