Baseball has moved into the realm of the one inning reliever and the 5 inning starter--meaning it should take 4-5 pitchers to make it through a game. That makes for a pretty difficult reality for a bullpen that would have to be "on" every single night to win a game. Back in the day, as far back as the 80's, the bullpen was mastered by a guy who could pitch 2-3 innings extremely effectively. Remember Dennis Eckersley, Lee Smith, Bruce Sutter, Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage, etc? These guys came into the game in the 7th/8th inning and effectively owned the game. They shut down the opposing team for 2 innings plus and earned a save... these are the types of pitchers (save masters!) that the save category was originally created for as a reward. Now, it's one inning and done. Lame.
Carlos Zambrano may be a lunatic on the mound, but he has the same sort of makeup that the original save masters had. I don't have any fancy stats to back up this argument, just a gut feeling. I think Carlos Zambrano could be the guy that restores the old-time saves masters.
Think of Marmol coming in the 7th inning to bail the starting pitcher out of a jam (something he was extremely effective in doing the past couple of years) and then Z coming in the 8th inning to close out the game. This would effectively solve the problem of a perpetually failing bullpen... and negate any needs for bullpen relief via trades. Z is a workhorse would could log 140-160 innings coming out of the bullpen, which is a lower workload than years past as a starter, and he has the mental makeup to close out tight games over a couple of innings!
The bullpen right now has lost most of the games for the Cubs this season, and moving Z to the pen couldn't have come at a better time. Now if they can simply swap him and Marmol the Cubs bullpen issues will be completely fixed.
Go Cubs go!
-Aaron
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