Chicago Cubs: Recent bullpen woes are nothing to worry about

Chicago Cubs fans are growing restless with the club’s bullpen. Watching John Lackey throw seven innings of one-run baseball against his former St. Louis Cardinals team, only to have the reliever implode in the eighth innings is frustrating, I’ll admit.

That being said, there’s still no reason to belittle the bullpen of the most well-rounded team in baseball.

Typically, clubs with the best bullpens have pitchers in assigned roles. Pitcher, A comes in for the 7^th, Pitcher B for the eighth, C for the ninth, and the rest can either match-up or come in for long relief if necessary. The Cubs had this set-up until Pedro Strop suffered a meniscus injury that will sideline him for four to six weeks. Now, the struggles we’re seeing are ones caused by depth rather than a lack of talent or readiness.

Hector Rondon came back from a two-week stint on the DL with a triceps issue to pitch his eighth inning set-up spot Sunday. In 1/3 of an inning, Rondon gave up four hits—including two home runs— spiking his ERA from 1.70 to 2.53 in the process.

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It’s easy to look at the four runs as the major factor, but in reality, it was Rondon’s control that did him in. Anyone who watched the game saw that he consistently missed his spots. Rondon’s velocity was still there, but that alone isn’t enough to get a professional hitter out. His control will come back as he gets more innings of work.

Prior to Sunday’s series finale, Rondon spoke in reference to C.J. Edwards Jr’s recent struggle against the Cardinals, giving up five runs in 2/3 of an inning.

“I told [Edwards Jr.], ‘Hey, it happens to everybody. Don’t feel bad. It’s in the past…We have to have a short memory and come in today like nothing happened. I told him, ‘Hey, man, learn from that.'”

That outing was the first time since July 8^th against the Pittsburgh Pirates that Edwards Jr faced more than the minimum amount of batters and the first runs he’d given up since July 20^th against the New York Mets.

“That was nothing — that’s a blip,” Coach Joe Maddon said of Edwards Jr’s outing. “It has to happen at some point.”

As usual, Maddon is exactly right.

The entire 2015 season has been one long experiment for the Cubs coaching staff in preparations for October. Remember those games at the beginning of the season when Maddon trotted out pitchers like Clayton Richard, Spencer Patton, and Trevor Cahill in high leverage situations?

It wasn’t because he was bored, or didn’t know what to do. Maddon just wanted to see who he’s got to rely on in the bullpen. Giving players equal opportunities in those situations helped him shape the bullpen into the monster that it is and will be.

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Now that Strop is out, Maddon has to conduct a similar experiment to see who can replace him.

The Cubs bullpen has pitched the fewest innings in the league (326.1) and is third-best in BAA (.217). More than half of the reliever have a sub-.230 BAA, including .192, .168, and .109 from Rondon, Strop, and Edwards Jr. respectively.

Watching the past two games against the Cardinals was tough. But, the struggles the bullpen had against the Cardinals won’t drastically affect how the team performs later in the season. If anything, it gives Maddon and the rest of the coaching staff more analytics to draw from when they need to select their playoff roster.