The Cubs Are Still Dealing with the Same Old Issues Despite Their New Manager
Maybe the genius of the Chicago Cubs’ new $40-million skipper is only beginning to reveal itself. Maybe the glorious future of the franchise is close at hand, and it’s just not yet visible to us. Then again, maybe we all owe David Ross an apology.
With the Chicago Cubs making their first trip of the season to Milwaukee this week to face the Brewers, there has been much discussion about Craig Counsell and his decision to leave the Brewers to manage the Cubs last offseason. In firing David Ross and making Counsell the highest-paid manager in baseball, the Cubs surprised many, and announced emphatically that they were ready to make moves.
Counsell, many thought, would come in and help the Cubs address a bullpen that blew a league-high 10 saves in September and October last season, during their freefall out of a playoff position. The Brewers consistently had a good bullpen under Counsell, and they usually posted a stellar record in one-run games. The Cubs went just 21-24 in one-run contests last season, compared to the Brewers’ 29-18.
Well, so far… nothing is different for the Cubs. The offense is completely broken. The bullpen, while it has been better of late, is worse than it was last year. Heading into Monday’s disaster, they had a 4.25 ERA, which was 22nd in baseball, according to FanGraphs. Last year, it was 3.85. Also, the team is 11-10 in games decided by one run.
To make matters worse, the Brewers continue to roll. At 31-23, they’re 3.5 games better than the Northsiders, and their bullpen ERA of 3.57 and WAR of 1.7 both place them as a top-10 relief corps in baseball. Their top two relievers by FanGraphs WAR, Trevor Megill and Bryan Hudson, were both pitchers in the Cubs’ organization as recently as three seasons ago. They’ve combined for 1.4 WAR. The Cubs’ entire bullpen is at 0.8.
Unreliable relief work was a constant issue last season. Yet, the only deadline addition to help that group was José Cuas. The only fresh faces in the bullpen to open this season were Héctor Neris and Yency Almonte. It should have been obvious that the bullpen was going to be a problem this year, too. Counsell isn’t the one who has to go out there and get outs. Despite the fact that he is now in the Cubs’ dugout and not the Brewers’, the bullpen special sauce–and the better-run organization–remains in Milwaukee. This is even with a payroll that hovers around half that of the big-market Cubs.
To be fair, the Cubs have had much more success developing pitchers of late. It’s just impossible not to be frustrated at seeing guys who were so recently in the Cubs’ employ excelling like this for the Brewers, even after poaching their manager.
Let this all be a reminder that failure (and success, too) is organization-wide, and let it also serve as an apology to Ross. I am sure there were some things he could have done differently last season to prevent the team’s September swoon, but he also could have simply been given better players. Jed Hoyer went out this offseason and brought back Cody Bellinger, replaced Marcus Stroman with Shota Imanaga, installed Michael Busch at first base, and added Almonte and Neris to the bullpen. Somehow, a lot of us believed that a new face in the dugout was going to be enough to propel this team to the playoffs. That could still happen, but thus far, the identity of this team is very much akin to that of last year’s.
The bats won’t always be as bad as they have been of late. I’ll even venture to say that the bullpen will get better, once the Cubs get healthier. On the flip side, though, I’d guess that Javier Assad and Imanaga will eventually start allowing some runs, so it all might cancel out anyway. To be clear, I don’t believe that much of this is Counsell’s fault, but in the same way, I didn’t believe that much of last season’s collapse was on Ross. So far, the early returns of the Counsell Era just aren’t much different from the Ross Era: a very average baseball team.
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