Crooked Pitch

I wrote an article over at FanHouse this morning about the Cubs decision to announce Carlos Marmol as their closer heading into the 2010 season. I may have been a little hard on Marmol with this statement.

While this is good news for Marmol, it’s more a result of Gregg stinking in the closer’s role, more so then Marmol beating him out for the job.

Since taking over the closer role Marmol has a 2.93 ERA and an 1.80 strikeout to walk ratio (18:10 K:BB). Digging a little deeper I found that Marmol has a 1.93 ERA in save situations and a 5.74 ERA in non-save situations. It looks as if the really poor pitching came when Marmol was in a set-up role, not as a closer.

Could Marmol be a completely different pitcher as a closer versus a set-up guy?

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