Ah, the life of a reliever. Most of the time, your workday starts at about 8:30PM. Sure, you get a little throwing in during the afternoon here and there, maybe do some working out on the weekends, but usually you’re just relaxing and hanging out on a bench with 6 or 7 other dudes, checking out the cute girls in the crowd and catching the occasional home run.
There’s a flip side to this, of course: save for 50 or 60 guys in the bigs, you are, for all intents and purposes, eminently replaceable. Everywhere you look, there are candidates to take the job of the guy sitting next to you: flopping starters, young minor leaguers, rule 5 picks. They’re all candidates to be slotted into the bullpen, and when they are, well, one of you’s gotta go. Relief pitchers are a little bit like socks. You’ve got a big drawer full of them, some are left, some are right; they work best when they come in a quality left/right pair, but if you’ve gotta mix and match and make do, hey, they’re just socks, right? They get the job done even if one’s a little bit bigger than the other one. They’re also like socks in that your favorite ones tend to get worn over and over and over. Maybe they’re really cushy, and you get a little irresponsible with your sock rotation. Before you know it, you slip them on one day, and fwoop: your big toe goes right through the end. Well, that’s too bad. Think I’ll go down to the store and get some new ones.
Carlos Marmol has, by most accounts, some of the best “stuff” in the majors as far as relief pitchers go. With a fastball that sits at about 95mph and bores in on right-handers and a low-80s “slider” that’s got about 7 inches of movement on it, he’s got the pitches to strike out any batter on any given night. Lately, though, he’s been struggling, amassing a 9.34 ERA since June 1st. What gives?
Marmol has appeared in 49 games this year, throwing 52.1 innings over the stretch. Put simply, that’s just too much throwing. He’s projected to appear in 84 games this year and throw 90 innings. Last season, only two pitchers appeared in 84+ games: Jon Rauch (88) and Saul Rivera (85), while only three guys threw 90 or more innings: Heath Bell (93.2), Saul Rivera (93), and Peter Moylan (90). Rauch also appeared in 85 games in 2006, and at a towering 6′11″ 291lbs, could probably throw 200 innings per year even if he was forced to pitch with a bowling ball. Saul Rivera, the only man to qualify for both lists in 2007, is just as much of a physical freak of nature as Rauch: he’s listed at 5′11″ 150lbs, and is a 70/30 fastball/slider pitcher who’s also getting a bunch of work this year. Heath Bell’s currently healthy and pitching in San Diego, while Peter Moylan is shelved for the season after undergoing surgery on his right elbow earlier this year.
Marmol, at 6′2″ 180, is rather slight of build for an athlete. I’m obviously not trying to make a causal connection between size and durability, but there’s reason to believe that Marmol isn’t really cut out to be an 80-game pitcher. Marmol was signed out of the Dominican as a outfield/catcher prospect, but when scouts judged that his bat wasn’t MLB-caliber, they put him on the mound, and he dazzled while alternating between starter and reliever. Most of the dazzling was happening in the first few innings, though, and he tended to be too wild to last late into ballgames. He started 13 games in 2006, but hurt his arm in August and was made into a full-time reliever following his return. He shined in 2007, striking out 96 batters in 69.1 innings (1.43 ERA). Going into 2008, Marmol was the club’s top setup option in front of Kerry Wood. Manager Lou Piniella has shown that he has no qualms about pitching Marmol on an almost nightly basis, opting instead to take it easier on Kerry Wood, who’s thrown 44.2 innings this season (and 233 fewer pitches).
Depending on who you ask, the slider is either the most or second-most stressful pitch a person can throw. Marmol, of course, throws a ton of them. He’s thrown 920 pitches this year, of which between 40-45% have been sliders, depending on the classification algorithm you use (most of his other pitches are fastballs in the low-to-mid 90s). Mike Wuertz, Brad Lidge, and Doug Waechter are the only pitchers who throw more sliders as a percentage of their pitches than Marmol, and Doug Waechter is the closest to Marmol in terms of pitch count with just 747. Marmol has thrown 70 or 80 more sliders than anyone else in baseball, and they appear to be taking a toll. Here’s a look at Marmol’s daily K/BB and BB/9 graphs for 2008:
Not so good. After peaking with a K/BB of almost 7 in late April, Marmol is down to a pedestrian 2.8 as the summer months have witnessed his BB/9 climb to 4.3. Neither number is great, though both are right around where he finished 2007 (2.754, 4.54). After appearing to be solidifying his reputation as a top right-handed setup man, Marmol has come back down to earth rather dramatically over the past month or so.
So is Marmol wearing down, hurt, or was he just pitching way over his head in the first couple months of the season? Given that his current season numbers are closely aligned with his numbers from last season, I’m tempted to say it’s a little bit of the first and a lot of the latter. Marmol hasn’t really done much in the majors to this point, so there’s nothing to say he’s going to establish himself as a full-season, dominant force, especially if his pitch load remains the same. Piniella is almost certainly overworking him right now, and his numbers appear to be suffering as a result. He could benefit from a reduced workload in the coming months, so that he’s able to stay fresh and maintain his peak velocity and movement as the Cubs head into the playoffs (which they almost certainly will do). Against a patient ballclub, a BB/9 that approaches 5 will spell trouble for a pitcher whose fastball stays up in the zone and induces a lot of fly balls (56%). If his fastball isn’t at “exceptional” level, that could mean big trouble and broken hearts in Wrigley Field come October.
