There has been much hand-wringing about the Chicago Cubs’ recent pitching woes, as the club dropped to .500 yesterday. Yet through Sunday, the Cubs’ pitching staff was the third stingiest in yielding walks (2.5/9) in the National League and the seventh most restrictive in allowing home runs (0.87/9).
Cubs’ pitchers were also striking out the third most batters per nine innings (8.39).
So why are the Cubs saddled with the fifth worst team ERA, 4.24, in the National League?
It is all in the defense.
The adverse effect the Cubs’ defense is having on the pitching staff can be illustrated by the concept of FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching). The theory behind FIP is that a pitcher can truly only control four outcomes: home runs, walks, hit batters and strikeouts. .
Now FIP has its shortcomings. Under FIP, a pitcher theoretically has no control over a batted ball that bounds off the very top of the outfield fence. However, he has total control over the outcome if that same line drive is elevated two feet higher and clears the wall for a home run. FIP also makes no distinction between a pitcher allowing soft but hitter-fortuitous contact and lasers that raid the outfield gaps.
But if you actually watch the games instead of relying on just FIP data, you can glean whether a pitching staff is being betrayed by its defense or if that same pitching staff could not be salvaged by the likes of defensive wizards Willie Mays, Ozzie Smith and Roberto Clemente. In other words, you can accurately assess whether a pitching staff’s FIP or its ERA is more indicative of how the staff is pitching.
If you do not have the time to watch that much Chicago Cubs’ baseball, you can always rely on saber-metrics to assess the quality of the defense behind a pitching staff.
The Cubs’ FIP of 3.49 is the fifth best in the National League, and the Chicago Cubs, by a large margin, have the greatest differential between team ERA and FIP (4.24 versus 3.49) of all teams whose FIP is lower than their ERA. With the exception of LH reliever Zac Rosscup, every Cubs’ pitcher who has tallied at least five innings this season has a lower FIP than ERA.
It is clear from watching Cubs’ games that the pitching problems have far less to do with the pitchers than with the men tasked with fielding the baseballs opposing hitters are putting into play. The infielders are not ranging far enough to get to baseballs that average fielders do. Rookie Jorge Soler has struggled to cover sufficient ground in right field, and base runners have stolen 21 of 25 bases against Cubs’ catchers.
But don’t take our word for it that the Chicago Cubs’ defense is cleaving almost a run off of their pitchers’ ERA. Let the numbers speak louder than our observations.
Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) is a ballpark-adjusted metric that determines how effective a fielder is at making plays in various areas of the field. The resulting value is an indication of how many runs a certain fielder has gained or lost for his team compared to what an “average” fielder at the same position and in the same year would do on plays in the same area of the field. Most importantly, it captures the runs a defensive player is costing his team beyond just errors that register in the scorebook. In other words, UZR penalize a defender the same for allowing a catchable fly ball to drop in front of him as for dropping the fly ball.
Only three teams in the National League have a worse UZR than the Cubs -1.4. The Chicago Cubs are last in this category at second base, ninth out of fifteen teams at shortstop, 14th at third base, eight at first base and tenth in right field. But for the outstanding play of Dexter Fowler in CF, where the Cubs rank fifth, and Chris Coghlan in LF, where the Cubs rank second, the Chicago Cubs’ defense might be on par with the Bad News Bears’.
But the good news is that three of the four culprits behind the Cubs’ porous UZR are rookies Addison Russell, who is adjusting to second base after primarily playing shortstop in the minor leagues, 3B Kris Bryant and the aforementioned Soler. Players are not born great defenders, and there is every reason to believe all three will hone their defensive skills with more experience.
Unless the Chicago Cubs acquire pitchers who strike out significantly more batters, thus mitigating the variable of poor defense, the Cubs will need significant defensive improvement to lower the team ERA and start winning on a consistent basis.