His OPS against vs. LH hitters was .663 last season. Don't know why he would be used as a ROOGY.
1. Maddon's history. Seems to me Maddon frequently replaces RH relievers mid-inning when lefty hitters are coming up. Strop's career vs LHP is .627, Rondon .659, both better versus lefties than Cishek's .663 last year. So Maddon might likely pull Cishek mid-innning when lefties come up even more than he's done in past with Strop and Rondon.
2. Don't you usually have lefty relievers with OPS vs. LH hitters well below .663? A lot of lefty relievers do considerably better than .663 versus lefties.
3. Qualitatively a low-slot guy maybe gets scouted as being tougher on same-side hitters? Perhaps arm-slot might tend to have managers past and future even less likely to let Cishek fight through LH hitters?
I've just been thinking about this for two reasons. Cubs just signed a short-innings starter in Chatwood; and I think the postseason highlights how pitchers pitching tired don't pitch as well. We've also seen a couple of seasons where, by all-star break, Lester especially is dead-armed, and guys have kind of benefitted from a break and some rest.
But, if you do even more to lighten the load and keep the innings and pitch-counts off on the rotation, how is that possible if you don't pick up extra innings with relief? But now for two years straight we've seen bullpen rotten in October, and some relievers pitching tired. Can you possible pass even more innings from rotation to relief, without just killing the pen?
Flip argument: Maybe the non-Davis, non-Chapman relievers weren't tired, they got plenty of rest. Maybe they were just bad because they were bad, wild because they're wild and the pressure got to them. So perhaps workload had nothing to do with it, and they could easily handle as many or more innings future.
From that view, nothing needs to change with the pen usage. Just have better guys pitching better.
But *if* Maddon thinks the pen was compromised by exhaustion late, then I would suggest that a way to have them cover as many innings (or more) with less exhaustion would be to reduce appearances by reducing mid-inning changes. [It's also a hypothesis that pitching full inning without coming into a dirty pressure inning might also be conducive to better control and throwing more strikes.]