Cards Notebook: Marmol's bullpen thought process, an encouraging season on the farm, possible rotation help in Japan

Let's dive into all manner of Cardinals matters as we attempt to ignore the current malaise that is the NL Central standings

I have some at-length thoughts on the rotation that I’m going to get into soon, but for now let’s dip into and out of other matters, not all of which are terrible.

Marmol’s baffling bullpen rationale

Following Wednesday’s crushing loss, which preceded Thursday’s embarrassing loss, manager Oli Marmol addressed his decision to let Giovanny Gallegos face Houston’s Kyle Tucker even though lefty Génesis Cabrera was available and would’ve seized the platoon advantage against the lefty-swinging Tucker, who wound up doubling off Gallegos with two-outs and setting up José Abreu’s home run. Here’s what Marmol said: 

“Tucker’s been much better against left-handers this year. He’s got a 1.000 OPS. He’s got a six-and-change against righties.” 

I understand that managers, possibly out of an exaggerated sense of “tactical paranoia,” aren’t always forthcoming in the reasons behind their in-game decisions. However, if this is what genuinely underpinned Marmol’s decision to let Gallegos handle Tucker with two outs, then it’s a serious concern. 

Marmol’s strength as a manager, we are told, is his willingness to employ analytics and let it drive much of his decision-making. If that’s the case, then he should know better than to read anything at all into not even half-a-season’s worth of Tucker’s lefty-on-lefty outputs.

Yeah, Tucker has been better against same-side pitching this year, but at the time Marmol made his decision he hadn’t even faced a left-hander 100 times in 2023. That level of data sample is woefully inadequate when it comes to analyzing platoon outcomes – particularly when presented as evidence of reverse platoon tendencies. And indeed, Tucker over the course of his career has been better against the opposite side, which is precisely what you’d expect. I get that Marmol does not relish the idea of Cabrera possibly having to face Abreu, but, again, Tucker was up with two outs, and Cabrera is much more likely to get that final out of the frame than Gallegos is in that situation, regardless of what 100 very recent PAs are saying. 

Marmol doesn’t have many ideal setup options right now – remarkably, Jordan Montgomery is the only rostered pitcher with a current ERA below 4.00 – but it’s less about this particular decision and more about the thinking behind it. Perhaps more troubling is the possibility that this was a consideration presented to him by a front-office quant, who should certainly know better than to react to three-months’ worth of hitter platoon splits. The process is often more important than the outcome, but in this instance both were discouraging. Let’s really hope that in-season micro-trends aren’t driving such decision-making.