Recently we put together a weighted list of what we think the Cubs priorities should be this offseason.  Many of them were jokes, but a lot of them weren’t.  LOOGY was 9th on the list.  The Cubs do have a few in-house options, but each of them come with serious question marks.  Let’s first take a look at the internal options.  First of all, thanks a lot to Harry Pavlidis who put together the bulk of this post. 

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Neal Cotts

Neal Cotts isn’t very good at baseball and he’s a terrible LOOGY.  Since 2005 his OPS against lefties is over .815.  Against righties is about .800.  Cotts has had one really good year, an average year and a few really bad years.  People point to his 2005 as his potential, but it was a fluke.  He only allowed 1 home run that entire year in 60.1 innings.  Cotts’ stats from before 2005 and after 2005 are nearly identical.  2005 is the outlier and it is highly unlikely it will ever be done again.

2003-2004:  72.2 IP, 76 H, 53 ER, 47 BB, 68 K, 14 HR, 1.52 WHIP, 6.06 ERA
2005:  60.1 IP, 38 H, 13 ER, 29 BB, 58 K, 1 HR, 1.11 WHIP, 1.95 ERA
2006-2008:  106.1 IP, 117 H, 57 ER, 46 BB, 100 K, 20 HR, 4.82 ERA, 1.54 WHIP

Again, Neal Cotts is not a LOOGY and he’s not even a good enough relief pitcher to offer arbitration in my opinion.  Stolen from Harry’s Cubsf/x, here’s some charts.

cfx	L	R	mph	pfx_x	pfx_z	deg	rpm	B:CS	corner%	Sw%	Whiff%	SwOZ%	TaIZ%	HR%	NKS	G:AO
CH	0	5	83.4	4.3	7.1	149	991	2.0	0.00	40.00	50.00	33.33	50.00	0.0
F2	2	13	92.0	7.1	8.1	138	1,423	10.0	20.00	26.67	0.00	0.00	22.22	6.7	1.333	1.0
F4	60	55	92.0	4.1	10.8	160	1,515	1.8	15.65	44.35	29.41	24.14	26.67	0.9	0.438	1.9
FC	2	2	90.9	0.4	7.6	178	985	1.0	25.00	50.00	100.00	66.67	50.00	0.0
SL	37	16	85.6	-2.0	4.2	209	602	1.5	18.87	49.06	26.92	40.63	25.81	0.0	0.625	0.8
	101	91	90.0	2.6	8.6	172	1,231	1.9	16.67	44.27	29.41	28.57	26.89	1.0	0.593	1.6

Here’s one against lefties in various ball/strike situations.

		#	CH	F4	F2	FC	SL
L	first	22	0.0	40.9	0.0	0.0	59.1
L	ahead	30	0.0	60.0	6.7	3.3	30.0
L	behind	24	0.0	83.3	0.0	4.2	12.5
L	even	17	0.0	47.1	0.0	0.0	52.9
L	full	8	0.0	62.5	0.0	0.0	37.5

And the same thing against righties.

		#	CH	F4	F2	FC	SL
R	first	23	0.0	52.2	26.1	4.3	17.4
R	ahead	37	10.8	56.8	2.7	2.7	27.0
R	behind	21	0.0	71.4	23.8	0.0	4.8
R	even	9	11.1	66.7	11.1	0.0	11.1
R	full	1	0.0	100.0	0.0	0.0	0.0

Facing lefties, the Southpaw Cotts relies on his four-seamer and fastball. When the platoon is working against him, he mixes it up, and is no longer simple power pitcher. The fastball is still there, but the slider drops off against righties, and he introduces some two-seamers and even some change-ups. The slider is still there when he’s ahead, but he doesn’t start righties off with it, which is something a lefty can flip a coin on. —Harry Pavlidis

Neal Cotts’ spin movement below.  Click on the images for a larger popup image.

The flight path of his pitches…

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Sean Marshall

In a very small sample as a reliever, Marshall has been pretty good.  The problem with Marshall is that he’s not really a LOOGY either.  Lefties have hit Marshall a bit better in his career than righties have and he’s a better pitcher than Jason Marquis so he should be in the rotation.  Let’s take a look at Marshall’s pitchf/x as well.

cfx	#	mph	pfx_x	pfx_z	deg	rpm
CH	163	83.5	5.7	5.8	137.1	997.8
CU	441	73.5	-4.3	-9.8	156.3	1,114.8
F2	105	88.2	7.8	7.0	133.4	1,333.1
F4	406	88.5	5.2	8.0	147.6	1,225.4
FC	662	86.8	-0.1	5.9	184.4	782.6
SL	335	83.1	-2.6	3.4	207.3	605.1
	2112	83.6	0.5	2.7	168.9	952.9

pitch selection in each appearance below.

#	date	CH	CU	F2	F4	FC	SL
99	2007-05-23	0.0909	0.1111	0.0101	0.3737	0.1818	0.2323
93	2007-06-08	0.0108	0.2903	0.0430	0.1935	0.1828	0.2796
94	2007-06-13	0.0000	0.1277	0.0000	0.0957	0.3298	0.4468
76	2007-06-19	0.1974	0.0658	0.0000	0.2500	0.1974	0.2895
54	2007-06-24	0.0000	0.1852	0.0000	0.2037	0.3519	0.2593
66	2007-07-17	0.0758	0.2121	0.0000	0.1667	0.2121	0.3333
96	2007-07-22	0.1458	0.1354	0.0000	0.0729	0.3125	0.3333
102	2007-07-28	0.1471	0.1569	0.2157	0.1765	0.0686	0.2353
66	2007-08-02	0.0455	0.2424	0.0000	0.1212	0.4091	0.1818
60	2007-08-07	0.3000	0.1833	0.0000	0.2000	0.1000	0.2167
65	2007-08-18	0.0923	0.1846	0.0000	0.2615	0.2923	0.1692
70	2007-08-24	0.0714	0.2286	0.1571	0.1571	0.0714	0.3143
81	2007-08-31	0.1481	0.1481	0.0000	0.1605	0.2716	0.2716
34	2007-09-29	0.0000	0.2059	0.2647	0.1765	0.3529	0.0000
47	2008-05-07	0.0000	0.0426	0.1702	0.2766	0.2553	0.2553
87	2008-06-24	0.1379	0.1839	0.0000	0.2414	0.4023	0.0345
93	2008-06-29	0.0860	0.2258	0.0000	0.3118	0.3548	0.0215
88	2008-07-06	0.0568	0.2727	0.1818	0.1023	0.3636	0.0227
49	2008-07-26	0.0000	0.3469	0.0000	0.2041	0.4490	0.0000
69	2008-08-16	0.0290	0.4203	0.0580	0.1449	0.3043	0.0435
83	2008-08-31	0.1325	0.2651	0.0000	0.1566	0.4458	0.0000
103	2008-09-07	0.0777	0.2039	0.0000	0.1942	0.5146	0.0097
35	2008-09-19	0.0857	0.1429	0.0000	0.3714	0.4000	0.0000
71	2008-09-23	0.0423	0.2394	0.2113	0.1831	0.3239	0.0000
38	2008-10-01	0.0526	0.2105	0.1316	0.1579	0.4474	0.0000

lefty/right pitchf/x

cfx	#	LHH	RHH	Swing	Whiff	B:CS	ISZ	Paint	Chase	Watch
CH	163	9	154	0.3988	0.1231	3.2609	0.3804	0.1104	0.2178	0.3065
CU	441	94	347	0.4512	0.3216	2.5588	0.3787	0.1156	0.3504	0.3832
F2	105	26	79	0.3524	0.1892	2.0909	0.4762	0.1048	0.2545	0.5400
F4	406	102	304	0.4064	0.1152	2.3056	0.4064	0.1552	0.2448	0.3576
FC	662	160	502	0.5257	0.1839	1.5040	0.4758	0.1450	0.4121	0.3492
SL	335	88	247	0.5582	0.1604	2.0204	0.4388	0.1582	0.3830	0.2177
	2112	479	1633	0.4740	0.1918	2.0836	0.4290	0.1383	0.3367	0.3433

Release point

Sean Marshall’s spin movement below.

Trajectory

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Donald Veal

Veal put together an outstanding season in Low A ball in 2006, but has struggled since then.  His future is almost certainly in the bullpen and there are signs the Cubs may finally be making that change with him as he’s working in relief in whatever Winter League he is playing in.  Veal’s biggest problem is that he simply has no idea where the pitch is going after it leaves his hand.  He walks entirely too many to be a starter, but maybe, just maybe pitching more frequently will help him get the ball over the plate a bit more.  Or, perhaps it just means that batters will be more likely to swing at more pitches as we’ve seen with Carlos Marmol since he moved to the bullpen.  Then again, the early results of the Arizona Fall League have been horrific for Veal. 

In only 1 inning today he allowed 4 earned runs and now carries a 13.50 ERA.  One outing can really screw up an ERA as a reliever, but check out his numbers:  6 IP, 8 hits, 11 runs (9 earned), 11 walks and 7 strikeouts.  About the only positive is that he’s striking out more than a batter per inning, but he’s facing about 30 batters per inning so even his strikeout rate pretty much sucks. 

He has excellent stuff and a low to mid-90s fastball that would probably increase 1-2 mph if he were moved into the bullpen.  The risk with Veal as the Cubs 2009 LOOGY is that you have no idea what he can do.  He’s never pitched above AA and he’s never pitched in relief prior to the last few weeks.  The odds of the Cubs taking a chance on him to start the season are pretty slim and that’s probably the right thing to do.  Send him to AAA as a reliever to open 2009 and if he dominates, you’ve got another bullpen arm that may even be able to work the later innings. 

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JR Mathes

He’s worked almost exclusively as a starter in his minor league career.  He turns 27 years old in a few weeks and has been dominating this winter.  He gives up a lot of groundballs, which would be good at Wrigley, but he doesn’t strike many hitters out.  He posted a 4.29 ERA in 140 innings in 2008 at Iowa, which followed up his 2007 performance at Iowa in which he posted an ERA of 5.58 in 151 innings.  He’d probably be a bit better than that as a reliever, but I think you’re looking at another reliever that’s similar to Carmen Pignatiello.  If you need him to come up for a couple weeks, you might get by, but other than that, I don’t see how there’s much of a future here.

Other than these 4 (5 including Pignatiello), there’s nothing that may be immediately available within the system. 

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There are a few interesting free agents who could fill this role—Brian Shouse, Damaso Marte, and Joe Beimel.  Marte and Beimel have been connected to the Cubs by one or more rumors so far this offseason.  The pitchf/x related stuff below was done by Harry Pavlidis of Cubsf/x. 

Brian Shouse

A LOOGY that should really never be allowed to face a right handed hitter.  In 2008 he allowed an OPS to lefties under .500, which is kind of ridiculous, but righties were over .800.  Over the last 3 years the OPS allowed vs. lefties is .553 and against righties it’s .804.  Below are some charts of what kind of “stuff” Shouse has.

cfx	#	mph	pfx_x	pfx_z	deg	rpm
CH	17	76.8	6.7	-6.0	227.6	985.1
FA	731	81.7	8.0	-5.8	233.8	1,149.0
SL	232	74.8	-2.9	2.0	209.2	446.8
	980	80.0	5.4	-3.9	227.8	980.0

Harry put together this little primer on the pitchf/x system awhile back right here.  Check it out for a description of some of what is in the charts. 

Most of the following table is rather self-explanatory.  ISZ is the rate of pitches in rule book zone. 

cfx	#	LHH	RHH	Swing	Whiff	B:CS	ISZ	Paint	Chase	Watch
CH	17	2	15	0.4118	0.0000	9.0000	0.2941	0.0588	0.2500	0.2000
FA	731	267	464	0.4651	0.0912	1.4747	0.4802	0.1368	0.2816	0.3362
SL	232	195	37	0.4698	0.3853	5.8333	0.1940	0.1250	0.4118	0.2889
	980	464	516	0.4653	0.1601	1.9605	0.4092	0.1327	0.3230	0.3292

As you can see, he throws mostly fastballs to righties, but primarily sliders to the lefties.  It’s an excellent pitch against lefties.  38.53% of the time a lefty swings at the slider he misses it entirely.  Below are some more pictures from the pitchf/x system that Harry put together.  Click on the images to view a larger popup image. 

and the trajectory of the pitches below.

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DAMASO MARTE

Unlike Shouse, Marte is good vs. right handed batters as well as lefties.  Over the last 3 years his OPS against vs. lefties is .561 and against righties it’s still below .700 (.686).  The Yankees decline Marte’s 2009 option and they may not re-sign him.  As with the charts and images for Shouse, here are some that Harry put together for Marte as well.

cfx	#	mph	pfx_x	pfx_z	deg	rpm
CH	53	85.1	9.4	3.3	130.2	1,225.9
FA	735	93.6	8.3	7.8	133.5	1,525.1
FC	6	90.3	1.3	5.0	167.2	684.5
SL	398	83.6	-3.3	0.1	187.3	486.9
	1192	89.8	4.4	5.0	151.5	1,160.9

Marte throws quite a bit harder than Shouse.

cfx	#	LHH	RHH	Swing	Whiff	B:CS	ISZ	Paint	Chase	Watch
CH	53	1	52	0.5472	0.2069	1.6667	0.3396	0.2264	0.4286	0.2222
FA	735	289	446	0.4163	0.1961	2.1168	0.4259	0.1184	0.2536	0.3642
FC	6	5	1	0.6667	0.5000		0.3333	0.0000	0.5000	0.0000
SL	398	127	271	0.4472	0.3146	1.3913	0.4196	0.1407	0.3983	0.4850
	1192	422	770	0.4337	0.2398	1.8277	0.4195	0.1300	0.3121	0.3980

Marte throws fewer sliders against lefties than he does righties.  He also throws an occasional changeup and every once in awhile he drops in a cutter.  All of his pitches have a good WHIFF rate. 

Check out the images below (click to enlarge).  The first one is Marte’s game by game pitch selection.

the next one is the spin movement of the pitches.

and finally the flight path of each pitch below.

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JOE BEIMEL

Beimel turns 32 in April and has put together 3 consecutive solid seasons in Los Angeles.  His OPS allowed against lefties over the last 3 years is .578 and against righties it’s .747.  He’s really good against lefties, but not as good against righties as Marte is.  He’s still good though. 

cfx	#	mph	pfx_x	pfx_z	deg	rpm
CH	59	81.3	7.9	6.4	128.5	1,190.1
CU	141	75.6	-4.9	0.6	195.7	608.8
F2	726	87.8	8.6	6.3	126.2	1,333.0
F4	559	89.7	5.1	9.3	151.0	1,371.1
FC	18	89.6	1.1	9.2	173.0	1,178.9
	1503	87.1	5.9	6.9	142.6	1,271.8

Beimel throws more pitches than Shouse or Marte.  He has a 2-seamer and a 4-seam fast ball.  He also has a changeup and a curveball.  He’ll mix in the occasional cutter. 

cfx	#	LHH	RHH	Swing	Whiff	B:CS	ISZ	Paint	Chase	Watch
CH	59	1	58	0.4407	0.3846	32.0000	0.1695	0.0339	0.3469	0.1000
CU	141	120	21	0.4255	0.3833	6.3636	0.2057	0.0709	0.3571	0.3103
F2	726	151	575	0.4353	0.1994	2.3525	0.3402	0.1129	0.3758	0.4494
F4	559	403	156	0.4687	0.1221	1.2348	0.5170	0.1109	0.2667	0.3426
FC	18	15	3	0.5000	0.3333	2.0000	0.4444	0.1111	0.3000	0.2500
	1503	690	813	0.4478	0.1947	2.0743	0.3879	0.1051	0.3391	0.3808

He mostly throws 4-seamers and curve balls to lefties while he throws 2-seamers and changeups to the righties.  The WHIFF rate for the changeup and curve are pretty good and he seem to get an even amount of hitters to chase each of pitches.  Or relatively even anyway. 

As before, click on the images below to view a larger image.

Flight path image is below.

Game by game velocity chart below.

Looks like Beimel wore down toward the end of the season, at least in terms of velocity.  That’s probably true for a lot of pitchers though.