The Cubs Will Go As Far As the Bullpen Allows

The Cubs bullpen has a swing-and-miss problem. Only three relievers on the Cubs have over a 25% strikeout rate, striking out one out of every four batters or better. This can work; the Cubs have what can be an all-time great defense. But comparing the team to their main competition (namely, the Dodgers and Brewers) illustrates a key flaw in Jed Hoyer's roster construction.

The Dodgers have eight pitchers with over a 25% strikeout rate; the Brewers have five. These pitchers have a higher chance to end innings without the batter making contact. One only needs to watch the last couple of losses for the Cubs to see what a strikeout arm can do—or could do, if the team had enough of them.

Saturday night's loss to the Seattle Mariners illustrates this perfectly. Jacob Webb (more on him below) retired the first two batters while protecting a two-run lead in the ninth. He then allowed a solid double to Weston Wilson, then a weakly hit single to right. Of course, then Randy Arozarena walked it off with a home run to ruin the Cubs' night—one where they led 4-2 and played otherwise solid baseball. The lack of swing-and-miss led to contact, leaving Webb subject to the vagaries of BABIP.

Tuesday night, Diamondbacks catcher Gabriel Moreno doubled to right off of Daniel Palencia. Box score watchers miss the context; it was a weakly hit line-hugger the opposite way, on a checked swing. But the result was a double, which set up Arizona to come back for another gut punch for Chicago. Palencia did strike out one batter, but the contact allowed once again led to defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. 

We may be watching regression to the mean in real time. FIP compared to ERA shows nearly all of the Cubs pitchers are overperforming their metrics. If you assume that FIP is more predictive of future performance (and you should—empirically, that's true), the bullpen outlook is worrisome with October looming.

Ryan Rolison, Hoby Milner, and Aaron Civale all have ERAs one full run below their FIP. Javier Assad is 1.50 ahead of what FIP would suggest, and Webb's FIP says his ERA should be nearer to 4.00 than his current 2.91. Even recently acquired Ryan Zeferjahn is half a run lower than his FIP of 6.93, and Caleb Thielbar is performing right where his 5.03 FIP suggests. The struggling pitchers don't look to have much hope to right their respective ships, and the heavily-used arms have overperformed all season.

So, what should the Cubs and Craig Counsell do? They need to manage the game that's in front of them, not slavishly follow the analytic models they favor. A quick hook for relievers who don't have it that day will be a requirement.

Counsell also needs to channel the era in which he played. The Cubs need to ride their starters until they can't. This week's sojourn in the Arizona desert showed what the Cubs' starters can do; Kevin Gausman, Clay Holmes, and Matthew Boyd all pitched deep into the game. The cost of facing a lineup for the third time is lower than the cost of exposing a weaker arm to playoff-level lineups. They'll need to ride their starters longer than they have in the past—assuming, of course, that their starters continue to handle that extra work well.

Hoyer's bullpen has performed adequately for most of the season. When the impressive pen he though he'd assembled over the winter (including Phil Maton and Hunter Harvey, among others) fell apart, Hoyer rebuilt the unit around Webb, Rolison and Trent Thornton. The patchwork has worked. However, underlying metrics show it might not be quite as good as it seems. Counsell will have his hands full managing it, both for the balance of the regular season and in the playoffs. With the news that Ben Brown is likely to miss the rest of the season, the bullpen could be looked back upon as the Cubs' Achilles heel.

The bullpen has survived despite mediocre swing-and-miss numbers. Its ERA has been better than its underlying indicators. The Cubs have lost games where weak contact turned into damaging rallies. And now, with Brown likely gone, they have fewer ways to compensate. They'll need to field the best defenses they can. They'll need to hope they can get someone who does rack up some strikeouts back into the mix, be that Shelby Miller, Justin Steele or the good versions of Zeferjahn and Palencia. Somehow, this team needs to assemble a solid bullpen for the third time this year—and hope that, this time, it holds up.

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