Managing a bullpen is a little like a field sobriety test, in that you'll have a big head start in passing if you're comfortable processing sequences in reverse order.
Rick Renteria had a pretty natural arrangement entering the season when trying to protect leads. He could recite it in his sleep. Alex Colomé was in line for the ninth innings, Aaron Bummer the eighth, Evan Marshall the seventh, and then a field led by Jimmy Cordero in the sixth. Bummer and Marshall might be flip-flopped depending on the handedness of the lineup, or hell, Bummer might handle both setup innings himself, but by and large, the White Sox had built a framework that eliminated most second-guessing.
But with Bummer injured and out of action for the foreseeable future, and during a stretch of five consecutive starts that didn't get into the sixth inning, Renteria is struggling to find the right sequence. He keeps filling in all pre-Marshall blanks with Cordero's name even though the returns have diminished. Cordero has pitched in five of the White Sox's last six games, and he's allowed runs in three of them. It doesn't help that Renteria allowed him to start a second inning work in two of those appearances.
It's easy to understand why Renteria has a fair amount of trust in Cordero. He's one of the bullpen's best strike-throwers, he keeps the ball in the park, and he's stranded a ridiculous 34 of 35 inherited runners during his White Sox career. He generally avoids digging his own grave, and he helps pull teammates out of ones they've dug for themselves.
Cordero is a nice, large arm to have in a bullpen, but it's becoming increasingly one-dimensional, which makes him less of a threat in tough situations like Tuesday night, when Renteria stuck with Cordero to open the seventh against Nelson Cruz.
When asked after the game what he liked about Cordero against Cruz, Renteria said, "Just getting him on the right-handed side. Cordero's slider was pretty good. I think he ended up getting a changeup or something that he ended up inside-outing a little bit, a 90 mile-an-hour changeup."
The battery's thought process might've failed more than Renteria's. Cordero got ahead of Cruz with a couple of sliders, but he didn't return to that pitch over the final three. Instead, he tried a sinker (borderline call that went Cruz's way), a fastball (fouled off) , and finally a changeup that lingered too high in the zone. Cruz shot it to right field to put the game-winning run in motion.
The disconnect lies in the changeup. It was Cordero's putaway pitch in 2019, but it's not doing anything for him in 2020. His Statcast page shows all negative developments with his offspeed offerings...
| Year | Pitches | AVG/XBA/SLG | Whiff% | EV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 94 | .000/.098/.000 | 50.0 | 78.1 |
| 2020 | 37 | .357/.286/.714 | 27.3 | 85.7 |
... and it's not necessarily because of location, although that's a part of it. He's not spotting it well, sure, but last year's maps show that precision didn't need to be such a priority.
This year, despite a similar movement, velocity and location profile, those whiffs just aren't there to be found. Perhaps the biggest difference lies not in that pitch, but his sinker, which has lost a tick of velocity. It's still a good sinker on its own merits, but perhaps a narrowing of velocity between his primary pitch explains why the changeup isn't as much of a weapon.
As a result, everything's going in the wrong direction. The ground ball rate is no longer great, just good. He still suppresses exit velocity as well as anybody in the league, but now he's more prone to where batted balls fall. And as we've seen over the last week or so, that makes for a very frustrating experience for everybody involved when it's not going right.
There's value in not abandoning him, especially when situations call for a grounder. I just don't think anybody is benefiting from seeing so much of him, and with the trade deadline behind the Sox and only the stretch run ahead, maybe it's time for Codi Heuer to pick up some of the slack for Cordero-shaped opportunities. He has a similar power sinker, but with the flashes of a true swing-and-miss slider that Renteria really wanted to see on Tuesday.
(Zach Bolinger/Icon Sportswire)
