Fueled by the most talented minor league system in baseball, and a young and exciting MLB team, the Chicago Cubs appear to have a very bright future ahead of them. With prospects like Kris Bryant, Addison Russell and Jorge Soler soon to join Starlin Castro, Anthony Rizzo and Javier Baez in the big leagues, the Cubs have a ton of young, cost-controlled and talented players.
While the system is loaded with pure talent, it is also very unbalanced. The Cubs are armed with a ton of high-level offensive prospects and young players, but they severely lack on the pitching side.
Theo Epstein and his staff clearly have a lot of work to do to get the Cubs' pitching on par with their offensive talent, but they took a nice step in the right direction last week when they landed Jacob Turner in a trade with the Miami Marlins.
Turner is a 23-year-old RHP who the Detroit Tigers selected with the ninth overall pick in the 2009 First-Year Player Draft. He was once considered to be one of the best pitching prospects in baseball, being ranked in the top 30 in the entire game by both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus from 2010-2012, and as high as 15th overall by both Baseball Prospectus and MLB.com entering the 2012 season.
The Tigers dealt Turner to the Marlins as the center-piece of the Anibal Sanchez before the trade deadline in 2012. At the time, the Tigers seemed very hesitant to deal Turner, but they felt that Sanchez would be a piece to help put them over the top. Almost everybody considered Turner to be a future ace pitcher, and many questioned the Tigers’ decision to deal him.
Turner was good for the Marlins last season, starting 20 games while posting a 3.74 ERA. Control was an issue for Turner in his rookie season (4.1 walks per nine innings), but he was mostly able to limit the damage, and his stuff seemed to translate well to the big leagues.
On the other hand, this season has been a struggle for Turner. He had a 6.38 ERA through his first nine starts of the 2014 season, before being demoted to the bullpen. He was sparingly used in the bullpen for the Marlins, but his struggles continued. He was moved back in to the rotation, had two starts with mild success, before getting pelted by the Cincinnati Reds on August 3rd. That would end up being his last appearance in a Marlins’ uniform.
Two days after his start against the Reds, the Marlins designated Turner for assignment. While he has certainly had his struggles, this was a surprising move. Sure his 5.97 ERA left plenty to be desired, but he is a once high-profile prospect with plenty of upside remaining.
Sensing a valuable buy-low opportunity, the Cubs claimed Turner off of waivers, and were able to land him in a trade for two fringe prospects. While his traditional numbers have been poor this season, there is still plenty of reasons to believe that he will turn things around quickly.
First, Turner still has the stuff that made him such a valuable commodity a short time ago. He throws his fastball in the low-to-mid 90s and has an impressive curveball that shows huge potential. Sure, he does need to develop a third pitch, but his change-up has shown improvement over the past year.
Next, while he has not been able to sneak out of trouble like he had in the past, Turner has really cut down on his walks this season. He has only walked 2.6 batters per nine innings this season, an impressive improvement over 2013.
Lastly, while it may not be totally to blame, Turner had some really bad luck while pitching for the Marlins this season. To start, his .368 BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) is extremely high. While that theoretically could be a sign of a hitable pitcher, more often than not, it is simply a case of bad luck. Sometimes they fall in, and sometimes they do not, right now it appears that they are all falling in against Turner, and that is bound to change eventually.
While it is the most common tool used to evaluate pitchers, ERA is a stat that is based off of many factors that the pitcher cannot control, making it overrated. Fielding Independent Pitching (commonly referred to as FIP) uses the factors that the pitcher can control (mostly strikeouts, walks and homeruns) to determine how well he is actually pitching. It is a much more accurate account of how well the pitcher has performed.
On the surface his 5.97 ERA looks bad, but when coupled with his 4.00 FIP, it shows that he has likely been pretty unlucky, and probably has a poor defense playing behind him. A pitcher with that much discrepancy in ERA versus FIP almost always turns things around quickly.
A perfect example of this is current Cubs’ ace Jake Arrieta, who was once a very talented pitching prospect in the Baltimore Orioles’ organization. He had an ugly 6.20 ERA in 2012, but a respectable 4.05 FIP. Similarly, he had a 7.23 ERA and 4.61 FIP through five starts in 2013, before the Orioles sent him to the minors.
The Cubs sensed a buy-low opportunity on Arrieta when they acquired him via trade last July, and it has paid off in huge dividends. He is arguably the most improved pitcher in the big leagues this season, posting a 2.77 ERA and an incredible 2.37 FIP. Arrieta has proved to be a steal for the Cubs, and is likely to become a very important piece of the rotation when they are ready to compete.
There have been other buy-low success stories with the Cubs over the past couple of seasons, namely guys like Travis Wood, Scott Feldman (who was traded to acquire Arrieta) and Jason Hammel. Each of these guys were severely undervalued, because of inflated ERA numbers, and the Cubs were able to take advantage.
Since he is out of options, the Cubs are forced to continue Turner’s development at the major league level. He is currently a bullpen option for the team who has yet to make his debut with the team, but expect the Cubs to give Turner every opportunity to prove himself as a starting pitcher in due time.
The team will likely take it easy with the young right-hander the rest of the way, and get him ready to start the 2015 season when he could easily become a very important piece. As incredible of an acquisition as Arrieta has been, Turner has the upside to be even better.
They may lack obvious options in the future rotation, but the Cubs have shown an uncanny ability to land and develop undervalued pitchers. Landing Turner was a great move by this front office, and he is likely to become a very important piece to a team that is very close to being serious contenders.