Chicago Cubs: The bullpen isn’t always mightier

Here’s the Summary

In five innings, Hendricks faced 19 Brewers hitters, allowing just four of them to reach base, two on hits and two on walks. He left having thrown 90 pitches with a 2-0 lead and a 77 percent statistical chance of victory.

In the succeeding two and two-thirds innings, his five successors faced 18 Brewers batters. They allowed nine to reach base —  four on walks, three on hit batters and two on run-producing hits. The result: three runs and game over.

For the record, the best Chicago Cubs bullpen arm, closer Craig Kimbrel, never got into the game. Instead, facing the highest leverage situation – bases-loaded, two-out, one-run lead, bottom of the eighth, Maddon’s maneuvering had led him to rely on Pedro Strop. Here are Strop’s crisis-pertinent numbers: a 5.20 ERA, an 87 ERA+ and a 1.157 WHIP.

The problem with the modern bullpen strategy is its stratification, which is to say its absence of thought. Starters are lifted because somebody developed a rubric saying they ought to be. Relievers are used because it’s their “role,” or they are not used because it isn’t their “role” yet.

But the “data” fails to admit managerial discretion, and it can also vary from pitcher-to-pitcher. In 2019, Hendricks has a .176 batting average against from pitches 76 to 100, and a .241 batting average against when facing hitters for the third time. In other words, he has improved, not weakened, as the game has developed.  The numbers run precisely counter to the strategy of pulling him for what would presumably be a better option to protect a lead in the sixth.

The most curious thing about the night is that when the game was over, no reporter cross-examined Maddon on his decision to remove Hendricks or the succession of failed bullpen strategies precipitated by that decision. Everybody appeared to merely assume he had made the obvious, logical choices.

That’s how ballgames – and eventually pennants — are lost these days.