A Modified Piggyback, with an Earl Weaver Gambit Kicker

The Cubs carried 14 pitchers for Sunday night’s game against the Reds, and if they’d played on Monday night, they’d have done the same. That’s one more hurler than threw a single pitch for the 1993 Atlanta Braves, and just one fewer than pitched for the 2005 Twins, 2001 Mariners, 1999 Astros, or 1996 Dodgers. All on one 25-man roster, at one time.

That’s untenable. It’s easy enough to see the reasons it’s happened, including:

• Joe Maddon’s aggressive, quick-hook approach to damage control with his starting pitchers (good);
• Maddon’s even more aggressive, quick-hook approach to damage control with his relievers (bad); and
• the combination of Maddon’s mistrust of Edwin Jackson and Travis Wood, and the front office’s refusal to cut bait with them (I can’t decide between ‘disastrous’ and ‘calamitous’ here)

However clear the origin of the problem, though, it’s very much a problem, and it needs to be solved. Cubs pitchers have made 215 distinct relief appearances, 13 more than any other team, despite having played fewer total games than all but two teams. The average relief appearance by a Cub lasts 2.6 outs, the lowest figure in baseball. Chicago is dead last in relief appearances lasting more than three outs (24), and second-to-last in appearances that bridge across inning changes at all (29).

I mentioned Jackson and Wood. Jackson, of course, was a starter until this season, remained stretched out throughout Spring Training, and seemed an obvious choice to be the long man in the bullpen once he missed the rotation cut. He’s made only 16 appearances this season, though, and in nine of those, he’s faced five or fewer batters. In seven of them, he’s faced three or fewer. He’s had at least five days of rest between appearances five times this year, but only once, all season, has he faced more than eight batters. Only twice has he thrown more than 31 pitches in a game. He’s appeared in multiple innings only six of those 16 times he’s entered the game.

Wood has made 10 appearances since being banished to the pen. He’s actually dominated in that role, striking out 11 of 44 batters faced and posting a 0.205 Win Probability Added. That’s great. Here’s what isn’t: He’s faced four or fewer batters in six of his 10 appearances. He’s yet to face more than eight batters in a single relief outing. He’s only thrown more than 25 pitches twice. He’s only pitched in multiple innings once.

I don’t want to spend too much time documenting this problem, but you see it, right? Maddon isn’t comfortable using his long men as long men (in Jackson’s case, he’s hardly comfortable using him at all), which has led to Pedro Strop making 32 appearances in 61 team games, including 10 on zero days’ rest. It’s led to three relievers being on pace for 75 or more appearances, and to Phil Coke (who wasn’t even good) pitching in 16 of the team’s first 36 games. This has to stop, not only to save the arms of the Cubs’ most important relievers, but to allow the team to carry the 12 or 13 (Heaven forbid they go so far as 14, which was still the standard number when I started watching baseball) position players a functional roster needs.

One of the aggravating things about statheads, people like me, is that we very often complain about the lack of imagination and ingenuity that teams put into constructing and deploying a roster, but we seldom offer up imaginative or ingenious ideas ourselves. This is partially the fault of narrow-minded people in places of authority, who loudly and haughtily shoot down good ideas sometimes simply because “the players would never go for it,” or “you just don’t understand the psyche of a big-league player.” It’s mostly our own fault, though, for not being able to adapt our ideas to these criticisms, or to develop better ideas in the first place.

Let me take a step toward amending that. I have a good idea. It’s radical and aggressive, but it accounts for the way the players on the team have prepared and the skills they’ve emphasized their entire lives. It accepts the limitations of Joe Maddon’s imagination, but demands that he use that imagination to broaden his horizons. Most importantly, though, it gets Brian Schlitter and Zac Rosscup off of the Cubs’ roster, and makes room for the hitters who are better and more valuable to the team than they are. It’s a plan in three steps, so bear with me.

Step 1: The new starting rotation: Travis Wood, Edwin Jackson, and Justin Grimm.

Right off the bat, you can probably see where I’m going here. The Cubs should start using Wood, Jackson, and Grimm as a rotating opening act for their traditional, main-attraction starters. Each would throw just an inning or two, depending on various factors (whether the game is at home or away, when their spot in the order comes up, pitch count, opponent lineup construction, who’s pitching the longer stretch for the Cubs that day, etc.), so going every third game should be no sweat. Each guy was a starter sometime in the last 24 months, so they’d be likely to appreciate the opportunity to pitch on a set rotation, with ample, predictable preparation time for each outing. Those are supposed to be among the things pitchers like about starting, so it’s a wonder that no team has yet tried giving them to relievers.

In addition to what it sets up (don’t worry, we’ll get there), this would get those three pitchers—guys Maddon doesn’t trust in high-leverage situations anyway—into spots where they could consistently eat important (but not delicate) innings.

Step 2: Bat the pitcher first (or seventh?).

For home games, the plan should be to have whichever pitcher starts that day bat leadoff, and exit immediately after the first inning. In his place, the second-best available guy on the bench that day should hit. (On most days, under the new roster configutation this would beget, we’re talking about Chris Coghlan, Chris Denorfia, or Christian Villanueva.) In effect, this bumps the pitcher to the 10th spot in the batting order, and makes the Cubs’ an American League lineup the first time through.

There’s an argument for batting the pitcher third, so that, if the first two batters fail to reach base and that plate appearance ends up meaning almost nothing, Maddon could leave his hurler in the game, absorb that out and get three more out of that opening arm. The problem with doing so is that, inevitably, it would interrupt the flow of the lineup, breaking up the Cubs’ best hitters. The whole reason Maddon loves to give for batting the pitcher eighth is that it creates a longer stretch of good hitters leading into the team’s big boppers. A version of this where the pitcher leads off preserves that; a version where he bats third does not.

On the road, this maneuver requires a slightly more deft touch. The rules demand that whichever player is listed as the pitcher on the lineup card at the beginning of the game face at least one batter, so it’s not possible to exactly replicate the idea. Instead of batting first, in away games, the pitcher should bat seventh, making them very unlikely to come to bat in the first inning, but very likely to do so in the second.

Here’s a look at the big picture:

The idea is the same as it used to be when Earl Weaver would start Royle Stillman at shortstop. See, Stillman, an Orioles farmhand of the mid-1970s, couldn’t play shortstop a lick. It wasn’t even his position. What Stillman could do, though, was hit, and that was just what Orioles starting shortstop Mark Belanger absolutely couldn’t do. Therefore, a few times in a few Septembers, Weaver would start Stillman (or someone in his mold) at shortstop, bat him second, and replace him with Belanger right away in the bottom of the first. That version of the move only worked on the road; this version works whether home or away. In both cases, though, the goal is simply to bat a good hitter where a bad hitter would otherwise be, and to do so without killing off good options later in the game.

I think both versions of the gambit achieve that. It’s something Weaver, who pinch-hit 148 times in 159 games in 1975, despite playing all of them under DH rules, would only do in September, when he had an expanded roster with which to work and could spare the stick. Back then, 58 percent of all pinch-hit appearances were in relief of a position player. In 2014, 58 percent of all pinch-hit plate appearances were in relief of a pitcher. That swing means that pinch-hitting just isn’t as valuable a strategic tool as it once was, and that using a bat-first bench guy for a first- or second-inning plate appearance that pushes the pitcher’s first appearance farther out is more justifiable than ever.

Step 3: Cut the starters loose a bit.

There’s one obvious drawback to this plan, which is that it would require the traditional starter for any given game to get his work in on a different schedule. He’d likely spend the first inning warming in the bullpen, instead of doing that on his own timetable prior to the game. It would take some gentle treatment of the starters’ egos to make this fly, and not just for that reason.

Once they embraced it, though, this plan would really help the Cubs’ starters. They’d be able to take over halfway through the first trip through an opponent’s batting order, thus staggering the times-through-the-order penalty differently than usual. It’s likely that the 22nd batter faced for the traditional starter (that point, right around 85 pitches and with some good hitters seeing them for a third time, where Kyle Hendricks and Tsuyoshi Wada, in particular, seem to run short on steam) would be the opponent’s nine-hole hitter, instead of their five-hole guy. There’s a chance that, in addition to simply entering an inning later, the starter could get an extra out or two per outing because of the way this shakes out. If the Cubs could do that, it’d go a long way toward slowing the assault on Pedro Strop’s arm.

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This plan would still leave Strop, Hector Rondon, Jason Motte, and James Russell in traditional relief roles, ready to fill in the back ends of games. If ever that corps gets too heavily taxed, a 13th pitcher could easily be called up temporarily, to stop the gaps. Wood, Jackson, Wada, and Russell all are suboptimal choices for the roles they would fill under this plan, but they would also not need to fill those roles all that long. Neil Ramirez is starting a rehab assignment with Double-A Tennessee this week. Jacob Turner is already two starts into his own rehab work. Rafael Soriano is just getting ramped up, but is only a month or so away.

Prospects Carl Edwards, Jr. and Corey Black, guys with great stuff who never seemed to have significant futures as starters, both have been pitching in relief this year, and should be good candidates to take on the newly carved-out roles I prescribe for Wood, Jackson, and Grimm soon, if any of those three prove inadequate to the task. In Triple-A Iowa’s win Monday night, the three relievers they used were Edwards, Jr., Armando Rivero, and Yoervis Medina. Both Rivero and Medina are candidates to step into relief roles with the parent club later in the summer, too.

Trade opportunities also abound, and if the Cubs go out and add a good starter to their traditional rotation, Wada could slide into the Wood/Jackson/Grimm role. Eventually, a 40-man roster problem is going to crop up, as is an out-of-options problem: neither Ramirez nor Turner can be kept in the minors at all once they’re activated. This plan lessens the need for guys like Brian Schlitter, Gonzalez Germen, and Eric Jokisch, which is good, because none of them are likely to fit anywhere in the Cubs organization by the All-Star break.

With Kyle Schwarber coming up for the week to DH, it’s clear that the front office is aware of the value of his bat, and unwilling to give it away in the short term simply in the name of development. Schwarber might be kept behind the plate in Iowa, and might remain primarily a catcher, but I’m not stretching by suggesting that he could see significant time as a left fielder, bench bat, and back-up backstop between now and the end of the season. This plan would make room for Schwarber (and others who will want or need to fit onto the big-league roster this summer and fall, like Javier Baez, Arismendy Alcantara, Christian Villanueva, Mike Olt, and Tommy La Stella), by getting Chicago back to a reasonable, efficient number of pitchers on the active roster. The offense would benefit not only from the extra bodies on hand, but from the lengthening of the lineup the first time through.

Ultimately, this would put a lot of people who have struggled in certain environments in better positions to succeed. Starters who no longer merit that role have a chance to keep preparing and thinking like starters, while also pacing themselves and pitching like relievers. A batter who might struggle to pinch-hit in the seventh, after sitting and getting cold on the bench in the dugout for two hours, will get a chance to take his lone plate appearance much earlier, against a hurler less likely to be throwing 98 mph. Players are people, and while teams should expect them to adapt to most of the things asked of them, they also should strive to fit roles to skill sets and habits. I think this plan balances that well.

The Cubs have a long stretch ahead in which they play a lot of games without off days. Rain has wreaked havoc on their schedule, and will continue to do so this weekend, if the forecasts are right. Although they’ll have a long stretch of time at home in August and face a softer schedule in July and August than they do this month, they also play pretty much every day from now through the end of the season. They need to be able to navigate that without carrying 13 or 14 arms at all times. This is a flawed and radical way to make that work, but it’s worth a try.

Lead photo courtesy of Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports