Chicago Cubs: Pitching could be this team’s biggest strength in 2018

One man head and shoulders above the rest

To keep this explanation brief, relief pitchers are handled exactly like starters for the purposes of this exercise. Please note: closers are not included among this list. They have their own category due to the nature and importance of the role.

Figure 8: Relief Pitcher Comparison

The chart for relief pitchers shows two key factors: there is one reliever in this division whose statistical measures put him head and shoulders above all others. But for that one player, the balance of the relief ranks are grouped together quite consistently.

Further analysis is also very telling in there is a very large difference between BABIP for several players on this list. This is not atypical of relievers. Often there are great fluctuations in this sort of category, particularly since many relievers have such limited exposure that even one sub-par outing can skew their numbers significantly.

Onto the reveal: