Dealing With The Whatever: Three Things True in Cubs' Woeful Bullpen Showing Monday

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Chicago Cubs' offense remains inconsistent, and its failure to fire at all over the first five innings of Monday's loss to the San Diego Padres was a key factor in that defeat. Another, though, was the latest in a chain of bullpen meltdowns that has to stop. What's the secret?

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

Some fans have sharply criticized Craig Counsell's deployment of his new team's relief corps this season, even as they have acknowledged that the talent with which he's been asked to work might be insufficient, and even with the understanding that the ultimate responsibility for massive failures to perform falls on the shoulders of those who have thus failed--in other words, on Adbert Alzolay, Jose Cuas, and the other hurlers who have done the actual work of letting games get away. There's been a thread of conversation drawn out from the premise that Counsell, who built and burnished his reputation in Milwaukee partially on bullpen management, was supposed to prevent these kinds of things from happening.

By and large, I find that line of thinking misguided, though it's understandable. Counsell does bear responsibility for the utilization of the pen, but a front office that overestimated its own pitching depth and a series of injuries that would have been hard to forecast (and which feel a bit like karmic recompense for the team's hubris) have conspired to put him in a tough position. The line already bordering on cliché from such heavy use is true: It's impressive that the Cubs are 21-15, even if they've gotten there in sometimes frustrating fashion.

Let's turn our attention specifically to Monday night, though, because I think there's some interesting stuff to say about that contest. It was Justin Steele's first start since Opening Day, and he looked great, but Counsell lifted him with two outs in the fifth inning, after the star southpaw had thrown 68 pitches and faced 18 batters. Richard Lovelady came on in Steele's stead, to face left-hitting Luis Arraez, but he also stayed in to start the San Diego sixth, in a scoreless tie.

In my opinion, three important things are true about the series of decisions Counsell made in this game, and about the way Cubs fans have interacted with them (and will, until Tuesday night's game begets a new narrative). Here they are.

1. It was the right night to let a game get away.
Every now and then, it is a manager's job to demand that their team earns a win themselves. Not every tie game in the sixth can compel a skipper to flip open the case over the activation switch and fire up their 'A' bullpen. Trying to will burn out the guys whom a team needs to trust to hold leads late in a season. Sometimes, even when a returning co-ace gives the evening a sense of extra import and potential momentum, you have to shrug and let Richard Lovelady and Daniel Palencia try to hold things together. If the Cubs had a 2-0 lead going into the sixth, I might sing a different tune, but at 0-0, it was proper to ask Lovelady to wade even through a right-leaning, dangerous heart of the Padres order.

This is my extremely rational side talking. Analytically and objectively, this game called for a bit of a reset, especially because the offense did nothing for the first half of the game against Yu Darvish. I'm not sure how removing Lovelady and bringing on Palencia without forcing the former to wear it a bit and soak up another few outs jived with that rationale, but it did seem like Counsell was willing to let the game go if the offense couldn't assert itself and prove the contest winnable. They didn't, so he was doing his duty by protecting both Steele and his top bullpen arms.

2. Counsell might not fully understand how hard the universe pushes against the Cubs, sometimes.
Alright, time to lean all the way the other direction, and embrace some irrationality. I admit that this sounds like unhinged paranoia, but I mean it in a more serious and less panicked way than others might, especially when the stakes are higher than they are right now. Here's my take: be it the culture of the team, the physical properties of Wrigley Field, the higher average attendance and fan investment (including palpable fan anxiety), or some metaphysical aspect I don't quite believe in but can't rule out, the Cubs work a little bit uphill late in games, compared to other teams.

I've held this opinion for two decades, first in a far more meatball, teenaged form, but even as I've become a nationally-focused baseball writer and spent time closely covering other teams in addition to the Cubs, I feel this. There's a tightness to games that shouldn't be tight, when the Cubs are involved. There's a sense of near-despair that sets in (not in me, but, seemingly, in the team or the gathered fans) when it shouldn't--when games are tied, or even when the Cubs have the lead but issue a seemingly innocuous one-out walk in the seventh.

Some people felt this, and then believed it entirely dissolved back into whatever evil crevice first disgorged it once the team broke its many curses and won the 2016 World Series. I've never felt it changed much at all. Sometimes, they do win the wrestling match, but this team seems to have to wrestle with the baseball gods in a way others don't, whenever being genuinely good (especially in a lasting way) seems within reach. A manager coming into the team from outside always has a learning curve where this is concerned. Deep down, baseball men don't believe in forces beyond their ken, and they think they can control any situation.

In Milwaukee, Counsell believed that, and he was right. In Tampa Bay, Joe Maddon believed it, and he was right. In San Francisco, Dusty Baker believed it, and he was right. At several stops, Lou Piniella believed it, and he was right just about every time. Leo Durocher, Dallas Green, and Jim Frey believed they could control the previously chaotic, too. They were all accomplished and respected baseball men. They all had to be roughly disabused of that belief in their control over things, once they took over the Cubs.

I happened to be in a hyper-rational period of my life when Maddon took over the Cubs, and I heavily criticized a lot of the decisions he made as he took his lumps from whatever unique form of gravity pulls the Cubs downward. Ultimately, though, I give him a lot of credit. To a greater extent than most of his predecessors (and to a much greater extent than his successor, prior to Counsell), Maddon proved nimble enough to adjust and come up with a new plan when he encountered The Wrigley Whatever.

I don't think Counsell yet understands what he's up against. I don't think the Cubs' demons are exorcised (although I also don't actually believe they're demons; I'm using a mystical shorthand for an intangible but non-magical Whatever); I don't think the 2016 championship solved anything. Counsell's remit, like Jed Hoyer's, should be to finish the work of the previous regime and make the Cubs a normal big-market, cornerstone franchise in this sport, capable of the decade- or decades-long stretches of sustained success enjoyed by every other such franchise in existence (the Dodgers, Giants, Yankees, Red Sox, and Cardinals), but never by the Cubs.

To do so, eventually, he has to grapple with The Whatever. I suspect that will have to mean leaving starters who are pitching well in games a bit longer than he did in Milwaukee, where relief pitchers just don't suffer the same cosmic deflection when they try to throw a 2-2 slider. I suspect it will have to mean occasionally bearing hideous blowouts and having to designate usable hurlers for assignment, to better shield some of the guys with a bit more upside from overwork. I tend to think it also means letting fewer close games get lopsided out of a concern for the following week; Maddon got good at snatching up any win that wandered across his path. That was how he briefly became the cat and made The Whatever a mouse.

I also suspect it will take another few months before Counsell even really groks the need for those kinds of changes. I think he's still thinking rationally right now. Generally, I applaud that. Generalities just don't stick very well at the corner of Clark and Addison.

3. Most importantly: this was the kind of boring loss everyone has been begging for.
The only thing interfering with the enjoyment Cubs fans should be deriving from a strong start to a strange season has been the unpleasantly plunging shape of several of their losses. Openly, in some cases, fans have been asking for a boilerplate, 6-2 loss that would leave everyone feeling flat but not live inside anyone's head for more than one night. 

Despite a fun little fake rally and some frustrating missed opportunities to finish the comeback, this was that kind of game. You're not supposed to win, or even be in, many games in which you are held scoreless over the first five innings. The late runs (and even the stranded runners) really don't matter much. This was a standard-issue loss, and was probably likely to be a loss from about the fourth inning onward. The Cubs can use it to reset a bit, and fans should do the same thingl.

I've already spent too many words on a couple of squishy notions and a couple of questionable (but probably correct) managerial choices. Again, this game, on its own, doesn't demand to be remembered. It just spurred me to trot out a few thoughts that have swirled in my head over the course of the first 20 percent of this season. As the Cubs get healthy and their schedule opens up a bit, they should be able to lean into an improving talent base and overcome The Whatever a bit more easily.

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[Transmogrified Tiger]

My takeaways were a little different but maybe thematically similar.  The 'whatever' or cosmic influence I think we can chalk up to the extremely fluky way the Cubs lost the shutout, Lovelady deserved to be three up three down wayyy more than he deserved to give up those first 3 hits, and at that point you're on plan C for the inning and it snowballed.  The pen has been unlucky almost more often than it's been bad the last few days.

Having said that, I'm normally very comfortable with managers taking the long view on individual decisions, but last night I think Counsell could've shown more ruthlessness.  Brown is said to be available in this series, and there's probably no greater opportunity for him than in this game after Steele couldn't get past 5, scoreless and the heart of the Padres lineup due up.  Yes, Brown was on 3 days rest after throwing 89 pitches, but we'd also only expect him to throw 2 innings/30-40 pitches.  If he truly was available I think it was a missed opportunity considering the median situation you'd expect the next 2 games before the off day.

The other is more cutthroat but one I'd expect a manager of Counsell's stature to be able to make, and that's pinch hitting for Gomes in the 8th.  Gomes had just hit a HR which makes it a tough choice optically, but we've seen so far this year Gomes has been overwhelmed by above average velocity, and Suarez throwing 90% of his pitches between 97-100 is a terrible matchup, on top of the DP risk being extremely damaging if he did put the ball in play.  There weren't terrific options off the bench(I'd have been half tempted to tell Canario to sit 4 seam every pitch and try to run into one), but Gomes' PA had a predictable outcome.  Maybe he felt strongly about giving Amaya the full night off from catching, but given the inning and game state I think that was a risk worth taking.