It’s very hard to point fingers at anyone in this special season of the Chicago Cubs. They share the best record in Major League Baseball with the Los Angeles Angels. They just made a trade with the Oakland Athletics to bring in another stud pitcher to match up with any team’s two starters. But with all that said the Cubs have a very troubled area in the bullpen department. Pinella seems to be running out of options late in games and may soon have to jigsaw pieces late in games. Getting to this point might very well be Pinella’s blame.
Coming into the season, the Cubs felt very confident they had one of the best bullpens in baseball. When trying to figure out who would be the Closer for this team, the Cuba had up to 4 choices to fill in the role. Kerry Wood, Bob Howry, Carlos Marmol, and Ryan Dempster were all candidates to be the stopper for the Cubs. As it turned out, Pinella made the wisest decision he could. Wood and Dempster were both picked for the all-star game in their new roles.
With Dempster and Wood in their new respective roles, it gave Pinella two arms in the bullpen he could trust at any point of the game. Unfortunately, this trust might have damaged the bullpen for the second half. While Cub starting pitchers have been very good this season, their propensity to not go very deep in games has led to some overuse in the bullpen. This wouldn’t be such a big problem but Pinella has shouldered the load onto Howry and Marmol instead of dividing the work load to the entire bullpen.
The main problem seems to have hit Marmol who has struggled with both his control and his confidence. While pitching in over 93 innings between AAA and the Majors last year, he has pitched in almost 53 innings this year. Many of those outings have been high stressful situations even though Marmol made it look very easy at times. In the month of July, Marmol has looked human as he has posted 13.50 ERA and allowing 9 hits in 5 1/3 innings. Granted, 5 of those hits came in one awful, strange inning against the Giants but it is obvious that something isn’t right with Marmol. The velocity is still there for Marmol but not the bite on his filthy slider which leads me to believe his arm is very tired. If Pinella can’t depend on Marmol, that will lead to more use of Bobby Howry who isn’t in top form yet this season. Howry has been pretty solid for the most part this season. He has only walked 6 batters all year in 46 innings. The Cubs, though, can’t afford to overuse Howry especially if Marmol can’t get enough rest to recuperate.
Much of the blame has to go to Pinella. Sweet Lou has pulled the string in the Cubs favor in so many ways but Lou has put the Cubs bullpen in jeopardy. While the Cubs have played a lot of tight games, there have been many games in which Pinella had a big enough lead to allow Michael Wuertz or Jon Lieber to finish off a game. Instead, Pinella chose to use Marmol or Howry to seal the deal on stretched out wins. On July 10th, Pinella finally decided to use Wuertz for just the second time since June 29th. He allowed 4 runs in over an inning and was then sent to the minor leagues. In the same game Pinella used Lieber for just the second time since June 27th.
The Cubs have to hope that Marmol can regain his nasty slider with some rest and some confidence by taking over the all-star spot for Kerry Wood. The Cubs also might be able to call up a pitcher between Jose Ceda or Jeff Samardzija who are both doing very well since each were promoted in the minors. They could also go the trade route for George Sherill or Brian Fuentes. Whatever the Cubs plan to do it will be better to have these problems solved soon. Pinella is running out of reliable relievers…at least in his eyes.
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on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 12:57 am and is filed under John's View.
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