I would like this post to be less about Shota Imanaga’s rough and brief outing in Seattle yesterday, and more about what happened thereafter on the pitching side.
First, on Imanaga, from Craig Counsell, who didn’t express any longer-term concerns (Tribune): “He was having a bad day. Frankly, keeping it to two through the two innings was pretty good. Civale got him out of the third, but he just was not on today. He was struggling today, and you could just tell the misses were far bigger than normal. Velocity was down a little bit from the beginning, so we just have to regroup and get him the next time.”
Fine and fair, given Imanaga’s track record. I don’t anyone is planning to pull the plug on him as a starting pitcher any time soon. But, clearly, Counsell sees it as the time of year when he is justified in being much quicker to pull the plug on an individual start.
And, to that end, Counsell and the Cubs are in the enviable position of having multiple “starting pitcher” types coming out of the bullpen. Imanaga doesn’t have it, and you want to go to the bullpen with two on, nobody out, and the third inning only just beginning? Good news! You have Aaron Civale available to not only get out of that jam, but cover four scoreless.
Civale walked no one over those four innings, allowing just four singles and striking out two. It continued the trend of Civale being nails with the Cubs in relief, after a career of being almost exclusively a starting pitcher everywhere else.
Fun facts on that, by the way.
Here’s Aaron Civale has thrown exactly 800.0 innings with teams other than the Chicago Cubs, and he’s posted a 4.30 ERA, held batters to a .254/.310/.437 slash, struck out 21.1% of the batters he’s faced, walked 6.7%, posted a 38.1% groundball rate, a 7.5% barrel rate, and a 38.6% hard hit rate.
Now, here’s Civale in his 33.0 innings with the Cubs over the last couple years: 1.91 ERA, .189/.244/.311 slash, 24.2% K, 3.8% BB, 38.9% groundball, 6.6% barrel, 34.1% hard.
When Aaron Civale is coming out of the Chicago Cubs bullpen, he is a monster.
… ok, ok, small sample, lower-leverage, etc. I get it, and those are not meaningless caveats. We don’t know what this would look like over a full season in a role where he’d have to pitch a lot more shorter-burst outings in higher-leverage, just by nature of being part of a full-season bullpen.
I also know that, because he’s been a solid starting pitcher a lot of the time in the big leagues, Civale would have plenty reason to go out there and seek another starting job this offseason.
But if he keeps doing this the rest of the way for the Cubs? Might be time to think about making a more permanent transition, no? Since departing the Guardians in mid-2023, Civale hasn’t been nearly as effective as a starting pitcher as he was in his younger days. At 31, he’s still far from being too old to be effective, though; it might just be a natural inflection point in his career. Maybe the extra MPH or two that he gets out of the bullpen with the Cubs is a really critical difference for him?
Anyway. Not really a full discussion for today. Instead, it’s just a celebration: kudos to Civale for really taking to his role with the Cubs, and kudos to Jed Hoyer and the front office for grabbing him (twice!) when he was available for just about nothing at midseason.
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