From the moment they saw their 2017 season end at the hands of the Dodgers in last year’s NLCS, the Cubs’ plan of attack for the 2018 offseason was clear: Restock a tired and largely ineffective bullpen.
It wasn’t that the bullpen was necessarily bad by traditional measures — their 3.80 ERA ranked third in the NL and their 620 strikeouts were second), but those don’t tell the story. Their 4.11 FIP was sixth in the NL and their 4.25 BB/9 mark was tied for the sixth worst in all of baseball since 2013. And that might not be what really hurt them.