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Year		Comment
2016		Carlos Marmol led all International League regulars in walks per nine innings. The last time a Columbus clipper was this far off the mark, the Santa María made landfall on Guanahani instead of India.
2015		It may finally be the end for Marmol. He broke camp with the Marlins and the league promptly broke him. The Reds tossed a rope into the abyss and offered him a minor-league deal so he could extricate himself from the darkness, but after three appearances, six walks and a 7.36 ERA, Cincinnati declared "enough" and cut bait. If he is done, Marmol concludes his career with the highest walk rate (6.2 BB/9) of any pitcher with at least 500 innings since 1995 and the sixth-highest walk rate in the history of baseball. Someone drop some crackers down there, at least.
2014		The Cubs finally admitted they had a problem, trading Marmol and a bag of cash for Matt Guerrier in June. The human walk machine had been particularly homer-prone during his final three months in Chicago—say what you will about him, but he's always been tough to hit. On June 16th, he entered a 3-0 game, gave up a solo home run to Marlon Byrd, and then the walk-off dinger to Kirk Nieuwenhuis, who entered the game slugging .138 and being Kirk Nieuwenhuis. That punched Marmol's ticket out of town. The Dodgers let Marmol stretch his wings in the minors for a few weeks before inviting him to Chavez Ravine, where he reverted to his usual walk-wielding, homer-suppressing ways. Other than acquiring punchline status, Marmol is basically the same pitcher he has always been, with a 94 mph fastball, a wayward slider that he uses with near-equal frequency and 20-grade balance that produces unpredictable pitch locations.
2013		Batters can't figure out where Marmol's pitches are going. Then again, neither can he. That gives him low home-run rates and gaudy strikeout numbers, but it also means that he issues an impressive number of free passes. At one point the Cubs lost patience waiting for him to find the strike zone and demoted him from the closer's role. And then the rest of the bullpen reminded the team it had few other acceptable options. Marmol came within a hair's breadth of being traded to the Angels, and it's possible the Cubs could try to deal him again.
2012		Marmol held opposing hitters to just a .205 batting average in 2011 while striking out 12 batters per nine innings. That these rates were disappointing is due to various factors. First, his 2010 season was one for the ages, with 16 K/9 and .147 batting average allowed. Signing a new three-year contract after that great season set expectations high. Then there's the fact that Marmol led the league (and tied for the MLB lead) in blown saves, with 10. Of more concern to the Cubs front office is the precipitous drop in velocity he demonstrated. In 2009 and 2010, his fastball averaged over 94 mph, but he rarely even topped 95 mph in 2011, and sat under 92. While his slider—his weapon of choice against most foes—is still a wipe-out pitch against hitters from either side of the plate, losing the edge on his fastball gives them a bit more time, and they now occasionally make solid contact, an all-but-unheard-of occurrence before 2011. Since Marmol pitches with a crazymaking lack of control, he needs to be nearly perfect when he does throw strikes to regain closer-worthy effectiveness.
2011		Using 40 innings pitched as a cutoff, Marmol struck out a major-league-leading 42 percent of all batters; he also walked 14 percent of his opponents. The other seven pitchers who walked that many lost their jobs or won their walking papers, but they didn't have Marmol's K-rate (the fourth-highest all-time) going for them. The only three seasons ahead of Marmol were Eric Gagne's enhanced 2003 (44.8 percent), Billy Wagner's 1999 (43.4 percent), and Brad Lidge's 2004 (42.6 percent). If Crash Davis is right about strikeouts, then fascism's on the rise and Marmol is the reigning Duce. By expected wins added, his 2010 season constitutes the third-best Cubs relief season ever, behind Bruce Sutter's 1977 and Lee Smith's 1983. What is particularly remarkable is that Marmol, more than anyone, was the reliever being used in a real fireman's role, pitching with 40 inherited baserunners, more than twice as many as most of the game's other 30-save guys, 10 times as many as David Aardsma or Francisco Cordero, and 10 more than Brian Wilson. We shall see if this inspires more managers to reach for their closers earlier than the ninth, but Marmol's utter dominance didn't lose anything to being asked to come into the eighth or pitch from the stretch from the outset. His control issues sound terrible, but they boil down to giving the man a clean slate against someone who might be even more hard-pressed to make contact. Marmol doesn't give in to batters—he can afford to give up and smoke the next guy.
2010		Carlos Marmol couldn’t throw a ball straight if he tried, and while the ridiculous movement he generates keeps batters from putting balls in play, it creates baserunners in other ways. Marmol struggled to throw either his fastball or slider over the plate, walking or plunking 23% of the batters he faced. He also struck out 27%, making his 2009 season one of the most contact-averse in history, but the spike in his walk rate reduced his Adjusted Runs Prevented total from 2008’s league-leading 26.0 to a decidedly pedestrian 7.9. Finally handed the ninth-inning keys in mid-August after Kevin Gregg blew one too many saves, Marmol enters the season as the incumbent closer, but he will have to earn back the organization’s confidence.
2009		The NL leader in Adjusted Runs Prevented, Marmol has served his apprenticeship and should be ready to step into a power closer's role that extends beyond merely logging ninth-innings saves and collecting high-fives. What that should mean is slightly fewer appearances but no real drop in his innings pitched, as he comes into tight games earlier than someone straightjacketed into the Eck role. He'll have to go through the drill of "winning" the job in competition with journeyman Kevin Gregg, but talent will be less the driving factor than Piniella's adapting to the new order.
2008		A lot of Cubs fans were up in arms that Marmol was not the team's closer by the end of the season, comparing the situation to that of the 2006 Tigers, who had Joel Zumaya in the Marmol role and Todd Jones playing Dempster. The analogy is a pretty good one, but one needs to remember what happened to Zumaya in 2007: his ERA spiked, and he suffered a career-threatening shoulder injury. Although Marmol is not likely to duplicate Zumaya's history of fluke injuries, he can expect to see his ERA rise, mostly because the high heat he throws is good, but not good enough to let him repeat the mere three home runs he allowed in 2007. To build on his breakout season, Marmol will have to rely less on his fastball and instead work on throwing his good curveball down in the zone.
2007		When you hit .149 in the Midwest League, as Marmol did in 2002, you need to think about changing your career. Marmol did, moving from the outfield to the mound. He blossomed at Double-A last year, but letting someone who has 60 professional starts in his entire career skip Triple-A seems precipitous. He did well in the majors initially, showing a nearly unhittable curve, but he also kept showing lefties a very hittable changeup. He was pounded hard over the last two months, but that`s more reflective of a biceps injury than any lack of ability. After some steady work at Iowa, he`ll be back in the rotation mix.
2006		Sometimes pitching prospects come from top college programs, sometimes they come from academies in Latin America, sometimes they come from a Texas high school, and sometimes, like Marmol, they come out of nowhere. A Dominican who spent his first four years as a pro in the outfield, the Cubs? made him a pitcher in `03. He throws a nice moving fastball, but also has surprising command of a changeup and some interesting breaking stuff. That assortment, coupled with his speedy ascent and success at Double-A has ended talk of a future in the bullpen. Despite being a little rough around the edges, he`s come very far very fast. In a system loaded with highly-touted young pitchers, he`s the sleeper.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2024, Carlos Marmol threw 9,101 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2007 and 2014, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2014, he relied primarily on his Slider (85mph) and Fourseam Fastball (95mph). He also rarely threw a Sinker (94mph).