On Thursday, ESPNChicago’s Doug Padilla reported that Valparaiso High School graduate Jeff Samardzija had finally been cemented into the Chicago Cubs’ starting rotation, landing in the third rotation spot for the Cubs to start the 2012 season.
The road to make “The Shark” a starter has been long in the making for the former Notre Dame receiver, after he expressed a strong interest and preference in starting going in to the 2010 and 2011 seasons after performing very well in 2008 out of the bullpen and struggling between starting and relieving roles in 2009.
Making the transition from bullpen arm to starter has been a tough one from many in baseball, as recently written about by Grantland’s Jonah Keri. And I’ve written before about the importance in solidifying his role in order for him to be successful, so it’s nice to see that, going in to a season, he’s officially been given a starting role. But what will Samardzija need to do to make sure he stays in the rotation for the foreseeable future?
Be Efficient
The new regime in Chicago is led by Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer, a duo that earned two rings in nine years in Boston, all while simultaneously killing a “curse”, turning around a franchise, and reinvigorating fan base in the process. With a similar goal in mind for the Cubs, Epstein and Hoyer are bringing an analytics-based approach to bringing in new talent to Chicago, looking for inexpensive options to fill out the major league club while the entire organization looks to rebuild from the ground up.
The type of player the new Cubs’ management is coveting on the pitching side of the game is ideally young, (even more ideally inexpensive), and likely coming off a year in which they have been less-than-stellar (think “buy low”). For the most part in this 2012 offseason, that has been exactly the type of player the Cubs have brought in or retained, including Samardzija.
Based on his projections and advanced stats I found over at FanGraphs (which I realize are based on Samardzija coming out of the bullpen), Samardzija will need to cut down on his walk rate if he wants to stay in the rotation. In his career, he has averaged walking 4.88, 3.89, 9.31, and 5.11 each season in his career, ranging from above average early in his career to an awful 2010 campaign. Luckily, many of the projection-stats predict that his 2010 season was just a hiccup, and low 4.2-range will be more in-line with what we can expect in 2012.
His ground-ball rate will also need to improve. Samardzija is a career 40.4% ground-ball pitcher, meaning more often than not, when the batter makes contact with the ball, it’s up in the air. To be a fly-ball pitcher on a wind-blowing-out day at Wrigley, well, that spells disaster. The good news is he’s improving, which brings me to my next point. In order to stay in the rotation, he’ll need to...
Stay Consistent
Luckily for Samardzija, he seems to have found a consistency late in 2011 that may have played a factor in his upgrade to the rotation. After a rough April and May (where he started in spring training, only to be demoted), he was incredibly consistent in July (14 IP, 11 K, 6 BB, 64 batters faced, 3.21 ERA), August (16 IP, 17 K, 6 BB, 61 batters faced, 1.13 ERA), and September (12.2 IP, 10 K, 5 BB, 51 batters faced 1.42 ERA) for the Cubs.
While that sub-2 ERA is likely unsustainable, especially when he’ll be logging for more pitches, batters faced, and innings, it’s important to have that 2/1 strikeout-to-walk ratio with the near 1:1 strikeout-per-inning ratio. As ESPN’s Keith Law, ESPN’s lead scout-of-sorts, said of Samardzija on the March 27th Fantasy Baseball podcast, “It seems like he figured it out.”
If he can improve on his efficiency from past seasons and maintain the consistency he showed late in 2011, only one thing could be a factor in keeping Samardzija from being a long-term starter in the major leagues this season. He will need to...
Stay Healthy
Health is the one aspect of sports that is nearly impossible to predict. Going back to the new regime in Chicago, I think this season is a “Let’s Throw As Much Against the Wall to See What Sticks” type of season for the Cubs. If someone (and not just Samardzija -- it could literally be anyone on the team) loses their starting position and their replacement comes in to do better, they may just be out of that spot on the roster.
For now though, Samardzija is a starter for the Cubs, a longtime process in the making. After coming in to spring training early to work on his craft, he finally earned a spot in the rotation. As he told Padilla, "Once you become a reliever and have success, a lot of times that’s where you end up for your career. I really wanted to give this a full head of steam, a full shot and go from there. I’m excited for the season and I can’t wait."
And if it doesn’t work out? There’s always next year.