Roundtable: Carlos Marmol

We’ve already talked about Rich Harden here and have done the same about Marmol in the game threads, but what’s up with Carlos Marmol? Is it time to replace him as the 8th inning guy and if so, who do they replace him with? Wreckard: Angel Guzman’s been more effective and reliable. But he’s also been more fragile - and I think Lou needs some guy he can abuse and send out there 80 times a year and I don’t think Guzman can ever be that guy. berselius: I’m not really sure what’s up with Marmol either. Guys with electric stuff like his do often have trouble controlling it, and maybe this is just the result of the innings that Lou has piled on his arm the past two seasons. Guzman is the obvious 8th inning choice, provided the Cubs don’t trade for someone. Women’s Fitness: This is a tough one. The only way Marmol will get right again is to pitch in high leverage situations like he’s used to. Side sessions won’t cure him, and neither will the David Patton Memorial Mop-up Man position. That being said, I don’t think we can watch him piss many more games away. I think we give him three more weeks of high leverage situations and then DFA him so he can end up with the Phillies and be a decent pitcher. Haha. Trajan: I am extremely concerned with Marmol. His stuff is out of control. He doesn’t seem to get as many swings and misses anymore. He has to walk at least one batter an inning. Ideally you would put Guzman in the 8th inning, but his durability is a concern. I think they’ll have to look to a trade to bolster the pen in someway. DylanJ: Sure as long as its Guzman. That said Marmol isn’t nearly as bad as Maddog thinks. He can walk a guy an inning and not get hurt too often because people don’t get hits off him. He will be fine. Suburban Kid: I hate to say it but I’m kind of like Lou Piniella when it comes to Marmol. I have a weakness for the guy based on his track record, and feel that if given the chance, he will work his way out of his 2009 troubles. I fully understand how ****-tacular his performance has been, and where I differ from Lou is that I would yank him a lot quicker in his inauspicious appearances. But I’d probably use him just as frequently, and continue to do so in the 8th inning for now, although I probably would not bring him in with guys on base in a tie game. On the other hand, I’m not too bothered about bullpen roles. I understand the need for certain roles, like pinch hitter, defensive replacement, sixth starter, fourth outfielder. But I think bullpen roles are overspecialized, and I’m not just talking about the closer. I don’t mind seeing Marshall or Guzman in the 8th or 9th inning, and I don’t mind seeing Gregg in the 8th. johnny_abrego: I give up on things very badly. It wasn’t until Corey Patterson announced that baseball was ‘just a game’ that I gave up on him. No **** Corey, for me it is, but it’s not really for you. Until then, I always figured he’d get it together and be a great player. As it turns out, Don Baylor was accurate to describe him as Odibe McDowell. +1 for Baylor. Marmol is like that for me, when he comes in, I’m still excited. I like to watch him pitch. I find him to be a statistical nightmare. His LD rate is way over last year (he’s given up as many LDs in ‘09 as he did in all of ‘08 but more on that later). However, his HR per FB is insanely low (probably not sustainably). He’s just all over the place. I think he should continue to serve as the Cubs 8th inning man. Maybe that makes me naive, but I can’t see past the fact that he really doesn’t get hit very hard. He has given up exactly 2 line drives since June 27th (singles to Pujols and Molina) which spans 29 batters faced. Those were both in that weird 9th against STL on Saturday when the Cubs needed 4 outs to end it. Mercurial Outfielder: Marmol is the same guy he’s always been, it’s just that the league adjusted, IMO. Guys stopped swinging at the ****. His control is spotty, period. I think you use him or Guzman in the 8th, depending on the situation. If there are guys on base, or it’s close, use Guzman. If there’s no one on, and the lead is >3 runs, use Marmol. Lou needs to get Marmol into some low-pressure situations and let him find himself again. Trotting him out there with the game on the line so he can **** the bed isn’t helping anyone. nittany cub: I like Carlos Marmol; always have. Even when he was trying to start for the Cubs in ‘06 and looked like ass. He’s always had trouble locating the strike zone for a month (or two), and this year seems to be no different. I say let him keep the 8th inning role, unless he Cotts the whole situation. MB21: The only problem Carlos Marmol has is his inability to get batters to swing at pitches they were swinging at in 2007 and 2008. That’s not really his problem since he can’t force the hitters to swing. 42 walks in 42 innings isn’t acceptable though. Rick Ankiel’s career pretty much came to an end with better control than Marmol has had this year. Rich Hill’s control was better than Marmol’s and Hill got sent to the minor leagues (down to rookie ball at one point). I don’t really know what you do. Marmol, when he gets the ball over the plate is an excellent reliever. Unfortunately, he hasn’t done much of that this year and you really can’t use the guy when there are runners on base. You also have to get a guy up in the pen when he comes into the game, which you know doesn’t sit well with Marmol. I guess at this point you give him some more time to start throwing more strikes, but sooner or later if it doesn’t improve something needs to be done. One of the advantages of collecting these responses from people is that I get to read through others before I post them. I write my response before I do so, but DJ said something so I wanted to add on. He said Marmol isn’t as bad as I think. The guy has a 4.68 FIP and is walking 9 guys per 9 innings. His WHIP is 1.57 and that doesn’t include the 7 hit batters. That’s a ridiculous 1.17 Hit batters per 9 innings. While not fault of his own, 2 batters have reached on an error. This is going to happen so there’s no reason to ignore these numbers. That’s one of the flaws that WHIP has. It ignored hit batters and reached on errors. Marmol’s baserunners per 9 innings (BR/9) is 16.07. That’s 1.79 baserunners per inning. On top of that, Marmol has thrown 4 wild pitches and has balked once. Surprisingly there has only been one passed ball. Marmol has always been unusually lucky when it comes to his line drive rate and his home runs per fly ball rate. Same goes for his BABIP. His career BABIP is only .242. It was only .185 in 2008 and he was nowhere near as dominant as he was in 2007 when it was a more sustainable .265 (Marmol is a flyball pitcher so his babip will be lower than average). It’s .241 this year, which means it’s likely only going to go up. He’s not stranding nearly as many runners on base this year as he did in 2007. In ‘07 he stranded a ridiculous 91% of the runners on base. It fell to 78.1% in 2008 and is down to 76.8%. His LD rate is a career high 18.6%, which is still just a bit under what you’d expect. His HR/FB rate in 2009 is the lowest it’s been in his career at 2.3%. 10% is normal and Marmol’s career rate is actually better than average at 8.2%. A staggering 30.2% of Marmol’s fly balls have been infield flies. While pitchers can control infield flies, this is double his career average of 15.0%. It’s going to go down. MO mentioned (and I did as well) that the hitters just aren’t swinging at Marmol’s pitches at the rate they used to. Marmol’s out of zone swing percentage in 2007 was 30.1%. He was so good that year in large part because batters swung at nearly 1 of ever 3 pitches out of the zone. In 2008 it feel to 24.2% and in 2009 it’s 19.9%, which is just above the 16.4% he posted as a rookie in 2006. The batters are swinging more frequently at the pitches in the zone. That’s up to 56.0% (53.4% last year). That is actually slightly less than 2007 when it was 56.3%. The overall swing percentage is the lowest it’s been in his career. In 2006 it was 39.7% followed by 42.5%, 39.8% and now 36.5% in 2009. Even more troubling is that batters are making a little more contact on the pitches out of the zone that they are swinging at. It was only 44.9% in 2007, 51.3% in 2008 and it’s 54.8% in 2009. The overall contact percentage is a bit less than 2007. The number of pitches in the zone is down to 45.8% (53.2% in 2008). Only 47.7% of the batters he faces he is throwing a first pitch strike. As you can see, the batters are swinging less and when they do swing on the pitches out of the zone they’re making contact more frequently. He’s not throwing the ball in the zone nearly as much as 2008 and his first pitch strike percentage has gone from 57.5% in 2007 to 49.1% in 2008 to 47.7% in 2009. Batters are more able to recognize his pitches. DJ is right that Marmol isn’t as bad as I thought. He’s worse. Among all pitchers with 40 or more innings pitched (211 pitchers), only Francisco Rodriguez of the Mets has a lower first-pitch strike percentage. Rich Hill is just behind Marmol. Interesting, Aaron Heilman is 5th and Rich Harden is 7th worst at throwing first-pitch strikes. Out of those 211 pitchers, only 11 of them are getting fewer swings on pitches out of the zone (Aaron Heilman is one of them). Batters simply aren’t chasing him anymore. Only 22 pitchers have thrown fewer pitches in the zone than Marmol. According to Fangraph’s pitch f/x page for Marmol, his fastball and slider are moving just as much as they did in the past so he’s not lost any movement. Perhaps Marmol is missing the zone by a lot more this year, but I’d think if that were the case that the out of zone contact percentage would be the same, but it’s increased. Rick Ankiel and Rich Hill were sent to the minor leagues after MLB success for the same problems that Marmol is having this year. Actually, those guys were sent to the minors with less of a problem than Carlos Marmol is having. All of that said, it’s not time to give up. He’s got great stuff. Middle infielders had difficulty catching his throws from behind the plate when he was a young catcher in the Cubs organization. Whatever he throws has a lot of movement and you can’t just give up on a guy with electric stuff. How much longer can you wait for him to improve though? We’re more than half way through the season now. I think you see if he can figure things out over the remainder of this month and if we’re still seeing the same Carlos Marmol the Cubs not only have to replace him, but they have to seriously consider optioning him to the minor leauges. He does have one option left. scarymonsters85: Marmol has huge control problems, which has been the only blemish on his otherwise exceptional yet short career in the bullpen. I don’t mind him in the 8th inning as much as some people, but Lou has to put him on a short leash. If he walks the first two people, or two people in an inning for that matter, he needs to be pulled. He is still striking out batter, although not at the prodigious clip he has in the past. Sadly, he is almost walking as many people as he strikes out. I wouldn’t mind giving Guzman a shot as the 8th inning guy. shawndgoldman: I’m more optimistic than most about Marmol. He’s obviously been horrible. However, just as it’s possible Soriano and Bradley return to form the same could be true for Marmol. He’s had a much-improved two weeks since his implosion against the White Sox and he’s been known to lose the plate for stretches of time only to find it again and be lights out for an extended period. He’s projected to have an FIP of 3.58 in the 2nd half, roughly equivalent to Guzman’s 1st-half production (FIP of 3.53). I will say this, though: Lou needs to always have someone up when Marmol’s in the game because when he loses the plate he _really_ loses it. cwolf: Marmol should be taken out of being the automatic 8th inning guy at this point. His control is awful and is not getting any better. Marshall and Guzman should be the 8th inning guys if Marshall doesn’t go back to the rotation during Dempster’s time out. Marshall being the only lefty hurts Piniella’s flexibility somewhat but Lou’s just going to have to be a little creative in using the bullpen including using Heilman in the 8th on occasion (like when Guzman inevitably gets hurt). I really think Piniella should use Marmol in some low leverage situations and just tell him to groove his pitches. I think the results wouldn’t be that bad considering his stuff and maybe that would give him some confidence to throw strikes. Marmol has shown how nasty he can be in stretches and maybe he can move back into the 8th inning role at some point but right now he just can’t get the ball over the plate enough to be counted on. thisyearcub: Good question ... there have been a ton of theories on this, everything from the WBC blown save to him just letting the mental side get to him (i.e. walk begets hit batsman begets another walk, etc.). I think it might be a confidence thing. His slider is still pretty filthy when he can spot it correctly, but it seems more hitters are laying off it now, making him rely on the fastball. I’d be OK with switching Marmol and Guzman in the 7th/8th roles. Perkins: Angel Guzman. Marmol has looked better of late, but I’d move him to lower leverage situations, at least until Guzman has a season ending injury.