October 18, 2019: Pitching Matters

Let’s start with the pitching. I don’t know about you, but going into this year I felt like we had one of the better rotations in the league. I would put Lester, Hendricks, Darvish, Hamels and Quintana against any rotation. Throw in the fact that we had Montgomery and Chatwood who could spot start, and a young kid in Alzolay who made his debut. Did we want the front office to do more here?

Sure, we could have had Verlander… hindsight huh? I thought he was done personally. To see him have a renaissance in Houston is surprising. I’m happy for him though; was a fan of his with the Tigers. Should have kept Jake instead of signing Yu. Yeah, well, you’re pulling at my heart strings now. Love Arrieta, and before the year started, OK, good point. Now that the year is over… Yu is starting to live up to the expectations. It took him long enough, but we’re getting there. If he stays healthy, I see a big year for him in 2020. Who else did you want? Heading into next year, is Gerritt Cole a legitimate option?

Most likely the rotation will be the same minus Hamels, yet that doesn’t excite me as much as it did this year. If I had to give a quick one sentence summary of the rotation this year, it would be solid not spectacular. None of them reached 200 innings pitched. Maybe that’s not as much of a milestone as it was in the past, but I think it still is a good indicator. Yu, even with his slow start, finished with the most innings pitched with 178.2, which is good for 34th in the majors. Wins is another stat that has lost emphasis, but I’m sorry, isn’t that what it’s all about? Lester and Q had 13 each…tied for 27th in the majors. How about ERA? Hendricks came in at 3.46, which was good for 20th in the majors, yet it was his worst ERA in the past 4 years. These guys weren’t horrible, but they weren’t great either. To take it to the next level, you need 1 or 2 of them to be great, don’t you? We had 0 that were great.

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What about the bullpen? This was the biggest gripe of most fans in the offseason; the apparent neglecting of the bullpen which gained momentum after the rough start. I’ll start with the big swing and miss: Brandon Morrow. The guy that was pegged as our closer gave us absolutely nothing this year due to injury. Next man up was Strop. Now I’ve had my problems with him over the years, but just when I’m appreciating Pedro for the great numbers he’s put up over his Cubs career… numbers that would put him as one of the best relievers in Cubs history… he implodes. Who saw that coming? In his first 6 years with the Cubs, he didn’t have an ERA above 3. This year? 4.97! What about next man up, Steve Cishek? Again, solid not spectacular could be used. So Theo went out and added the best closer on the market in Craig Kimbrel to shore the back end up… that just didn’t work out. I would have wanted Kimbrel 10 out of 10 times. Come on, everybody did. He was not good. Was it because he started his season late? We better hope so because he ain’t going anywhere.

We said goodbye to Montgomery; biggest save in my lifetime. The Edwards experiment ended; ever since that Yu Darvish AB in the playoffs… Brad Brach? Good God… hate even saying that name. Kintzler was actually decent. We did find some pieces that could be useful going forward in Kyle Ryan and Rowan Wick. The bullpen was feast or famine. When guys were bad, they were all bad; when guys were good, they were all good. Unfortunately, there was a lot more bad than good.

So are we assigning some blame here? Of course, but that’s not what this is about. Was it really the front office not addressing this area, or was it guys that just didn’t perform up to par? Again, not letting Theo off the hook, but I’ll go with the latter. Maybe I’m wrong too. But I thought we had enough, plus adding Kimbrel and the other arms along the way… it just didn’t pan out. Regardless of how much blame is assigned, and to whom it is assigned, I expect a lot more attention to this part of the roster this offseason. We have guys that will be back, but adding another high quality arm or two would be smart. It has to be kind of like that philosophy the Cubs had with the prospects early in the rebuild. Stack up these arms and hope some of them actually pan out. I guess the stack of arms just wasn’t high enough… or did more than the normal of arms not pan out? Let’s move to the hitters.