A 10¢ Bullpen for a $20 Job; and It Might Be Enough

Over the last few days, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the Cubs’ bullpen. It’s not something I do regularly, I assure you. It’s just that it seems to me—and maybe, in a few minutes, it’ll seem to you as well—as if the bullpen’s current construction is something that feels hard to think through at first, what with all the movement that’s happened this winter, but becomes a whole lot clearer once you work through it methodically. So let’s do that together.

In 2015, 22 different players made at least one appearance in relief for the Chicago Cubs. They are:

Trevor Cahill, Phil Coke, Chris Denorfia, Carl Edwards, Jr., Gonzalez Germen, Justin Grimm, Tommy Hunter, Edwin Jackson, Yoervis Medina, Jason Motte, Neil Ramirez, Clayton Richard, Fernando Rodney, Hector Rondon, David Ross, Zac Rosscup, James Russell, Brian Schlitter, Rafael Soriano, Pedro Strop, Tsuyoshi Wada, and Travis Wood.

Of those players, Germen (Rockies), Medina (Pirates), Motte (Rockies), Russell (Phillies), Schlitter (Rockies), and Wada (NPB) have already left Chicago for other homes via free agency or trade. Coke, Hunter, Jackson, Rodney, and Soriano remain unsigned, but appear unlikely to rejoin the Cubs unless on incentive-laden or split contracts, which we won’t know about for a few months and which needn’t meaningfully affect our analysis for the moment. And Denorfia and Ross—despite their myriad talents—can be safely removed from consideration for meaningful bullpen roles in 2016.

That narrows the list of returning 2015 relievers to just nine names, with my estimates of their 2016 salaries in parentheses (those’ll become relevant later):

Cahill ($4.3 mm), Edwards ($0.5), Grimm ($1.2), Ramirez ($0.5), Richard ($2.0), Rondon ($1.2), Rosscup ($0.5), Strop ($3.5), and Wood ($6.0).

As a group, those nine players will be paid approximately $20 million in 2016, though Grimm, Rondon, Strop, and Wood are arbitration-eligible and might be paid in excess of my expectations, pushing the total up somewhat. Cahill and Richard, for their parts, are on contracts whose values are known, and Edwards, Ramirez, and Rosscup will make the major-league minimum or close to it next year.

To that collection, all of whose members have spots on the 40-man roster, the Cubs have rostered the following six relievers or potential relievers this offseason:

Andury Acevedo ($0.5 mm, if MLB), Rex Brothers ($1.4), Pierce Johnson ($0.5, if MLB), Edgar Olmos ($0.5), Spencer Patton ($0.5), and Adam Warren ($1.2).*

All of which brings the Cubs’ bullpen commitment in 2016 (so far) to 15 players and approximately $25 million. Except, there’s no way that the Cubs are bringing 15 relievers with them to Anaheim for Opening Day. Last year, the Cubs spent the better part of their season with eight relievers on the roster. Given their flexibility on the positional side in 2016, I’d imagine that they’ll continue that practice going forward. Of course, they might not. But for now, I’m comfortable working with eight bullpen spots.

Except thinking about eight bullpen spots, alone, isn’t really sufficient, is it? The way this Cubs team is set up, you can’t separate decisions about the bullpen from decisions about the rotation, and so what we’re really talking about is 13 spots available for pitchers, overall, come Opening Day.

Three of those spots will be taken up by Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, and John Lackey. The rest of the rotation is dicey, so let’s leave it alone for a minute, with the understanding that two spots are left to decide, and move on to what we know for sure—or close to it—about the bullpen. Cahill, Richard, Warren, and Wood are essentially guaranteed Opening Day roster spots by virtue of their contract status and the Cubs’ obvious interest in bringing them back this winter. Strop and Rondon, last year’s star performers, are extremely likely to get spots as well, barring injury. That leaves us here:

That’s a good start, but we can do better. Let’s return to the rotation, where there are, at least putatively, two obvious men for the final two rotation spots: Jason Hammel and Kyle Hendricks. But, owing to each man’s periodic struggles with ineffectiveness in 2015, the competition will go a little farther than that come February: you can expect each of the men listed in spots six through nine on the list above to figure into the Cubs’ rotation competition during spring training, each with varying levels of on-paper viability for a spot.

Those four players, though, are relatively easy to deal with for the purposes of our exercise. Whether or not they make the rotation—which is something I’m in no position to forecast now—they will be on the roster come Opening Day, either as starters or as relievers. We therefore needn’t concern ourselves with them any further here. Instead, it’s Hammel and Hendricks who must be reckoned with. Hammel is, to my mind, the easier to deal with of the two, given his contract, upside, and veteran status. Despite his struggles near the end of 2015, and barring absolute performance collapse in Spring Training, I’m near-certain that he’ll get one of the five rotation spots to start the year. That’s not a lock, and it’s just my (informed) opinion, but I’d be surprised if it doesn’t happen, assuming no changes to the candidate pool between now and February.

Hendricks presents a trickier situation, because (unlike Hammel) his stuff is unlikely to play well in the bullpen and (also unlike Hammel) he has options left. If his performance in spring training merits a spot in the rotation, things become pretty clear: two spots would then remain for relievers, with nine competitors for those spots. If he doesn’t make the rotation, on the other hand, I’m guessing that he’ll be sent to Iowa to start the year, one of the men listed six through nine will become a starter, and there’ll be a third opening in the relief corps with the same nine competitors. That’s a rather unfortunate scenario for Hendricks, but it’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

In terms of roster decisions, that leaves us with two scenarios: one in which Kyle Hendricks makes the rotation out of spring training, and leaves two relief spots open for nine men, and one in which he doesn’t, leaving three spots open for the same nine men.

Luckily for us, the analysis I’d like to do for the final relief spots doesn’t require knowledge of the number of spots left available; rather, it requires knowledge of the option status of the nine remaining relievers. By my best guess (with thanks to Arizona Phil‘s wonderful roster resource), the following players have options remaining, meaning they can be sent to the minor leagues in 2016 without the Cubs exposing them to other teams:

Acevedo, Edwards, Johnson, and Patton.

The following players are subject to revocable waivers if optioned, by virtue of their service time:

Brothers and Grimm.

And the following players are out of options, meaning they must either be on the 25-man roster come Opening Day, or be offered to every other major-league team before being sent to the minors:

Olmos, Ramirez, and Rosscup.

So, there you go. Five relievers with various forms of options left, and two or three spots remaining. Grimm, who appears to be a Maddon favorite, will likely get a spot, leaving just one or two spots left (depending on how you feel about Hendricks). If it’s one spot, I’m guessing it goes to Brothers, given his lefty and contract status. If there’s two, Brothers will make it and the final spot will likely go to the better of Rosscup and Olmos (both of whom are lefties) and Ramirez. The two losers, sadly, will likely head out of the organization, unless they’re placed on waivers at the perfect time.**

But that’s just a guess, and none of it matters, anyway. The bullpen will change constantly throughout the year, and I can guarantee you that the eight relievers the Cubs start the year with will not be the eight guys they finish with. And that’s ok, because bullpens are sort of a crapshoot. With rare exceptions (Mariano Rivera, I’m looking at you) good relievers in one year are no more likely than bad relievers to be good relievers in the next, which makes constructing a bullpen, for the most part, a question of scouting the stuff—traditional pitching stats don’t matter much, across the small sample sizes that relievers accrue—and volume.

And so the best you can do with a bullpen is find pure talent—as much as you can—and see what floats to the surface. That’s what the Cubs have done this offseason. They had an excellent bullpen in 2015, without spending too much money, and they’re likely to have a pretty solid bullpen next year as well. Why? Because they’ll get to choose, at any given moment, the best eight players out of the 15 or so they have available to them. There’ll be some duds, yeah, but they’ll spend most of the year in Iowa. And the stars should—if the scouts have done their job—more than make up for it.

The best sports combine luck and skill in perfect ratio. You don’t want to leave things entirely to chance, of course, but you also want room enough for the possibility that the underdog might sometimes win. That’s because the beauty of sports lies somewhere in the intersection of impossibility and hope, and neither the random dictates of fate nor the banality of a predictable victory allow room for that intersection to breathe and captivate in the way sports can when they’re at their best.

In the sense that it will require a great deal of both luck and skill to succeed, then, the Cubs’ bullpen in 2016—like the team and city it will work in the service of—should have no reason to shy from greatness.

*Note that I have not included Eric Jokisch here, who’s been on the roster since September of 2014, is mostly a starter, and doesn’t appear to figure heavily in the Cubs’ bullpen plans for 2016. I ignore Dallas Beeler in the starters section, later, for similar reasons. Both are depth players, and won’t figure into Opening Day plans unless disaster strikes.

**This section was rewritten after publication in part due to comments from @micahbennett, @fullcounttommy and @jhay187. Thank you!

Lead photo courtesy Charles LeClaire—USA Today Sports.