General Offseason Priorities

[Bertz]

9 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

ERA is not a good metric for a bullpen pitcher. 

Right, they are results that in small samples often do not properly reflect performance.

[squally1313]

26 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

ERA is not a good metric for a bullpen pitcher. 

Are there good metrics for a bullpen pitcher?

[LBiittner]

1 minute ago, squally1313 said:

Are there good metrics for a bullpen pitcher?

Trying not to suck ?

[Bertz]

This is exceedingly unscientific, but I increasingly use the "circle of trust" mental model and think about relievers in three tiers:

- Guys I trust implicitly

- Guys I trust in favorable situations (e.g Tyson Miller against righties)

- Upside/Developmental Opportunities 

There are of course pitchers who are straight up bad, but if you avoid multi-year contracts you're very unlikely to have an on-paper one heading into the season.

An elite bullpen is generally going to be something like 3-3-2.  I'd say the Cubs are currently something like 1-3-4 heading into next year, though there's a small army of guys in that third bucket, so you do feel like the second half bullpen is likely to be better than the first half.

Add a top tier guy this winter and I think you can feel solid about next year's bullpen.  Add guys to both upler tiers (the latter ideally being tough on lefties) and you can feel good about it.  Dare to dream add two top tier guys and we should feel great about the pen.

[Stratos]

13 hours ago, squally1313 said:

Not to sound snarky, but do you have a better explanation for that last sentence besides 'bad luck/randomness'?

And to split hairs a little bit, the (rough) theory behind pythag is that hitters and pitchers can't really control ordering of events, clutch isn't actually a thing, etc. And so if you took the cumulative performances from everyone on the team last year and then had them spray out in a random order 10,000 times, the theory is that our average record would be better than what it currently is. No one is necessarily claiming that this is going to translate into next year, we have age regression, changes in roster, BABIP gods, etc. Just that the overall production of our offense and defense/pitching (measured in terms of runs scored for the offense and runs allowed for the defense/pitching) implies a higher level of talent than the record currently shows. 

Last offseason I made a similar argument about our pythag record where hopefully this year the distribution would play out differently.  Including if we had a better bullpen that didn't blow all those saves in the first half we could get closer to our pythag record as well.

Our pen was built the same way and the same thing happened it.  Our offense was almost the same group of guys and the same thing happened.

I'm saying now that maybe it isn't luck, maybe it's a pattern.  Who knows.  I'm not going to speculate on the cause of what happened.  Maybe they like hitting in warmer weather?  I have no idea.  Maybe they will break the pattern and overachieve their pythag record next year, but i'm just saying i'm not counting on it either.  I'm assuming this is who they are if they had the exact same winning % 2 years in a row.

[Stratos]

13 hours ago, 1908_Cubs said:

I don't think their bullpen strategy isn't working though. This year, they were banking on Julien Merriweather, Adbert Alzolay Mark Leiter, and Hector Neris as the back end. Two of the four of them essentially missed 90% of the season hurt.

Rossy also pitched the crap out of Alzolay/Merryweather/Leiter during last year's summer because we lacked pen depth and relied and a bunch of JAGs, Merryweather himself being one.  We won't know for sure, but i wasn't surprised when they got hurt.  2 of them also got hurt around last Sept.  At the 2023 deadline we acquired another JAG to replace the other JAGs. 

Seems like they're doing a lot of signing interesting JAGs and betting on their coaching and development to make some tweaks to get something out of them.  Its not surprising it can take 2-3 months to figure out who doesn't suck, and by then we've had several blown leads/saves.

But alas, there's also randomness.  Given the Fulmer and Neris signings me thinks Jed doesn't pay much mind to xFIP.

[Stratos]

12 hours ago, Andy said:

I have no quarrels with your post, really, but I quoted this part just to note that this passage illustrates why it was a bad idea to sink a bunch of resources into a guy like Hector Neris, whose underlying numbers last season were screaming that a large regression was coming.

I also just looked up his Astros numbers since he signed there and funnily enough he has a worse ERA than he did in Chicago (in only 13 1/3 innings, granted) despite a far better WHIP. Go figure.

Nobody but Jed liked that Neris signing, i'll never understand it.  Maybe the stats he looked at didn't show 25 balks per year.

[Jason Ross]

7 hours ago, Stratos said:

Rossy also pitched the crap out of Alzolay/Merryweather/Leiter during last year's summer because we lacked pen depth and relied and a bunch of JAGs, Merryweather himself being one.  We won't know for sure, but i wasn't surprised when they got hurt.  2 of them also got hurt around last Sept.  At the 2023 deadline we acquired another JAG to replace the other JAGs. 

Seems like they're doing a lot of signing interesting JAGs and betting on their coaching and development to make some tweaks to get something out of them.  Its not surprising it can take 2-3 months to figure out who doesn't suck, and by then we've had several blown leads/saves.

But alas, there's also randomness.  Given the Fulmer and Neris signings me thinks Jed doesn't pay much mind to xFIP.

These pitchers didn't pitch nearly as much as people think they did. None of those players even hit career inning limits. Alzolay pitched 125 innings in 2021, Merryiweather had thrown 70+ innings three times in his MiLB career, and Mark Lieter Jr threw three less innings in 2023 compared to 2022. This idea that David Ross abused these guys doesn't really hold water. 

[mul21]

13 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

These pitchers didn't pitch nearly as much as people think they did. None of those players even hit career inning limits. Alzolay pitched 125 innings in 2021, Merryiweather had thrown 70+ innings three times in his MiLB career, and Mark Lieter Jr threw three less innings in 2023 compared to 2022. This idea that David Ross abused these guys doesn't really hold water. 

I don't think total innings is a good barometer for that considering all 3 of them spent time on the IL last year and Alzolay spent time as a starter in his highest IP year.  I think you need to look at workload during that July/August time period and determine if they were overloaded then.  

[Jason Ross]

15 minutes ago, mul21 said:

I don't think total innings is a good barometer for that considering all 3 of them spent time on the IL last year and Alzolay spent time as a starter in his highest IP year.  I think you need to look at workload during that July/August time period and determine if they were overloaded then.  

Cool, let's look at their workload then. Because once again, doesn't hold water.

Mark Leiter IP per month:

10, 12, 11, 11, 12, 7 

Julien Merryweather IP per month: 

11, 10, 12, 11. 14, 12 

Adbert Alolzay IP per month:

14, 13, 7, 12, 14, 3

None of these players were abused. None of them had massive peaks on IP at the end of the season (which is generally where people pretend these players were over used). The biggest jump in IP is basically 2 or 3 innings. I don't mean this specifically towards you, but people create narratives that statistics can easily disprove. These are not pitchers who saw extensive use at the end of the season. They were not used extensively compared to other MLB relievers (Julien Merryweather was the 17th most used RP in baseball and he was the high water mark for all three. Also the high water mark for appearances as the 26th most used RP in 2023). 

It sucks that two of these three basically missed 2024. But anyone who predicted Merryweather was going to have a stress fracture or Alzolay was going to need TJS based on 2023 is just being silly. Is it shocking Alzolay got hurt? Not particularly, he's been hurt plenty of times. But I don't think it was the 2023 season that did it. He missed real time in 2022, and as a prospect as well. 

[mul21]

8 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

Cool, let's look at their workload then. Because once again, doesn't hold water.

Mark Leiter IP per month:

10, 12, 11, 11, 12, 7 

Julien Merryweather IP per month: 

11, 10, 12, 11. 14, 12 

Adbert Alolzay IP per month:

14, 13, 7, 12, 14, 3

None of these players were abused. None of them had massive peaks on IP at the end of the season (which is generally where people pretend these players were over used). The biggest jump in IP is basically 2 or 3 innings. I don't mean this specifically towards you, but people create narratives that statistics can easily disprove. These are not pitchers who saw extensive use at the end of the season. They were not used extensively compared to other MLB relievers (Julien Merryweather was the 17th most used RP in baseball and he was the high water mark for all three. Also the high water mark for appearances as the 26th most used RP in 2023). 

It sucks that two of these three basically missed 2024. But anyone who predicted Merryweather was going to have a stress fracture or Alzolay was going to need TJS based on 2023 is just being silly. Is it shocking Alzolay got hurt? Not particularly, he's been hurt plenty of times. But I don't think it was the 2023 season that did it. He missed real time in 2022, and as a prospect as well. 

I wasn't saying you were wrong, I was just saying total IP is a bad measure of whether or not they were overused.  I'd also be curious to see how many of those appearances were 3 out of 4 days or 4 days out of 5 because the stress on the arm is a multiplier in those situations.

The only thing I'll disagree with you on is predicting Alzolay's injury.  The old forearm tightness is a pretty good harbinger of UCL doom so I wasn't the least bit surprised when he ended up needing TJS.

[Jason Ross]

2 hours ago, mul21 said:

I wasn't saying you were wrong, I was just saying total IP is a bad measure of whether or not they were overused.  I'd also be curious to see how many of those appearances were 3 out of 4 days or 4 days out of 5 because the stress on the arm is a multiplier in those situations.

The only thing I'll disagree with you on is predicting Alzolay's injury.  The old forearm tightness is a pretty good harbinger of UCL doom so I wasn't the least bit surprised when he ended up needing TJS.

Well, the point I was making was that there was no evidence they were overworked. Their total innings would show a lot of that. Their break downs show it as well. All of that is readily available for people. I'm all for looking for reasons, but too often we (and I say that in the greater version, not at anyone) create a narrative that can so easily be disputed. It feels like we create the narrative and then hope the data backs it up too often.

And sure there's some nuance about multiple day usage and etc, but these guys were roughly averaging an inning per outing. And even if they went 3 days in a row here or there, they were getting like 12 innings or so per month. That leaves a lot of off days. I don't think there's anything to support David Ross beating up these guys. 

And yeah! I think the injury history of Alzolay could predict UCL issues. Super agree! But David Ross over using him or his IP doesn't predict that. Which has been something I've seen people use.

[Stratos]

5 hours ago, 1908_Cubs said:

These pitchers didn't pitch nearly as much as people think they did. None of those players even hit career inning limits. Alzolay pitched 125 innings in 2021, Merryiweather had thrown 70+ innings three times in his MiLB career, and Mark Lieter Jr threw three less innings in 2023 compared to 2022. This idea that David Ross abused these guys doesn't really hold water. 

Merryweather was largely a starter in the minors.

Cubs played 27 games in Aug 2023 and Alzolay and Leiter threw in over half those games, which is especially a lot for a guy like Alzolay with a history of arm injuries.  Merryweather threw 14 IP in 27 games that Aug.  14 IP x 6 months = 84 IP pace.

[squally1313]

17 minutes ago, Stratos said:

Merryweather was largely a starter in the minors.

Cubs played 27 games in Aug 2023 and Alzolay and Leiter threw in over half those games, which is especially a lot for a guy like Alzolay with a history of arm injuries.  Merryweather threw 14 IP in 27 games that Aug.  14 IP x 6 months = 84 IP pace.

The 14 innings that Alzolay and Merryweather both threw in August puts them tied for 23rd in baseball for that month. Now, obviously there are some Rays-type shenanigans in there. But one pitcher threw 15 games, 12 pitchers threw 14 games (including Alzolay), and 23 pitchers threw 13 games (including Merryweather). None of this screams some unique managing crime, especially for a team in the thick of a playoff race. 

[Stratos]

5 hours ago, squally1313 said:

The 14 innings that Alzolay and Merryweather both threw in August puts them tied for 23rd in baseball for that month. Now, obviously there are some Rays-type shenanigans in there. But one pitcher threw 15 games, 12 pitchers threw 14 games (including Alzolay), and 23 pitchers threw 13 games (including Merryweather). None of this screams some unique managing crime, especially for a team in the thick of a playoff race. 

In 2023 between July 1 and Sept 2nd there were 183 qualfied relievers in the MLB.  Leiter tied for 1st in appearances (28), Alzolay tied for 2nd (27), and Merryweather tied for 4th (25).  From the ASB to Sept 2 Leiter led everyone.  They were used a lot.  Alzolay especially given the history of arm injuries.  They played a ton of close games during those months and those 3 guys seemed to be in virtually all of them.

That's mainly on Jed, he didn't get Ross a proven dependable arm at the deadline.  He said at the time the cost for relievers at the deadline was too high.  Alzolay went down with injury in Sept last year, was bad to start this year and blew 5 saves and now his arm is in a sling.  I'd like to ask Jed what the cost of that has been.  It might have cost us the playoffs last year given Alzolay was hurt in Sept and Leiter had a 8.59 ERA in Sept and was probably gassed.

[squally1313]

22 minutes ago, Stratos said:

In 2023 between July 1 and Sept 2nd there were 183 qualfied relievers in the MLB.  Leiter tied for 1st in appearances (28), Alzolay tied for 2nd (27), and Merryweather tied for 4th (25).  From the ASB to Sept 2 Leiter led everyone.  They were used a lot.  Alzolay especially given the history of arm injuries.  They played a ton of close games during those months and those 3 guys seemed to be in virtually all of them.

That's mainly on Jed, he didn't get Ross a proven dependable arm at the deadline.  He said at the time the cost for relievers at the deadline was too high.  Alzolay went down with injury in Sept last year, was bad to start this year and blew 5 saves and now his arm is in a sling.  I'd like to ask Jed what the cost of that has been.  It might have cost us the playoffs last year given Alzolay was hurt in Sept and Leiter had a 8.59 ERA in Sept and was probably gassed.

Small point: calling it tied for 2nd and tied for 4th is disingenuous because you’re leaving out how many other pitchers also did the same thing. 
 

also, at the risk of sounding callous, leiter was a 32 year old lightning in a bottle guy who you ride until he loses the one pitch he has. And he was also fine this year, so whatever wrongs for this year you’re trying to pin on Ross don’t apply here. 

[Rcal10]

50 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Small point: calling it tied for 2nd and tied for 4th is disingenuous because you’re leaving out how many other pitchers also did the same thing. 
 

also, at the risk of sounding callous, leiter was a 32 year old lightning in a bottle guy who you ride until he loses the one pitch he has. And he was also fine this year, so whatever wrongs for this year you’re trying to pin on Ross don’t apply here. 

If Leiter was first and then Alzolay was second, doesn’t that mean no one was tied with Leiter? If there was someone tied with him Alzolay couldn’t be second. And if Merryweather was 4th doesn’t that mean there was one person tied with Alzolay for 2nd? Again, if there were more, how could Merryweather be 4th. Based on Stratos post the only question should be how many pitchers were tied with Merryweather.

i am not agreeing or disagreeing with Stratos. But based on what he posted, it does sound like the Cubs used those guys more than  other relievers were used over the timeframe he picked. 
 

 

[squally1313]

1 hour ago, Rcal10 said:

If Leiter was first and then Alzolay was second, doesn’t that mean no one was tied with Leiter? If there was someone tied with him Alzolay couldn’t be second. And if Merryweather was 4th doesn’t that mean there was one person tied with Alzolay for 2nd? Again, if there were more, how could Merryweather be 4th. Based on Stratos post the only question should be how many pitchers were tied with Merryweather.

i am not agreeing or disagreeing with Stratos. But based on what he posted, it does sound like the Cubs used those guys more than  other relievers were used over the timeframe he picked. 
 

 

Because he’s saying anyone who threw 28 games was 1st, anyone who threw 27 games was 2nd, etc. Which isn’t correct. 
 

4 guys threw 28 games, 6 guys threw 27, 7 guys threw 26, 12 guys threw 25

[Stratos]

3 hours ago, squally1313 said:

Small point: calling it tied for 2nd and tied for 4th is disingenuous because you’re leaving out how many other pitchers also did the same thing. 
 

also, at the risk of sounding callous, leiter was a 32 year old lightning in a bottle guy who you ride until he loses the one pitch he has. And he was also fine this year, so whatever wrongs for this year you’re trying to pin on Ross don’t apply here. 

Leiter and the Cubs are pretty lucky he only wore down and didn't get hurt.  I guess Ross thought he did what he had to do which is why I blame Hoyer more.  Riding a guy hard and risking his career or future earnings via injury so you don't have to give a prospect for a solid relief arm is unethical IMO.

[Stratos]

2 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

If Leiter was first and then Alzolay was second, doesn’t that mean no one was tied with Leiter? If there was someone tied with him Alzolay couldn’t be second. And if Merryweather was 4th doesn’t that mean there was one person tied with Alzolay for 2nd? Again, if there were more, how could Merryweather be 4th. Based on Stratos post the only question should be how many pitchers were tied with Merryweather.

i am not agreeing or disagreeing with Stratos. But based on what he posted, it does sound like the Cubs used those guys more than  other relievers were used over the timeframe he picked.

From July 1 to Sept 2 there were 3 guys tied with Leiter for 1st, 6 tied with Alzolay for 2nd, and 12 tied for 4th with Merryweather.  Of the guys tied with Alzolay he threw more IP than all of them.  Of the 12 tied with Merryweather he threw more IP than all but one.  For the guys tied for 1st with Leiter, one guy threw more IP and the other threw as many as Leiter.

We can slice it another way.  There were 174 qualified relievers over that period, not 183 like I said.  My bad.  Of those 174, those 3 Cubs relievers each appeared in more games than 145 of them.

There were a bunch of guys who threw more relief IP than those 3 Cubs relievers in that period but almost half of those were clearly longmen given the number of games they appeared in (e.g. 11 games vs Alzolay's 27).

We can split hairs any way we want but they were on the mound a lot that summer.

[Stratos]

1 hour ago, squally1313 said:

Because he’s saying anyone who threw 28 games was 1st, anyone who threw 27 games was 2nd, etc. Which isn’t correct. 
 

4 guys threw 28 games, 6 guys threw 27, 7 guys threw 26, 12 guys threw 25

I said they were TIED for 1st, 2nd etc.

Read my last post to rcal.  The 3 of them were used a lot those 2 months.  How is that not clear and obvious?

[Cuzi]

6 minutes ago, Stratos said:

I said they were TIED for 1st, 2nd etc.

Read my last post to rcal.  The 3 of them were used a lot those 2 months.  How is that not clear and obvious?

If there are 4 people tied for 1st, the 5th person isnt 2nd, they are 5th.

[Rcal10]

7 hours ago, squally1313 said:

Because he’s saying anyone who threw 28 games was 1st, anyone who threw 27 games was 2nd, etc. Which isn’t correct. 
 

4 guys threw 28 games, 6 guys threw 27, 7 guys threw 26, 12 guys threw 25

That isn’t correct then. If 4 guys threw 28 games a guy who threw 27 can’t be second. He is 5th. And if 6 guys threw 27 games Alzolay is tied for 5th with 5 other guys. As for Merryweather, he appears to be tied with 11 other guys for 18th. A far cry from 4th. Still a lot of innings in a hand picked amount of time, but definitely an exaggeration to make a point. 

[squally1313]

6 hours ago, Stratos said:

I said they were TIED for 1st, 2nd etc.

Read my last post to rcal.  The 3 of them were used a lot those 2 months.  How is that not clear and obvious?

In terms of semantics, I specifically said small point. Others made that into a bigger deal. But, officially, no. If the winner of the Masters shoots -10 and then 8 guys shoot -9, the guy who shoots -8 doesn't tie for third. 

They (and roughly 25 other relief pitchers) pitched a lot over a 2 month stretch. Throwing notoriously streaky Leiter in the mix kinda weakens your argument on the long term damage because he came back in 2024 pitching effectively (but streaky) and obviously held up enough to get traded at the deadline. You can't call it 'lucky' on the healthy side but somehow pre-ordained on the unhealthy side. I'm guessing if you look at those other 25 pitchers you'd see a mixture of 2024 effectiveness/ineffectiveness/injury. I'd guess if you looked at the next 25 guys after that you'd see a similar mix of results. Pitchers break, relief pitchers ERA explode, etc. If this was anywhere close to an exact science people would be a lot better at it. 

I don't know. It seems like a narrative that's easy to put together in hindsight. We were in a playoff race and Ross leaned on his best pitchers. If he would have handed the ball to Michael Rucker or Palencia and we missed the playoffs all the same, that's a whole different narrative to throw at his feet. We had a garbage May/June and had to treat the entire second half like they were September playoff chase games, and at the deadline Jed (and everyone else in baseball) decided to go get a AAAA reliever and roll with that. There weren't good answers. 

[CubinNY]

Jeez o' pete. Can we agree that they were among the most used relievers and stop with the pedantic bull horsefeathers. 

The point stands and no amount of hair splitting will change that. 

One can blame Ross or Jed or both. And "riding" a lightning in a bottle is stupid.