Article: The Cubs, the Nature of Pitching Depth, and the Long Season Ahead

[matto1233]

In the spring, everyone believes they have pitching depth. The Chicago Cubs, though, can point to an objective framework that keeps the whole league in view, which says that they have better depth than most.

Image courtesy of © Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports

We’ve all likely heard this news by now: Jameson Taillon’s back acted up on him just prior to his first scheduled spring training appearance, and as of this writing, he has still yet to throw a Cactus League inning. According to Bruce Levine, the veteran righthander’s back has responded well to his rest and treatment, and he is planning on throwing off of a mound later this week. Given that we’re a little more than a week away from Opening Day, though, it is unlikely he will be ready to go for the start of the season. 

Caleb Kilian, who looked good in his three preseason appearances, will also be out (in his case, for several months) after an MRI revealed a strain of the teres major in his right shoulder. This all sounds really bad for the Chicago Cubs, and it is, but frankly, they should be glad that these are the only injuries that have struck their pitching staff to this point in spring training.

Kyle Bradish was diagnosed with a sprained UCL and will miss the start of the season. Lucas Giolito is out for the year after undergoing elbow surgery. Justin Verlander will miss the start of the season with a shoulder injury. Most importantly, the once invulnerable Gerrit Cole has been shut down after experiencing elbow pain and likely won’t resume throwing again for several weeks. 

This all underscores a larger point: Throughout the history of baseball, pitchers have never been as fragile as they are right now. According to The Athletic, injured list placement for pitchers rose from 241 in 2010 to 552 in 2021. Use of the IL has dropped slightly in the years since then, but according to CBS Sports, the number of days lost to the injured list this past season rose 6.1 percent. That implies that, while the number of injuries might be tailing off, the severity of those injuries continues to worsen. 

Some blame the pitch clock for this. Pitchers now have less time to recuperate between pitches, and some think this is an issue that compounds over the course of the season. Others blame the increased focus on velocity and spin rate. With pitchers throwing at maximum effort every single pitch, more arm injuries are bound to happen. I’d tend to lean toward the latter being the reason, but I am not a doctor, nor am I remotely smart enough to be one. 

But enough self-deprecation! Since the Cole injury, specifically, I have been thinking a lot about pitching depth in baseball. I assume everyone reading this has had the importance of pitching depth drilled into them by Jed Hoyer by now. It is unfathomable to me that the 2016 Chicago Cubs had five pitchers combine for 152 starts. It’s even more unfathomable to me that that was only eight years ago. Hoyer is likely correct when he says that that is not something that will repeat itself any time soon.

The Cubs don’t have a bona fide ace. Justin Steele is very good, but most projection systems are bearish on him and consider him a good, but not elite, starting pitcher. ZiPS projects him to be the 35th best pitcher in baseball in 2024. Shota Imanaga might be really good, but he is way too much of a question mark at this point for anyone to consider him an ace. 

So, sure, the Cubs lack an elite ace. But are we sure that is all that much of an issue? I co-own a fantasy baseball team with my brother, and we have a philosophy on pitching. I know, nobody cares about my fantasy baseball team, but bear with me. It’s an auction league, and our strategy is to (almost) never bid on a pitcher that will cost us more than $10 or $15. Pitchers are way too fragile, and we’d much rather bank on six out of 10 decent pitchers staying healthy and giving us bulk counting stats while reinvesting that money on hitters, where performance and health are just a bit more reliable. If you drop $35 on Spencer Strider and he gets hurt, or has an unlucky year and posts a 3.86 ERA like he did last year, you end up with a lot of money that could have been better spent elsewhere.

What the Cubs do have is depth. Take the Cole injury as an example. Last season, the Yankees (as a team) posted 13.4 pitching WAR, according to FanGraphs. Cole himself was responsible for 38.8 percent of that total. The Cubs posted 16.9 WAR, and their best pitcher, Justin Steele, was responsible for 29 percent of it. The Cubs have less of their value tied up in any one specific player, which in theory, would make it easier for them to withstand any sort of injury. In the era of injuries to pitchers being so frequent, this feels important to me. 

Ben Clemens wrote brilliantly about this at FanGraphs recently. The Cliffs Notes version is that they reran season simulations after removing the best player from a team. Then, they did it with the top two players removed, then the top three, and so on. You should check out his articles on it, but what struck me as interesting is where the Cubs fell on these lists.

As it currently stands, the Cubs project to be an exactly average team: 15th in all of baseball with a .501 winning percentage. If you remove their best player (Dansby Swanson), they project to have a .500 winning percentage. I won’t walk you through the entire table, but notice that once you get down to removing the top eight, nine, or 10 best players, the Cubs vault into having one of the three best winning percentages in that scenario. This is for all players, not just pitchers, but it still goes to show that the Cubs are one of the deepest teams in baseball.

Does this mean that the Cubs shouldn’t invest in superstar-level players? Of course not. Those types of players raise a team’s ceiling immensely. But in an era where players (and, more specifically, pitchers) seem to be dropping like flies, I have found myself wondering if building your team this way can be a legitimate strategy. With Taillon missing the start of the season, the Cubs have Javier Assad available to fill in and hold his own. If that doesn’t work out, they can give Drew Smyly a try. If that doesn’t work out, maybe Ben Brown or Cade Horton can get a shot. The old saying goes “you can never have too much depth,” and that has never applied more than right here and right now. I can’t wait to see how it works out for this iteration of the Cubs. 

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[Bertz]

I am definitely of the mind that the Weak Link theory of roster building applies in baseball.  Maybe not in the playoffs but certainly in the regular season.

In that vein, I feel really good about the Cubs pitching staff.  There will certainly be pitchers who underperform, but half the pitching staff is optionable and half the Iowa pitching staff is guys I'd feel comfortable taking major league innings in the short to medium term.  Of the MLB guys you might side-eye, Taillon’s the only one locked up long term and thus you'd have to continually run out there even through struggles.

Having both depth and flexibility means that you should feel good about most innings on most days.  That's a really good way to pile up a lot of wins.  Even really really good teams often have a messy back third of the pitching staff.  Like the Braves gave Jared Shuster (5.81 ERA) 11 starts last year.  The Dodgers got a collective 5.61 ERA across 46 starts from their #5-#8 starters.  If the quartet of Wicks/Smyly/Assad/Wesneski give the Cubs ~50 starts of a ~4.50 ERA that's an enormous competitive advantage.

[CubinNY]

13 minutes ago, Bertz said:

I am definitely of the mind that the Weak Link theory of roster building applies in baseball.  Maybe not in the playoffs but certainly in the regular season.

In that vein, I feel really good about the Cubs pitching staff.  There will certainly be pitchers who underperform, but half the pitching staff is optionable and half the Iowa pitching staff is guys I'd feel comfortable taking major league innings in the short to medium term.  Of the MLB guys you might side-eye, Taillon’s the only one locked up long term and thus you'd have to continually run out there even through struggles.

Having both depth and flexibility means that you should feel good about most innings on most days.  That's a really good way to pile up a lot of wins.  Even really really good teams often have a messy back third of the pitching staff.  Like the Braves gave Jared Shuster (5.81 ERA) 11 starts last year.  The Dodgers got a collective 5.61 ERA across 46 starts from their #5-#8 starters.  If the quartet of Wicks/Smyly/Assad/Wesneski give the Cubs ~50 starts of a ~4.50 ERA that's an enormous competitive advantage.

Totally agree. The playoffs are about who is playing the best come playoff time. 
It’s two different seasons. 

[Hairyducked Idiot]

My general rule is that you want to start the season with at least 18 guys in your system that you're comfortable using for MLB innings.  I think the Cubs are probably there or getting close.