Angel Guzman demotes Zambrano to the bullpen

Current Record (6-9)

I couldn’t believe it when I heard the news, I thought it was a joke. But it isn’t. He admitted it himself. Alfonso Soriano will no longer be doing the hop before he catches (or drops) fly balls. Oh, and Carlos Zambrano is moving to the bullpen.

I’m starting to think that someone needs to have an intervention with the Cubs (well, the logo at least).

“Look Cubs logo, it’s been a fun ride. You gave it a good run. Well, not really. But you did play a lot of games. Some of them competitively, even. Maybe baseball just wasn’t your strong point. Tell me, how do you feel about soap operas?”

The truth is, since yesterday afternoon I have been digesting the decision to move Zambrano to the bullpen. It’s definitely not as cut and dry as some are making it out to be, and part of me really wants to believe that there is something else going on behind closed doors that makes this make sense. But the realistic side of me that has been following the Cubs since birth makes me think that this was not a decision made after thinking about all implications of every alternative.

Logic tells us that there are a finite number of innings you play in a season (technically that’s an impossible number to calculate because of the possibility of extra inning games). Obviously, someone has to be pitching for your team during those innings. Most games you need someone pitching for 9 innings. Sometimes, you need more if the game is tied and goes into extra innings. Sometimes it is less if your team loses on the road- then you are only pitching for 8 innings. Or sometimes the game is shortened by rain and you may only need a pitcher to complete 5 innings. Assuming those situations even themselves out, there are around 1450 innings per season that you need a pitcher. The best strategy would be to make sure that when you are dividing up the innings between your group of pitchers that your best pitchers are pitching as many of those innings as possible while not being overworked.

Over the last 5 years, Zambrano has averaged just over 200 IP a year. So let’s assume if he started all year long, he would pitch 200 innings again this year. If that’s the case, he would account for 13% of your total innings pitched. The most worked relief pitchers in baseball throw about 80 IP a year. That’s 5% of your total needed. Because Zambrano has already started 3 times, let’s assume if he stays in the RP role for the rest of the season, he will finish with about 100 IP. You have just taken your best pitcher and decided to use him half of the time you were going to use him as a starter.

Now you could argue that Zambrano is not really all that superior to Dempster or Lilly. And that’s fine. Even so, of the 1450 innings you need pitching this season, wouldn’t you want Zambrano, Dempster, Lilly, and Wells pitching as many of those as possible? I certainly don’t want Zambrano to only pitch 20-30 innings more than someone like Jeff Smardzija. But that’s exactly what will happen with Zambrano in the bullpen.

Obviously with Lilly returning this weekend, someone had to be the odd man out if you’re going to stick with a 5 man rotation. So what you need to do is take a look at Zambrano, Lilly, Dempster, Wells, Gorzelanny, and Silva and decide out of this group, which of the 6 you would like to take up the least of the 1450 innings. Without a doubt, the choice is between Gorzelanny and Silva. Silva has been pitching out of his mind lately. In his first 3 starts, his ERA is under 1. It’s hard to find the balance between milking something for as long as you can and taking your money and running away as fast as possible. Realistically, we got Silva because it was the only way to get rid of Bradley (as his old landlord wishes he could). So it’s not like the Cubs were counting on Silva to anchor their rotation. But he has. It’d be hard to send him to the bullpen right now. And Gorzelanny has pitched pretty well too. Pinella said he didn’t want to send Gorzelanny to the bullpen because he doesn’t need another lefty. Ok, I understand both of these dilemma’s. But the solution is not to take one of your best 3 pitchers (and probably the best) and give him less innings over the course of the season. Do you really want Carlos Silva pitching more innings than Carlos Zambrano? Maybe. If 2010 was the first season either of them had ever pitched and all you had to go off of was their first 3 starts. Then it’s a no brainer. Send Zambrano to the bullpen!

But then there’s the other side that says, “Yes, but we need someone to pitch in important innings where we need to protect the lead and get some big outs and I’d rather have Zambrano pitch in those innings than Jeff Gray.” Me too. But we have to look at the season as a whole. It’s easy to feel that way after the Cubs got off to the 5-9 start and the bullpen blew most of those 9 losses. It’s easy to decide to do something crazy like move your ace to the bullpen right after one of any of those losses. But in the long run, does it make sense?

There is a statistic that baseball nerds way smarter than me have formulated that measures a players worth probably as good as any other can as far as how they actually influence the number of wins their team accumulates. It’s called their WAR (wins above replacement). Basically it measures how many wins a specific player contributes to the team more than if they were replaced by another player (albeit, a bad one). Over the last 3 years, here are the Cubs current 6 starters average WAR values:

Zambrano: 2.93
Lilly: 3.46
Wells: 3.20 (only 2009 stats)
Dempster: 4.05 (as starter in 2008-09. Had a -.1 WAR as closer in 2007)
Gorzelanny: 0.70 (Though it was 3.6 in 2007 for Pittsburgh)
Silva: -0.05 (2.6 in 2007, but 2008 and 2009 were so bad he actually lost more than a replacement would have)

So obviously, the most valuable pitchers in the rotation are Dempster, Lilly, Wells, and Zambrano. Zambrano has had a couple of seasons where he had a WAR of over 5, but it’s been a few years since then.

So the question now is, how valuable could Zambrano be in the bullpen? Let’s say he moves to the bullpen and becomes the best in the league. What would his WAR be if that was the case? To get an idea, let’s look at some other WAR values of the seasons of relief pitchers over the last few years.

Great closer seasons:

Eric Gagne, 2003: 4.3
Mariano Rivera, 1996: 5.4
Billy Wagner, 1999: 3.9
Brad Lidge, 2004: 4.2

Set-up men seasons:

Matt Thornton, one of the best set-up men in baseball, had a WAR of 2.7 in 2009.
Octavio Dotel had a 3.8 WAR in 2002 setting up Billy Wagner (but he also had 6 saves in 10 chances- Wagner may have been hurt for part of the season?).
Angel Guzman (Zambrano’s true replacement since he’s out for the year and was the set-up guy last season) had a WAR of 1.4 last season.
Carlos Marmol’s WARs as a set-up man in 2007 and 2008 were 2.8 and 2.2, respectively.

So if I’m reading these numbers right, it appears as if it is possible for a closer to have a pretty high WAR value. However, as a non-closing relief pitcher, even the best will end up with a less valuable WAR value than Zambrano’s worst WAR value over his career as a starter.

So if we were talking about moving Zambrano to the closer role, now the move seems less strange (by the numbers, anyway). But you have to realize that this means that both Gorzelanny and Silva would have to have really solid seasons and a WAR of 2.5 or so to make this work. Gorzelanny has the potential to do so and Silva has done back in 2004, but we saw their most recent 3 year averages.

It just seems that for this move to make sense, too many things have to happen. Silva and Gorzelanny both have to get back to pitching the way they did in their best career years. After 3 starts, so far so good. But it’s been 3 starts! I still think there must be something else going on. I read that the Cubs were “scouting” Braden Looper. I don’t know why he needs to be scouted. He started for the Brewers last season. He’s not a great pitcher by any means- he doesn’t even have a job this season. But he’s been a starter, closer, and reliever in his career and I think would be a better option than any of the Cubs current right handed relief pitchers aside from Marmol. Sign him and send one of the rookies back to the minors.

I still think the Cubs have a chance to turn this season around. The offense will hit better. If Soriano and Soto continue their improvement, you have to think Ramirez is going to break out of his slump soon. If Lee and Byrd have average years for them, that’s a decent lineup.

The Cubs starters have a chance to be near the top of the league. If the Cubs could just figure out some relief pitching, I think they’ll start winning some more games. The relief pitching can’t continue to be this bad. Pretty much anything that could have gone wrong for them, has. Caridad should come back and be decent. Grabow and Marshall should be ok from the left side. Really, the key is that right handed set up man. If Zambrano is going to be that guy for awhile, that should be pretty set.

I think things are about to turn around. Call me crazy.

-John Mark