The title of this post sums up the best reaction to the news of Carlos Zambrano going to the bullpen I've heard so far. Terms like "head-scratcher" and "shocking" don't do this move justice. This is baseball LUNACY. To take a guy who not only is being paid $91 million dollars, who has been your "ace" starting pitcher going on 5 years now, that usually gives you 200 innings per season, and put him in the bullpen in the first two weeks of a season where he won't even be the Closer is the equivalent of driving a car blindfolded. Not only does it not make any sense, it's also very dangerous.
Before we go overboard on how idiotic this is, let me get the preliminaries out of the way. Yes, the Cubs bullpen has problems. Yes they need a set up man who preferably has a "power-arm". Yes they are getting Ted Lilly back, and someone has to be the odd man out in the rotation. That's all fine and good. Under NO circumstances should the odd man out be Zambrano however. None. There are much better candidates that have pitched out of the bullpen before, Ryan Dempster, Carlos Silva, and Randy Wells in particular. None of those guys though are nearly the Ace, and Innings Eater that Zambrano is. Even the baseball nerds at Fangraphs.com can't make any sense of this, because here's the thing : even if Zambrano excels in his new role, he's still not as valuable as a bullpen specialist versus being the #1 Ace of the staff. There's NO WAY around that.
Another amazing aspect of this, that I never in a million years would think could be possible...even the people who can't stand Zambrano for his antics, feel some level of compassion for him now. He didn't ask for this, and this is not a knee jerk reaction to some injury that Zambrano has. This is just a bizarre decision that's out of his hands, and he's handled it like a professional. As far as I know, this has never been done before by any team, and if it has been done, it certainly wasn't done two weeks into a new season!
I honestly don't know why Lou and Jim Hendry would do this? Not only does it make zero sense, but it really doesn't seem like it will work either considering Zambrano's history is that of a guy who struggles in the first inning of games he pitches?
I am still at a loss for words at this mind-numbing move. You hit it right on the head as far as it being impossible to justify. I can't even trust Lou to put him back into the rotation at some point this year.
ReplyDeleteSee that's the other thing that makes this tricky and itchy because Lou has said that he refuses to pitch Zambrano on back to back games. So that means Zambrano should go at least 2 innings an appearance because if Lou truly plans to put him back in the rotation later in the season, you don't have him get used to pitching 1 inning per game, and then suddenly put him back in a position to go 7 innings again.
ReplyDeleteSo far he's averaged close to 1.5 innings in both of his appearances. We'll see if that number goes up - especially when Carlos "Cy Young" Silva comes back to earth...