Marmol and Flyballs

This morning, I mentioned that Jason Bergmann had the second highest flyball rate in the major leagues among pitchers with at least 30 innings. Only one pitcher in baseball allows hitters to put the ball into the air with more frequency than Bergmann, but in a striking contrast, Carlos Marmol couldn’t be any more different as a pitcher than Bergmann.

Marmol has been a revelation out of the Cubs bullpen the last two years after struggling in the rotation during 2006. As a reliever, he’s blowing hitters away with his power fastball/slider combination, having scrapped the curve he used as a starter in favor of the harder breaking ball. His 93 MPH fastball and 81 MPH slider are both knockout pitches, and his huge jump in strikeout rate shows the effect of the new pitch and the increased velocity since moving to relief full time.

Marmol leads all major league relievers with 47 strikeouts, and Joel Hanrahan is the only other guy over 40 on the year. With a strikeout rate exceeding 12.0 K/9, its easy to see why Marmol has been successful. It’s hard to score runs if you can’t make contact.

However, when hitters do put the bat on the ball against Marmol, odds are its going to be a flyball. When looking for a late inning relief ace to protect a one run lead, a flyball isn’t necessarily the outcome you’re looking for in a lot of cases. In fact, Marmol’s flyball rate is so extreme that he’s going to have to sustain an unbelievably low HR/F rate in order to keep from giving up a few high leverage home runs. While relievers do post lower HR/F rates than starting pitchers, even the great relievers are going to have problems keeping their HR/F rates below 5% consistently, and that’s really where Marmol is going to have to live considering how often the ball reaches the outfield when hitters make contact.

He’s undoubtedly one of the best relief pitchers in the game, but if I’m a Cubs fan and Marmol comes trotting in to protect a one run lead, I’m going to be hoping like crazy for a strikeout, because his non-strikeout events could be rather scary.