After a nice little run to start the season, the Cubs have come back to Earth somewhat. It’s been a tough stretch, going just .500 over the last 30 games and losing 6 of the last 10 (to very good teams, mind you). I know that I thought the Cubs would definitely score runs, and that they just wouldn’t have the pitching this year. Baseball has a way of doing exactly what you don’t expect, and this year is no different.
Offensively, the Cubs are right in the middle of the National League. The average runs per game is 4.08; the Cubs average 4.04 (as do the Cardinals). Furthermore, it’s difficult to lean on the excuse that the Cubs are hit-unlucky; while that was certainly true the past 2 years, the Cubs have a .305 BABIP this year, which is pretty much exactly where you’d expect it. One bugaboo you can point to is the inability to get runners home from 3rd. The Cubs get the man on 3rd with less than 2 outs in 44% of the time, and the league average is 50%. That’s 6 runs this year the Cubs have forfeited in this way (and technically more, since scoring that run means the inning isn’t over yet, and you have implied odds of scoring again).
However, the pitching side of the equation has actually been a nice surprise (bullpen notwithstanding). Jason Hammel is another pitcher when he’s a Cub, apparently. Lester is settling in nicely after a rocky start to 2015. I’m not the biggest fan of Arrieta this year (he looks off and I can’t help but feel like some serious regression is about to happen), but it’s hard to argue with his results. Hendricks is even starting to turn the corner. Perhaps most importantly, they’ve all stayed healthy. The Cubs have only dipped into the well or reserve starters due to Wood’s ineffectiveness (and Wada has been great in relief of him). I’ve developed a fun little metric to determine just how good our pitching has been. I call it tournament points.
First, I took every qualified starter (by innings pitched – the cutoff was 53 IP). That left me with 109 – that means each team should have about 3 pitchers, maybe a little more. Then, I sorted the starters by FIP*. Then, I assigned them a point value based on their FIP. The way I assigned points was easy: the best pitcher by FIP (Scherzer) earned a 10 – best in class. I doubled the size of the next tier and gave them 9s (Kluber and Archer). The next tier is twice as big again. I kept doing this until I got to the bottom (the 4-class of pitchers). Then, I totaled up each team’s points by total rotation, top 3 pitchers, top 2, and #1. The Cubs did very well in this exercise.
| Team | Tournament Points | P3 | P2 | P1 |
| Indians | 27 | 22 | 17 | 9 |
| Athletics | 26 | 21 | 15 | 8 |
| Pirates | 25 | 21 | 15 | 8 |
| Cubs | 24 | 19 | 14 | 7 |
| Angels | 23 | 15 | 10 | 5 |
| Giants | 23 | 15 | 10 | 5 |
| Cardinals | 22 | 17 | 12 | 6 |
| Mets | 22 | 18 | 13 | 7 |
| Nationals | 22 | 22 | 16 | 10 |
| Brewers | 21 | 13 | 9 | 5 |
| Astros | 20 | 16 | 12 | 7 |
| Red Sox | 20 | 16 | 12 | 7 |
| White Sox | 20 | 16 | 11 | 6 |
| Yankees | 20 | 16 | 12 | 8 |
| Rays | 19 | 19 | 15 | 9 |
| Tigers | 19 | 15 | 11 | 6 |
| Diamondbacks | 18 | 14 | 10 | 6 |
| Dodgers | 18 | 18 | 13 | 7 |
| Orioles | 18 | 14 | 10 | 6 |
| Blue Jays | 17 | 13 | 9 | 5 |
| Braves | 15 | 15 | 11 | 6 |
| Padres | 15 | 15 | 11 | 6 |
| Phillies | 15 | 15 | 11 | 6 |
| Mariners | 14 | 14 | 10 | 5 |
| Reds | 14 | 14 | 10 | 5 |
| Royals | 14 | 14 | 9 | 5 |
| Marlins | 13 | 13 | 9 | 5 |
| Rangers | 13 | 13 | 9 | 5 |
| Twins | 12 | 12 | 8 | 4 |
| Rockies | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
*I used FIP instead of WAR because it’s a rate statistic. That said, all 4 of the Cubs qualifying pitchers have the exact same tournament score if you use WAR instead of FIP.
The Cubs are both deep (4 pitchers that qualify) and top-heavy (5th in Top 3 pitchers, 6th in Top 2, and 7th in Top 1). For those curious, Hammel and Arrieta were both 7s and Lester/Hendricks were both 5s.
There are some real problems in the bullpen, but I think they’ll work themselves out in the near future. The Cubs have a small army of arms that can fill in when needed. For starters, Carl Edwards, Jr. is probably going to see some work with team in July or so. Pierce Johnson needs to be on the 40 or he’ll get Rule 5’ed away next year, so he’s a good candidate to enter the pen at some point this year as well. Armando Rivero’s fastball command has disappeared this season, but he has filthy stuff and might make the team at some point. Yoervis Medina is an intriguing arm that the Cubs recently acquired, and he’s already on the 40. Neil Ramirez will be coming back at some point, as will Jacob Turner. All of these players have legitimate upside in a Cubs bullpen, and the only thing standing in any of their ways is Edwin Jackson.
There aren’t hitting reinforcements just over the hill, unless the Cubs decide to end the Schwarber backstop experiment (which I’m all on board with; the Cubs are good enough this year to challenge for a playoff spot and Kyle’s ultimate future is not shredding his knees playing catcher), but there are absolutely major-league caliber players on the pitching side. Our staff has been not only as good as expected, but much better.