Don’t Walk This Way: Cubs Relievers Need to Curb Free Passes

The Cubs have blown late leads in each of their Sunday games this season, and walks have been at the heart of the issue. Of their 17 combined free passes in those two losses, the bullpen was responsible for 10 despite pitching only eight innings. For the season, Cubs relievers have racked up an MLB-worst 27 walks. You might be thinking that’s to be expected due to having played more games than any other team so far, but the Cubs are actually third in baseball with 41.2 bullpen innings.

Making matters worse, Craig Counsell‘s relief corps has struck out only 34 batters, tied with four other teams for 14th in MLB. But wait, there’s more. The Cubs bullpen ranks 29th with a 14.8% walk rate and 28th with a 17.3% strikeout rate, and we still haven’t reached the bottom. While it’s never great to put runners on base, and failing to strike them out means you’ve got little margin for error, having a good defense means balls in play are often converted to outs.

Trouble is, Cubs relievers are allowing an MLB-worst .299 average to opposing hitters on an absurd .362 BABIP against. And we can’t even chalk that up to bad luck because they’ve allowed the least amount of soft contact (9.8%) with the seventh-most hard contact (34.6%) and 10th-highest line drives (19.5%). All of this comes down to a -1.29 win probability added that is worse than any team not called the White Sox (-1.54).

The good news is that they’ve got 150 games to figure it out. Whether that’s Ryan Pressly tamping down his 9.00 BB/9 that includes walking the leadoff or second batter he’s faced on three occasions — the most recent of which was the Padres’ No. 9 hitter — or Caleb Thielbar addressing that unsightly 26.3% walk rate, something has to change. Perhaps Brad Keller should get a little more run in high-leverage situations.

I do believe this is something of an aberration, but it needs to be quickly balanced out by a consistent string of clean outings.