A Look At The Cubs’ New Rotation
Joe Maddon has made several crazy/smart moves since he’s become Cubs’ manager, but the moves have often seemed to work out in the end.
The Cubs will be visiting the St. Louis Cardinals for their opening series starting April 2. Chicago will begin the season off in a heated battle, and maybe that has caused Maddon to make an awkward move to his rotation.
The 2016 pitching rotation:
- Jake Arrieta
- Jon Lester
- John Lackey
- Jason Hammel
- Kyle Hendricks
The 2017 pitching rotation:
- Jon Lester
- Jake Arrieta
- John Lackey
- Brett Anderson
- Kyle Hendricks
Don’t freak out Cubs fans, trust Maddon; he makes the best decision often. In MLB you don’t often see the lowest ERA pitcher pitching fifth in the rotation, but it’s for a reason.
The Cubs did not want to have two lefties, Anderson and Lester, start in back-to-back games against opponents. Another reason why Maddon would go with that method is to get teams off guard and not make Chicago predictable. Additionally, Hendricks facing an opponent fourth or fifth starter is almost a guaranteed win if he can maintain what he did last year.
“Everybody’s always concerned about pecking order regarding who you perceive to be best or best,” Maddon said. “It’s just more or less balancing it out. I don’t even know how important that is either. Some teams only have righties — you see righty, righty. Is that a benefit to the other side? I don’t know. We’re just going to do that to break it up a little bit.”
Hendricks did perfectly fine at the fifth spot last year, he finished with the lowest ERA in MLB, had a career high 15 wins and finished third in Cy Young voting, so why would you try to fix something that doesn’t need to be fixed?
“If he does the same thing, we’ll be pretty happy with that,” Maddon said.
When Maddon told Hendricks, he will be the fifth starter, he jokingly said he began to throw things. Additionally, Maddon told Muskat why the Cubs are a unique team and buys into the system.
“I heard things rattling, so it must have been that,” Maddon said. “That’s the point about our group — everybody buys in, everybody’s good, and they understand about being a part of the puzzle in their unique way. It’s kind of neat when you can have these conversations, knowing ego is not going to play a part of it coming from the player back at you. They know it’s part of the overall picture, they know the purpose is to do what we did last year. It’s a unique situation.”
The other big news from Thursday is Maddon announcing Anderson had won a spot in the rotation. Over the offseason, Anderson and Mike Montgomery were fighting for a starting spot in the rotation, but it’s the free agent signing who will start the season there.
Anderson has played more games as a starting pitcher than Montgomery. Another reason why this was a good move is Montgomery did a phenomenal job in the bullpen last season. Maddon can now use Montgomery as a spot starter or the sixth man in the rotation down the stretch.
Chicago will put Anderson in Hammel’s old role on the team. When the postseason begins, it’s unlikely Anderson will have a spot in the postseason rotation, but he will help get wins in the regular season and eat up innings. He can try out for a bullpen pitcher in the playoffs depending on how well he performs.
The countdown is on: only nine days until the 2017 championship defense begins.
