The Bullpen’s Dirty Secret
When the M’s traded for Brandon League to bolster their bullpen, most of us saw a end-game foursome of David Aardsma, League, Mark Lowe, and Shawn Kelley and penciled the relievers in as one of the team’s strengths for 2010. And, I think the perception is still there that the bullpen is one area where the Mariners have an advantage over their opponents. The problem – given how the bullpen has shaken out, it’s not really true anymore. Two reasons:
1. Mark Lowe, setup man.
Instead of mixing and matching the League/Lowe/Kelley trio based on how often they had pitched and the opposing hitters due up, Wak opted to give Lowe the 8th inning job and relegate League to middle relief. This is despite the fact that League is demonstrably better, and better suited to a “fixed inning” role. As we’ve talked about before, Lowe is something of a glorified right-handed specialist.
His career FIP against RHBs is 2.80, but its 5.62 against LHBs, and he’s shown a huge BABIP platoon split as well (.286 vs RHB, .355 vs LHB), exacerbating the issue even further. His problems with lefties are not subtle – they have hit .298/.382/.514 against him in his career, and this year is no different. His fastball/slider combination is effective against righties, but do nothing to fool left-handed batters, and he’s basically abandoned his change-up at this point in his career, so he doesn’t really have anything to throw opposite handed hitters.
This creates some high leverage problems when he’s called upon to give an innings worth of work, which usually requires him to get a lefty or two out. We saw this in the 11th inning on Sunday. He gave up a single to left-handed hitting Julio Borbon to start the rally, and then once Elvis Andrus reached on a bunt, he was able to get right-handed hitting Michael Young to strikeout, but then had to face back-to-back lefties in David Murphy and Josh Hamilton. A deep sac fly and a single later and the game was basically over, as Lowe’s inability to get LHBs out (combined with Rob Johnson’s inability to catch) gave the Rangers a couple of runs.
Lowe has his uses, but he’s not good enough to be handed a strict role and allowed to pitch no matter who is due up. He needs to be selectively used to face mostly right-handed hitters, and the team can’t rely on him to get tough lefties out in critical situations. And yet, as the anointed setup man, that’s what they’re going to ask him to do.
2. Shawn Kelley is no longer on the team.
Because the team decided to go with a seven man bullpen, Kelley hadn’t gotten regular work (a sign that the team didn’t need seven relievers in the first place), and since he had an option left, the Mariners shipped him to Tacoma when Lee returned. The problem, though, is that Kelley is the team’s third best relief pitcher, behind Aardsma and League. His ability to get both lefties and righties out, while pounding the strike zone, make him more valuable than Lowe, even if the stuff isn’t as visually impressive.
On a team without a left-handed reliever, Kelley is a pivotal guy, because he’s the only guy in that bullpen besides Brandon League and David Aardsma who has a demonstrated ability to get good left-handed hitters out. Wak’s obviously not going to bring Aardsma in to get a lefty out in a high leverage situation in the 7th or 8th, so if League has already pitched or is not available, the M’s don’t have any other good options, so they are stuck with Lowe or Sean White. Those guys are below replacement level against left-handed hitters. That’s a bad situation for the M’s.
Right now, with the Mariner bullpen being structured as it is, it’s not a strength anymore. The closer is good, not great, with obvious strengths and weaknesses. They have one really good setup guy, but he’s being used in middle relief. There’s a good right-handed specialist in the 8th inning role, a three guys who are basically replacement level in White/Texeira/Colome, and then a starter-turned-mopup guy in Ian Snell.
It’s getting overlooked because of the offensive problems the team has experienced, but this isn’t a great bullpen, and the Mariners are going to play too many close games to give away wins by keeping it like it is. The team needs to bring Shawn Kelley back, let him and Lowe share the 7th inning duties (depending on handedness of opposing hitters), and make League the setup guy to Aardsma. At that point, they’d have a good bullpen again.
This current group – it’s not so hot.
Excellent post Dave! Kudos
I think the simple act of reading this blog has made me lose a lot of faith in Wak and the management. I mean, if it’s this clear-cut, why are decisions being made to the contrary?
Do you really have to piss in my cornfakes again today! Seriously, Dave you are awesome. I’m starting to think that Wak is Hargrove 2.0.
They need Lowe to be the setup guy for other reasons. Namely, so he can be marketed as a “future closer” as part of the trade bait to land some kind of offensive upgrade next month. Of course, in that scenario you still want to set things up to maximize his successes, so the part about fixed innings holds true.
It’s a problem of save creep, where the one-inning role of a closer has metastasized into a full bullpen of inning-by-inning guys, except when resorting to one-handed specialists, which the Mariners don’t have (or at least, don’t realize they have). And even specialists, LaRussa-style, just amounts to burning two or three one-inning guys in half an inning, and moving on to the next guy the following inning. There’s nobody you can really look to when you need someone to come in with men already on base who can pitch multiple innings besides.
Good analysis Mike, I hope you are right.
Is using Lowe as “trade bait” the primary reason the Ms are doing this? Dave has intelligently broken down why they shouldn’t be using the bullpen the way they are right now. But Wak and the Ms aren’t completely unintelligent (right?). They must have their reasons. What are they?
The simplest solution is to ask all the starters to pitch 7 innings + in every start and stop obsessing over 100-pitch limits and lefty-right matchup nonsense. Lee and Hernandez at the very least, and possibly Fister as well, should be able to pitch 7 innings every start, pitch counts be damned.
Then you really only need Snell for long relief, League, Kelley and Lowe for the 8th, Aardsma for the 9th.
Then you can bring up anyone you want for the bench…
OK, I am a major fan of Jack Z and the organizational structure he has put in place. Their process of talent evaluation and acquisition is extremely impressive. But have we reached the point of enough evidence (The hugging DH’s, 7 man bullpen, Kelley to AAA, Lowe as set up, League not being used in high leverage situations, Tui as “SS,” Lopez-Griffey/Sweeney in the heart of the order) to start worrying that for all their talent acquisition strengths, the FO and coaching staff are NOT high level in actual use of the talent they assemble? They seem to be great at assembling a group of players that COULD be optimized to maximize the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses of our actual talent, but they have been woefully bad at actually optimizing it.
Fister: Average Start: 7IP
Felix: Average Start: 6.2 IP
Lee: First Start: 7 IP
Vargas: Average Start: 6.1 IP
The starters are not the problem.
I have often wondered how much Lowe’s diabetes plays into his inconsistancies. Last year it seemed that some days he “had it” and other days he didn’t. (It always seemed obvious to me when he didn’t and I was always suprised when Wak didn’t pull him immediately) Having read the post, perhaps his inconsistencies are more platoon based rather than health based, but I would love to see some data to confirm or rebut my impression. I wonder if there are enlightening stats and sabermetric combinations on “quality relief” apperences and pitch effectiveness.
No, the evidence you cite is actually a mixture of both acquisition and deployment issues. Fundamentally, they’re not done yet, and they know it. Yes, you can argue on the margins that some of the decisions are suboptimal in terms of deploying the talent on hand, but the ultimate solution to a problem like the DH isn’t available within the organization right now.
No, they’re not. But I did say “7+”. Right now only Lee and Fister give you that. Felix at the very least should be pitching at least 7 (yes, I know, bad back in last start). Vargas and RRS need to step it up, so that they don’t have the cascading effect of using specialists on various days and painting themselves into a corner.
Pitch counts are overused. Specialization is overused. Don’t focus on getting the right specialists, used in the right ways – focus on having the best players possible in the rotation and pen overall.
Dusty Baker? Is that you?
It seems to me that there is still untapped potential in the major leagues for teams to get an edge over their rivals by applying rational thinking more consistently to in-game situations. Even with a front office that understands the value of statistical analysis very well, you still inexplicably have Lopez hitting fourth every day, Sean White pitching in high leverage situations, the occasional hard-to-understand steal attempt or bunt, etc.
I understand the argument that Wak is a good manager because he shows faith in his players, but it seems to me that that argument values the difficult-to-quantify over the easier-to-quantify, which makes me uncomfortable.
Anyway, I think there is at times disconnect between what the front office understands and what takes place on the field.
I’ve been concerned about this for a while too. Wak’s bullpen management doesn’t seem to be any better than Hargrove’s. And while DFAing Byrnes is a step in the right direction, hanging on to veterans for too long is hanging on to veterans for too long, whether we trust the thought process that went into building the roster or not.
That they didn’t address that in the offseason is a roster problem. That they’re only just coming around to fix it (assuming Langerhans is in left, Bradley is at DH and no one else is to be seen at DH) has been a lineup / Wak problem.
I know that the DH solution is not in the organization, but Dave hammers home often how easy it should be to find a solution to that kicking around the minors or somewhere else (Nelson Cruz is a perfect example that Dave advocated a few years back, before Texas snagged him, I know they won’t all be that good, but can we really downgrade at this point?). Deployment issues are the ones I am talking about. Would the team better if instead of jettisoning Byrnes right away, we kept him around until we found the solution to the DH mess? I think so. The 7 man bullpen issue. The bullpen use issue. Wak’s crazy lineups that keep Lopez at cleanup. All of these things (to me) demonstrate a serious flaw in the organizations deployment (I like this word for what I am pointing out) of talent process. I know they aren’t done fixing the DH problem, but I want to see them optimize the lineup and the bullpen. Use the database that Blengino set up, talk to Tango. Something. I liked when USSM was solely cheerleading, even if it meant less content (For the record, I am not complaining about the negative content, I agree with it. I just miss the period last year when it seemed like the FO couldn’t do wrong).
Felix has pitched 7 innings twice, and is our only starter who has thrown a complete game, and pitched 6.2 in his other start that he didn’t have a bad back in. 7+ means you expect guys to go 8 innings a start, and your earlier point was that we need our starter to get us to the 8th. If Felix is making to the end of the 7th every start, then he is going above and beyond expectations, since it only leaves 6 outs for the bullpen to get. Felix has been incredible and we don’t need to expect more out of him. We can, because he is awesome and will deliver more often than not, but don’t make your standards so high that even workhorses like Halladay would struggle with
Great post – that explains a lot, and I am still perplexed by the Kelley decision. It makes sense on the option, but makes no sense in the case of actually wanting to win.
If your starters are all going to go 7-8 innings, then you don’t need a 7 man bullpen… maybe more like 5-6 guys.
But it’s kind of superfluous to discuss the point, since stamina, fatigue and injury factors are going to prevent you from getting more than 100-110 pitches out of today’s rotation. A “7 innings or bust” approach to the rotation isn’t quite practical.
Like I said, that sets the standard to all-Halladay type starters
I posted this in a prior thread, but it was quite after new subject matter had been posted. I don’t know if there’s a way to link to specific comments, so apologies for the “reposting”.
Hm, an subject that has interested me for a while now has popped up. Pitch counts.
It became interesting to me since I started watching the Koshien tournament. It’s a national HS tournament in Japan held semiannually (one is an invitational, the other the actual tournament). Team qualify through tournaments in their prefecture or region.
Many HS teams don’t have more than one ace – even the top tier schools may have 2 at the most.
This means that the ace has to go almost every game (unless you’re confident to throw a weaker pitcher against a weaker opponent).
I attended the 2006 tournament where ace Saitou Yuuki of Waseda Jitsugyou threw 6 complete games, 69 innings, 262 of 264 total batters and 948 pitches, including a two-day championship (the first in 37 years) which ended in a 1-1 tie after 15 innings the first day and winning 4-3 the next. All this in less than a 3 week span, and 3 of those games were on back-back-back (9 innings-15-9).
(By the way, he’ll graduate from Waseda University this year and is the next pitcher thought to consider MLB.)
Anyways, pitchers in Japan for the most part throw pitch counts out the window. Phenom Yu Darvish easily throws over 100 each start, and in his most recent one threw 150. In fact, he already has 4-140+ pitch starts. And he’s still a coveted pitcher for teams looking at Japan.
That’s why I wasn’t too surprised when Colby Lewis went out for the 9th on Friday even though he was over 100. He did it too in Japan, and Nolan Ryan has begun to throw the book on pitch counts out the window.
Now sure, NPB teams have less games and sometimes have 6 man rotations. And one wonders about the injury risk posed to such pitchers. (See Daisuke Matsuzaka and Koji Uehara)
But I wonder about the idea. Could you throw pitchers longer here? Perhaps you would have to go to a 6-man rotation because of the extra games in a MLB season vs. NPB season.
I mean, let’s just say you were able to get the M’s rotation go say 120-140 pitches each start, but have a rotation of:
Felix-Lee-Bedard-RRS-Fister-Vargas
Instead of approximately 33 starts, you’d get around 27. But you could get them to go longer and finish more games.
That in turn would remove the need for a bigger bullpen now that the SP are going longer. And if the bullpen is failed SP, then it’s a good thing.
But the problem remains whether the pitchers here would be conditioned to do so. In Japan, pitchers right from the get go rack up high counts, so it makes sense that they carry it into college and pros. But I don’t know if you could do that here unless it too was done at early levels as well. I don’t have experience about baseball here at the LL to HS level to know.
I seem to remember Dave posting something in the past about once a pitcher throws over 100 pitches the risk of injury becomes greater. Their was actual stats to back this up.
What I don’t understand is why the fan’s can see these obvious signs and M’s mgmt is unable to do so! I thought they had all this open dialogue from the front office down and with all the pre-season talk about League’s unhittable pitch and possible closer status if Aardsma fails. It’s all for not with Wak managing the way that he has. The offense can only get better from this stage forward but this mismanagement by Wak is costing us games that will decide things in September. Where is Tony and Jack on this? I’m losing faith in Wak’s ability to manage at the end of the game and noticed this last year as a potential roadblock to contending in 2010. Nice post Dave! To bad your not in the front office!!!
This bullpen flat out isn’t as good without Kelley. I have no clue why they want to keep Colome, he’s basically the same as Miguel Batista. He can’t throw strikes!
Wak also changed the lineup today, Lopez moved from cleanup to 6th(finally),Bradley hitting 4th(good) Moore and Wilson switched spots(don’t see how that helps any), Griffey still batting 5th(ugh) and Kotchman still hitting 7th(hmmm).
I have my concerns. For all the positive moves the organization has made, the fact that it continues to make stubbornly boneheaded ones as well makes me worry that the good moves may be more luck than we would like to admit. I’m having a hard time seeing a consistent philosophy (that I like) behind Wak’s moves, and I’m even begining to question Zduriencik.
The 7 man pen is simply idiotic. I mean, it’s one thing to believe that you need seven guys when you’re regularly using seven guys. I’d still call that inefficient, but at least it’s logically consistent. But Wak isn’t using seven guys. Colome is his security blanket, I guess.
Then the way Lowe, League, Kelley and White are used undermines the notion that the M’s have a modern evaluation system in place. It looks more like “throw hard = good”. Likewise sending Langerhans through waivers to keep Sweeney and having Tui as the backup SS undermine the notion they are committed to defense.
I mean, I just don’t know how I reconcile the Gutierrez and Lee trades with the 7 man pen and DH platoon.
You know, the MLB draft is just a month away. Is it possible that a general philosophy of leaving the day-to-day running of the team to Wakamatsu, combined with the distraction of preparing for the draft, has caused the front office to not be sufficiently persuasive in suggesting the best use of the assets they’ve assembled?
Dave,
Are there teams out there that will over value Lowe because of your point 1. and undervalue Kelly because of point 2? If so and a trade is forthcoming, maybe this isn’t so bad in the very short term.
If your starters average 6 IP per start, then you only need to get an average of 3 IP per week from each guy in a 6 man pen. The rotation the M’s have is easily capable of averaging 6 IP per start – they have two aces and three pitch-to-contact guys.
I don’t get that feeling from seeing Zduriencik talk. Now, the man could probably sell igloos at the equator, but as good of a salesman as I figure him to be, I also think he’s about as hard a worker as we could hope for.
It’s funny you bring this up, because I was just thinking today about how lucky we are not to have a guy who flips on cruise control. He may be restricted in some ways, but that probably just makes him work harder and look at every angle to improve this club.
Only around 15% of the games in the season have passed and Mark Lowe has already given up the losing run in 3 games. That’s small sample size galore, but last year he had 7 losses and 10 blown saves (of course there’s probably overlap for those games when we were leading and he gave up the runs which negated our lead and the losing run also).
Given that Lowe seems to be overrated (sadly, foremostly by Wak as pointed out above) is there any possibility to add him to a trade for a servicable DH?
Kelley can be brought up as his replacement and we’d seem better off than now. Or are other teams not so dumb to overpay for someone like Lowe?
Long time reader, first time commenter (and made the switch from “once a year baseball watcher” to “avid M’s fan” late last season – my GF has season tix you see)… On to the point of the post:
I am as frustrated as everyone else with Wak/Z not “seeing” these things either; but can they really be that blind? I suppose they could be too close to the staff, or not wanting to make any sudden/reactionary moves… but there’s also ample evidence of them being perceptive and strategic when it comes to talent and player skills (at least with Z, despite what you think of Wak).
The comment from Mike about Lowe being trade bait got me thinking – could this also be why Lopez has been so high in the order? I’m not savvy enough with MLB info to know whether there’s a demand for 3rd basemen around the league – but if so then this makes a lot more sense (more options for a blockbuster trade or 3-way trade if we have both Lopez and Lowe as chips to use). Chone could stay at second or be moved over to 3rd in the wake of a trade, giving us options in how we fill Lopez’ spot. Maybe?
BTW, I think the Kotchman-batting-seventh deal has got to be Wak thinking that he doesn’t want his worst bats all clustered at the bottom of the lineup (3 quick outs in an inning). I’d be curious to see an analysis between sprinkling better hitters throughout a lineup vs. clustering them all at the top end of the order. I’m sure the true “correct batting order” of any given team is dependent on the offensive skillset of the starters; but it would be interesting to see if any longer-term trends shake out. Not sure how you’d go about doing this analysis, though!
I like Nolan Ryan’s lack of emphasis on the 100 pitch count, but I don’t see anyone banging the drum for a 4-man rotation–like we old timers used to see.
Dave (and everyone else,)
It seems to me that since the recent post praising Wak’s believe system and giving a pretty strong endorsement of his overall managing qualities, everyone has been heaping criticism on him. Now I understand that its only recently that his strategic errors have directly led to losses, but all of the problems with this team (many of which have to do with Wakamatsu) were quite apparent from the start of the season. I’m wondering how you reconcile these two competing perceptions of Wakamatsu, and whether or not you stand by your post on April 28th. Can you really keep touting his fairly intangible abilities as a leader while he misuses the bench and bullpen, and runs out a deeply flawed active roster?
You make it sound like Wak sucks. Used to be, he was a genius. Which is it?
I wish Lowe would go back to his change up…