Article: Remember Some Cubs: The Chaotic Dominance of Carlos Marmol

[matto1233]

Desperate for a win, and to generate some positive momentum for their season, the 2009 Chicago Cubs turned to Carlos Marmol in the eighth inning of a game against the then-Florida Marlins. It was May 1, and the Northsiders, up 8-5, needed their best reliever to start performing as such.

Image courtesy of Brock Beauchamp

To that point in the season, Marmol had a 6.00 ERA, and had just given up four runs to the Arizona Diamondbacks in a disastrous outing a few days prior. After walking the first two hitters he faced, Marmol then struck out the next three in a row, putting out the fire that he had started.

This was the essence of Carlos Marmol: enter a game, walk a bunch of guys, then strike a bunch of guys out. Rinse and repeat. His appearances were never smooth, and while I don’t think anybody ever felt like the game was securely in hand when he took the mound, he almost always got the job done at the end of the day. I feel like, due to the rocky nature of his outings, Marmol has become forgotten in Cubs history. However, he just may be one of the greatest relievers that this franchise has ever seen.

Marmol signed with the Cubs as a 16-year-old catcher and outfielder in July, 1999. After hitting only one home run and posting a .559 OPS in the minor leagues in the 2002 season, Marmol officially converted to become a pitcher that offseason.

Following a steady rise through the minors as a starting pitcher, Marmol made his major-league debut in 2006, at age 23. He ended the year with 19 mostly unsuccessful appearances (13 starts and six out of the bullpen), as he had a 6.08 ERA and an even 1.00 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

The right-handed pitcher made his 2007 debut on May 19, with a scoreless inning of relief, and thus began his reign of chaotic dominance. He would finish the season with a 1.43 ERA, third among all relievers, and his strikeout rate of 33.7% was second. His walk rate, while bad (12.3%), was 18th-worst. (Remember Some Cubs bonus: future Cub Brandon Morrow had the worst walk rate among relievers that year, at 17.3%.) 

I would be remiss to discuss Marmol’s strikeouts and walks without mentioning the culprit for his effective wildness: his slider. Nobody, Marmol included, had any idea where that thing was going to end up when he threw it, but man, was it nasty. Batters hit only .167 against him in 2007, which was fourth-lowest in MLB. If he was capable of getting the slider anywhere near the plate, hitters were either swinging and missing, or hitting very soft contact somewhere.

The wild relief pitcher followed up his 2007 season with an equally good 2008 season. Then, he really started to lose control of where he was throwing the baseball. The 2009 season saw his strikeout rate drop to a still-good 27.8%, but coupled with a rise in walk rate (to a major league-leading 19.4%), the slippage made him (for that one season) a good, but not great, pitcher.

Which brings us to 2010. That strikeout rate jumped right back up, and Marmol led all qualified relief pitchers with 2.7 WAR. He set the all-time record for the best K/9 ratio for a pitcher (minimum 50 innings) with 15.99 strikeouts per nine frames. (Another Remember Some Cubs bonus: In our current era of strikeout mania, this has since been broken several times, with Aroldis Chapman currently holding the record at 17.67 K/9 in his 2014 season. Marmol’s 2010 season remains a Cubs record, though.) 

Marmol’s 6.7 WAR from 2007 to 2010 was eighth among all relievers in baseball. His 33.9% strikeout rate led all relievers, and his 14.9% walk rate was fifth-worst. He hit 30 batters, which also led all relief pitchers and further compounded the issue. But still: to underscore just how unhittable he was, and to add to the list of things he led relievers in, hitters hit only .152 against him. His slider was worth 53 runs above average, according to Statcast, which made it the third-most valuable pitch for a reliever across those four seasons. For those curious: Heath Bell’s fastball was worth 55.6 runs above average, and, of course, Mariano Rivera’s cutter was worth 54 runs above average. Make no mistake about it: Despite the walks, during his four-year peak, Marmol was elite.

Then started a downward trend: he continued walking and striking everybody out in the 2011 and 2012 seasons, but his slider went from completely unhittable to somewhat hittable, which inflated his ERA to 3.76 across those two campaigns. He was designated for assignment by the Cubs in June of 2013, in the wake of a really rough start to the season. He would go on to throw 21 ⅓ innings for the Dodgers to finish 2013, and then 13 ⅓ innings for the Marlins the following season, and would never appear in a major-league game again after that. 

For his Cubs career, Marmol ended up with 6.8 WAR, per FanGraphs. That’s third all-time for Cubs relievers. Bruce Sutter and Lee Smith are well ahead of him, with 16.1 and 14.9 WAR, respectively. Passing two Hall of Famers is tough to do, though, so coming third on this list is nothing to sneeze at. He was far from perfect as a pitcher, but that is also what made him so fun to watch. Watching him walk the bases loaded was never fun in real time, but it only made it so much more fun when he’d strike out the side immediately after that.

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[Guest234]

In his time, he was the subject of lots of whining and bellyaching, similar to Patrick Wisdom today.

All he had to do was throw strikes, the bum.

[BaezBall13]

Charlie Marbles

[vance_the_cubs_fan]

Two nice Marmol stories.

First, when the Cubs moved their minor league affiliate from West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx, the DJaxx put old jerseys for sale and I bought Carlos Marmol's minor league jersey from AA which I was able to later get him to sign.

Secondly, when my daughter was four years old (so 2008), we went to see the Cubs in SD. While standing at the dugout before the game, Marmol saw my daughter in her Cubs t-shirt and pointed her out and tossed her a ball.

And here's me with Carlos Marmol in 2007. 

[Old Time Cub Fan]

Great article remembering Marmol. He was not like anything we've ever seen before. He would be virtually unhitable for quite awhile and them completely blow up for a couple appearances, get bank on track and same over and over again. 

[imb]

On 2/11/2024 at 9:52 PM, vance_the_cubs_fan said:

Two nice Marmol stories.

First, when the Cubs moved their minor league affiliate from West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx, the DJaxx put old jerseys for sale and I bought Carlos Marmol's minor league jersey from AA which I was able to later get him to sign.

Secondly, when my daughter was four years old (so 2008), we went to see the Cubs in SD. While standing at the dugout before the game, Marmol saw my daughter in her Cubs t-shirt and pointed her out and tossed her a ball.

And here's me with Carlos Marmol in 2007. 

marmol had airpods, time travel confirmed

[matto1233]

On 2/11/2024 at 10:52 PM, vance_the_cubs_fan said:

Two nice Marmol stories.

First, when the Cubs moved their minor league affiliate from West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx, the DJaxx put old jerseys for sale and I bought Carlos Marmol's minor league jersey from AA which I was able to later get him to sign.

Secondly, when my daughter was four years old (so 2008), we went to see the Cubs in SD. While standing at the dugout before the game, Marmol saw my daughter in her Cubs t-shirt and pointed her out and tossed her a ball.

And here's me with Carlos Marmol in 2007. 

Thanks for sharing! Love hearing stories like this about players. 

[Guest234]

Instead of "pieces" for stat based empires in the air.