The Lesson of This October for Left-Out Cubs: Better Build a Deep, Varied Bullpen

[Matthew Trueblood]

The 2024 Cubs needed a better relief ace, or at least to find their way to one sooner. But as the postseason has reminded everyone, the next-level challenge is to build a bullpen that contains several reliable hurlers with versatile skill sets.

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

With each passing year, the postseason becomes more about pockets. Cubs fans who have watched years of Joe Maddon, David Ross and Craig Counsell know what those pockets are: stretches within one team's lineup that their opponent believes they can exploit with a particular pitcher, based on handedness, arsenal, and swing paths. Teams increasingly lean into the strategy of getting their starters out of games before damage can be inflicted once the postseason comes, and that means that successfully finding and creating favorable matchups decides games and series.

However, if you only have one or two relievers you trust against a given pocket of a lineup, you quickly run into a problem in series longer than three games: the repeat-reliever effect. As closely studied by David Gordon and explored at length by Ben Lindbergh last fall, the more times a pitcher works within a series, the more danger there is of the same exposure effect that makes starters less effective as the lineup card turns over within a single game. It's a real effect, and a significant one, and teams who have tried to bullpen their way through the Division Series this year have run into it, already.

Building great bullpens is a difficult business, fraught with volatility. Building ones containing six or seven pitchers capable of getting out multiple profiles of playoff-caliber hitter is downright vicious work, and because the Cubs currently lack either a starting rotation or a lineup sufficient to the task of reaching the postseason, it can't be their top priority. However, it also can't be neglected.

Teams like to collect relievers who give hitters a wide array of different looks, and that's a valid approach. If a club leans too much into its favorite profile of hurler, they risk being exposed if they come up against a hitter or two in the opposing lineup who handle that set of release points and pitch shapes well. The Cubs, for instance, like to have guys like Tyson Miller, Jose Cuas, and Luke Little, who have outlier arm slots and release points as wide of the center of the rubber as anyone in the league, but that makes the counterbalances of Julian Merryweather and Drew Smyly important: they give hitters very different, over-the-top looks.

Obviously, though, it can't just be about creating varied looks. First of all, the pitchers have to be good--better, if we're being blunt, than Smyly or Cuas are, and ideally more consistent and durable than Little or Merryweather. Secondly, if we embrace the concept of the repeat-reliever effect, we also have to admit the importance of having more than one pitcher who can attack each important pocket. You don't want to have to turn to the same relievers over and over within a series, but you especially don't want to have to use the same relievers against the same sets of hitters over and over.

The Tigers' Beau Brieske struck out Guardians slugger David Fry in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the ALDS on Monday. He struck him out again in the fifth inning of Game 3 Wednesday night. In Game 4, though, with the tying run on base and two outs in the seventh frame, A.J. Hinch went back to Brieske to face Fry--and Fry hit a game-winning two-run homer that eventually forced a Game 5.

Hinch doesn't trust regular-season closer Jason Foley very much against the key hitters in the Cleveland lineup. He hasn't turned to him at all in this series. Foley's pitch mix consists primarily of a sinker that favors arm-side run over sinking action and a tight, gyro-style slider. Fry struggles more against sweepier right-handed breaking balls, so Brieske was (all else equal) the better matchup against him. All else wasn't equal, though. Fry got his third look at Brieske in four days, and the dynamic changed. Hinch was worried that if Foley didn't get Fry, he would have to face Jose Ramirez and Josh Naylor, against whom his mix is an even worse, downright disastrous matchup, so his choice to try his luck with Brieske was defensible. But it underscores the fact that what the team really needed, in that moment, was one more pitcher akin to Brieske on whom Hinch could call instead.

You can't collect doubles of every good pitcher you have, but throughout these playoffs, we've been reminded of the fact that it's vital to have relievers who throw both left- and right-handed, and who have a wide variety of pitch types and shapes at their disposal. It might even be valuable to seek out more hurlers who have unusually deep repertoires, for that role, so that more of them can be called upon against more pockets of a good lineup. If you have a reliever who relies on just two pitches, he has only a fair chance of matching up well against a given hitter. If your pitcher throws three different offerings with some confidence, there's an exponentially better shot of their fitting nicely. They might need to leave one of their pitches out of the mix against a given hitter, but they should be able to work off two of them. Maybe it's just one pitch they can turn to against one batter, but they have two or three that work against the hitter on either side of them in the order.

All of this needs to be in the forefront of Jed Hoyer's mind as he and his staff set about building a great bullpen for the 2025 Cubs. Balance, depth and dominance all matter, and while the relief corps will surely need to be refueled and reinforced on the fly--that happens to every team, every year--starting with a foundation of all those things will be critical. After all, during the regular season, there aren't even the extra days off that dot the postseason schedule. Using the same relievers every game isn't even a hypothetical option. You have to have more than one guy who can do everything that might need doing. The Cubs didn't meet that standard for the first two months of last season, and it torpedoed their whole campaign. To first get to and then thrive in the playoffs, they have to take a more comprehensive and aggressive approach to bullpen-building this winter.

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[Bertz]

The bullpen clock!

This is something Ross got a lot of undeserved crap for.  Like yeah he can see Cuas and Winkler are struggling too, but if you can get a guy like this going  e.g. with Tyson Miller you can really see the value that funk can bring (not to mention he wasn't given a ton of better options to work woth).

I think looking more forward I wouldn't be surprised if one of Hollowell or Paredes already have their name penciled into next year's pen.  Both have that side-arm funk, and Hollowell especially was a monster at Iowa after he got claimed and you can easily convince yourself he just needed to get away from the Rockies.  A comparably funky lefty getting added this winter wouldn't be the biggest surprise either.  

[CubinNY]

1 hour ago, Bertz said:

The bullpen clock!

This is something Ross got a lot of undeserved crap for.  Like yeah he can see Cuas and Winkler are struggling too, but if you can get a guy like this going  e.g. with Tyson Miller you can really see the value that funk can bring (not to mention he wasn't given a ton of better options to work woth).

I think looking more forward I wouldn't be surprised if one of Hollowell or Paredes already have their name penciled into next year's pen.  Both have that side-arm funk, and Hollowell especially was a monster at Iowa after he got claimed and you can easily convince yourself he just needed to get away from the Rockies.  A comparably funky lefty getting added this winter wouldn't be the biggest surprise either.  

How does one get a guy going who cannot throw strikes? The Cubs have yet to figure that out. 

[Guest234]

Wasn't there a promise of "news" about Ben Brown?

Edited October 11, 2024 by Guest234
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