NEWSLETTER
It would not be accurate to say the Cubs have NEVER had a solely good set of relief performances in a game this year, because they have. Yesterday’s win was not necessarily a unicorn in that respect. Rare for this year? Extremely. But not completely unique.
Still, it stood out to me.
Maybe it’s because the Cubs had lost four in a row (and have been pretty much terrible for a month). Maybe it’s because they were pitching in a tie game and helped turn it into a win instead of a loss. Maybe it’s because it was four individuals all having a good night, rather than just two or three.
Whatever the case, it just felt like a really good day for the bullpen, and I wanted to spotlight each of the four performances.
First, you had Luke Little coming in and striking out the side in order. It doesn’t get much better than that:
More than just the three strikeouts, they were all against righties. Although Little is visibly a nightmare for lefty batters, he has the stuff to overpower righties, too. On the season, Little has a 3.97 ERA over 22.2 innings, as well as a 4.17 FIP. Both are almost exactly league average when accounting for park and league adjustments. The way he’s gotten there has been funky as all get out – an 18.3%(!) walk rate, but nobody can make good contact on him – but he’s been about average.
The next step for him is pretty obvious: as soon as he can get really consistent with the mechanics, and rein the command in just a bit, those walks are going to come down, the strikeouts are going to shoot up, and guys still won’t be able to make great contact against him. His 68.1% groundball rate is the highest in all of baseball.
Next up, the Cubs got a mostly clean inning from Tyson Miller. He walked the leadoff man – yes, definitely a yikes move in a tie game – but then went groundout, groundout, and an extremely well-executed strikeout:
Miller is down to a 2.15 ERA on the season split between the Cubs and Mariners (29.1 IP), and it’s been just 1.53 with the Cubs, specifically. We could debate how sustainable that is (his FIP- on the year suggests he might regress back toward average over a larger sample), but there are definitely some fun numbers under the hood: his 25.7% strikeout rate is above average, despite a lack of premium velocity. His 3.7% walk rate is hilariously small. His 34.7% hard contact rate is low, and his groundball rate has more than doubled from the Mariners to the Cubs (interesting).
For the 9th inning, the Cubs went with … Hector Neris. Oh my.
But he looked the best he’s looked all season with the Cubs. Maybe a brief little reset is going to have helped him a lot? A 1-2-3 inning with a groundball and two nasty-looking strikeouts in a tie game in the 9th? That really was the best appearance he’s had all year. Fingers crossed.
Bonus, extremely silly and not informative fun: thanks to Ian Happ’s homer the following inning, Neris picked up his Cubs-team-leading 7th win (tied with Shōta Imanaga). It’s also now the highest win total of his career now. There are only 17 pitchers in ALL OF BASEBALL who have more “wins” than Neris. Is that a Cy Young I smell?
Lastly, you had Porter Hodge getting the call to close the game out. Why not? We’re already deep into the “ok, fine, whoever” mode – Craig Counsell HAS TO BE at this point – and Hodge certainly has closer-caliber stuff. See how he responds.
He responded well! Although Hodge gave up a pop up single to open the inning (on which I would argue he did his job), he then went strikeout, lazy fly out, infield pop out to end it. What I liked is that the single that opened it, and put the tying runner on base, did not seem to fluster him. Nor did the 9-pitch at bat that followed – Austin Slater did a good job fouling off pitches before Hodge finally got him.
I don’t know if Hodge will stay in the “closer” role from here – again, I say why not? – but it was nice to see him get his first big league save:
It’s been only 10 big league innings for Hodge so far, but they’ve been pretty dominant: 1.80 ERA, 1.96 FIP, 37.5% K, 15.0% BB (recall that a couple of those walks were total screw jobs a few weeks ago!), and has yet to allow a barrel.
So, yeah, I guess you can see why yesterday’s bullpen performance stood out to me. Lots that I wanted to say!
