Why is Carlos Marmol struggling?

Decreasing strikeouts, increasing walks. What gives? I'm too lazy to do the analysis, but this graphic is pretty self explanatory



Basically, Marmol has limited himself to only two pitches this season (the fastball and slider, removing the curveball from the mix) and both have dramatically fallen in quality. Marmol's slider, the best in baseball in 2007 and 2008, has plummeted from a +21.4 runs per 100 pitches thrown rate to a mere 2.7 (87.4% decrease) and his fastball has gone from slightly positive to slightly negative in effectiveness (continuing a three year trend in declining fastball quality for Marmol).

I think we broke him last season.

1 comments:

Cubsfan4evr said...

I thought his problem was that he is falling off the mound to the first base side after he releases the ball. I think if he stopped doing that you would see him have better control and not hitting as many batters or walking them.