Jay Jaffe over at Pinstriped Bible recently took a look at the Yankees’ bullpen and liked what he saw:
Add it all up and the Yankee bullpen now has the AL’s lowest ERA at 3.08, its second-best strikeout rate at 8.1 per nine (the Red Sox are .0024 behind them in that department), and its fourth-best strikeout-to-unintentional walk ratio at 2.6. Furthermore, the bullpen has allowed just 23.9 percent of inherited runners to score, the league’s second-best mark, and they’ve taken the loss a league-low 10 times, for whatever that’s worth. The Yankees are 59-6 (.908) when leading after six innings, 2.5 wins better than the average AL team under such circumstances.
So despite the loss of Soriano for an extended spell and for the remainder of the season, despite the annoying presence of Hamburger Helper in the form of , , , and , the Yankees have once again emerged with a quality relief corps. We can quibble with the tactical tics that have earned Girardi his “Coffee Joe” moniker, we can holler about the choice of personnel in the 10th inning of Sunday night’s loss, we can make stale jokes about his binder. Still, the Yankee skipper has once again shown a knack for finding order in the chaos of his bullpen; it has become one of his signature traits, and it’s a big reason why this team enjoy a seven-game cushion in the Wild Card race while trailing the Red Sox by just a game in the AL East. The Yankees are positioned to waltz into the postseason, and there’s no sense in overlooking that silver lining despite a tough series loss.
Jay’s evaluation of Girardi holds up to further scrutiny. Let’s take a look at where they have ranked in some of the more important statistics during Girardi’s tenure (remember that these numbers are not adjusted for ballpark or quality of competition):
2011:
ERA: 1st
K/9: 2nd
BB/9: 6th
IS% (inherited runners scored): T-1st
2010:
ERA: 3rd in AL
K/9: 4th
BB/9: 4th
IS%: 7th
2009:
ERA: 5th
K/9: 1st
BB/9: 2nd
IS%: 1st
2008:
ERA: 5th
K/9: 1st
BB/9: 5th
IS%: 9th
Overall:
ERA: 2nd
K/9: 2nd
BB/9: 2nd
FIP: 3rd
WAR: 2nd
Just as a point of comparison, here is how the Yankee bullpen looked in the 1-year and 3-year periods prior to Girardi taking over:
2007:
ERA: 10th
K/9: 6th
BB/9: 11th
IS%: 10th
2005-2007
ERA: 10th
K/9: 9th
BB/9: 9th
FIP: 11th
WAR: 10th
The Yankees are right up there with the White Sox and Athletics for the best bullpen in baseball since Girardi took the helm in New York. Considering the ballpark and competition discrepancies between the Yankees and A’s, it is fair to say that the Yankees have had one of the two best bullpens in baseball over the last 3+ seasons, which is a credit to both Brian Cashman for (finally) finding the right pieces and for assembling them into an effective relief corps. As Jay noted in his article, Girardi tends to be able to sift through the trash that often inhabits the back of Major League bullpens to find the players who can give him effective innings for some period of time. While he does have some clear flaws and may make some puzzling in-game decisions, handling the bullpen over the course of a season is clearly one of Girardi’s strengths.
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Since Giradi has been under the helm as manager it seems that it has always taken him until June or July to really get the bullpen set and rolling. After that point the Yankees usually have a very dominant bullpen. However, the biggest inefficiency in rosters that I see is how bullpens are handled. Considering that the Yankees have a relatively young, good, and deep bullpen it would be nice to see them maximize their values. Instead of Robertson being the 8th inning guy it would be nice to see him go out for both the 7th and 8th and then take the next day off. Or it would be great to see when Joba gets back that if the starter only gets somewhere into the sixth inning that Joba goes out and pitches not only the rest of the sixth, but the seventh and eight inning as well. While this is a radical change in how bullpens have been used over the last twenty years the Yankees can gain more high leverage innings from their pitcher this way that before. Instead of Robertson going say 75 appearance with 75 innings he could 55 appearances and 100 innings. With some of the middle relievers using more of the innings it is also feasible that you could get by on six relievers on the bench and have more versatility on the field with a better pinch, a good defensive OFer, or even a third C.
It is an interesting idea, but I’m not certain that it will necessarily get you the most high leverage innings. Can you think of anyone who was used that way so we can look at the leverage usage surrounding that player?
It was more hypothesis than anything else on my point, but if you look at Goosage’s average play index on fangraphs it was usually around 1.8 give or take. Robertson mainly as the eight inning man this year has a average play index of 1.56 which is a career high. Another caveat that I would like to add to my hypothesis is that a pitcher to get the most out of him on leverage especially is putting him in games when they are down a run or two to up two runs. This goes slightly against the conventional save situation wisdom, but the leverage would be higher that when the game is three runs each way as “the Book” showed that regardless of the reliever the team has a very high probability of winning at least in the ninth.
Very interesting. I’ll look into this more over the weekend.
I like your idea of multi-inning relievers, but I just doubt that sort of usage pattern is going to emerge again. If it did, I think it’d be a great way to break in young guys; it would get them experience against big league guys and wouldn’t kill their innings totals.
What I’d really like to see, but also has no chance of happening, is just a more efficient distribution of relievers that isn’t dictated by the save rule.
Which is disappointing most of the time and infuriating when it takes 4 pitchers to get through the seventh.
But as we know reliever statistics are highly subject to small sample size bias and luck. Yes Mariano Rivera (despite the last two games) is as sure a thing as you can get in baseball and Robertson is for real. But Luis Ayala? Cory Wade? Boone Logan? The new and improved Rafael Soriano? The result of Cashman’s and Girardi’s genius? Really? Would anyone be shocked if any of those guys tanked down the stretch or in the playoffs? I wouldn’t.
I personally find all of this fetishization of the bullpen as one of the most tiresome and annoying subjects in baseball. There is way, way too much emphasis on the bullpen to the detriment of the position player component of the roster that has led to absurdities as 12- and 13-man pitching staffs, gross overcompensation for highly fungible assets such as middle relievers and most closers (not Mo of course), the idiotic notion that a reliever is being disrespected or not motivated properly if he’s asked to get outs in any inning other than the 8th or 9th (all of the outs count you know), I could go on and on.
What are these large bullpen corps and structured roles but an excuse for guys like LaRussa and Girardi to over manage? Having to rely on 3-4 pitchers a game is more often than not an algorithm for finding the one guy who’s having a bad enough night to cost you the game. Sometimes that guy is even Mariano Rivera.
“But as we know reliever statistics are highly subject to small sample size bias and luck. Yes Mariano Rivera (despite the last two games) is as sure a thing as you can get in baseball and Robertson is for real. But Luis Ayala? Cory Wade? The new and improved Rafael Soriano? The result of Cashman’s and Girardi’s genius? Really? Would anyone be shocked if any of the latter three tanked down the stretch or in the playoffs? I wouldn’t.”
And yet, year after year over those samples, Girardi finds the guys who can be effective for him out of the pen, whereas Torre was unable to do so. While you may not like the way the sport has developed in terms of bullpen usage, it is likely here to stay, and it is up to the manager to find the best mix of guys to succeed within that system.
Aren’t Cashman and and Girardi the guys who keep bringing back Sergio Mitre and Buddy Carlyle? Just asking.
Yes. So? No one said they were infallible. But that’s how you end up with the Cory Wade’s of the world: you throw enough moderately talented guys against the wall and let the manager ferret out the best options. You can dismiss it all you want, but the results over 1800 bullpen innings suggest that Girardi is fairly adept at finding the right guys.
So really it’s just a process of trial and error (in the case of Carlyle and Mitre: trial, error, another trial, same error …). There’s no special talent to that.
You clearly aren’t going to be budged off the idea that there’s no talent in it. I think the results tell a different story.
You admitted that the process was essentially throwing slop against the wall and seeing what stuck. I can do that. You can do that. I’m sure Branch Rickey, Joe McCarthy and Casey Stengel could have done it but it doesn’t really require their talents to do it, merely a willingness to keep trying guys and having the resources and roster room to do so.
There’s absolutely no talent involved in the slop throwing approach to talent acquisition, especially when you pick up some of the slop that fell off and and keep throwing it at the wall because you really, really want it to stick,
I’m enjoying the success of guys like Wade and Ayala but I don’t for a minute think that either of them is as good as their results. The chances are that neither one of them will do as well next year and it wouldn’t surprise me me if neither one is a Yankee by Memorial Day of next year.
Sorry, but throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what you get lucky with does not require talent, It’s you who will not budge off the idea that it does.
Except I have evidence, and you don’t. You are also oversimplifying the process of finding relievers, using them, moving them into more important roles, etc.
This is a reply to your 9:50 pm comment which for some reason the Reply button is disabled.
You want evidence? How about the fact that Cashman and Girardi have to find a new batch of anonymous middle-inning guys every year. Could it be that these guys really aren’t very good but manage to outperform their limited abilities for short periods and will eventually be exposed for the scrubs that they are?
I will concede that there is a talent involved in not getting fooled into thinking you were anything but lucky to catch these guys in a good year and being willing to cut your losses with them as soon as they’re exposed.
But this is not the same as saying that there was some sort of talent involved in the original brute force selection process (the nature of which you have admitted) or in casting off guys who flop (unless they’re Mitre) and keeping guys who do well.
Meanwhile these bullpen “geniuses” got rid of a guy (Aceves) who they could probably use right now and who ended up with their chief rival and gave up pretty easily on Melancon while keeping around duds like Jose Veras and Edwar Ramirez.
You’re giving Girardi and Cashman far too much credit. Yeah, they have gotten good results – no question. But I think they’ve been luckier than good and luck has a way of evening out.
“And yet, year after year over those samples, Girardi finds the guys who can be effective for him out of the pen, whereas Torre was unable to do so”
Actually Torre’s problem is that he found one or two guys who were effective and kept bringing them out there until their arms fell off (see under Proctor, Scott; Gordon, Tom; Quantrill, Paul).
That too. Girardi is much better at resting his bullpen arms. Apparently he has a whole index card system that tracks how many pitches and innings a pitcher has thrown lately and whether they are available and to what extent. Marc Carig wrote about it last season, I believe.
Giradi has this revolutionary idea that you can’t use reliever 100 games a year even though it looked like he really wanted to with Robertson at the beginning of the year.
MJ Recanti, regarding your post about Phil from the prior thread:
I think he has plenty to learn in AAA – like learning how to put hitters away and maybe somehow even developing another pitch besides his FB. I’d rather see him starting (I don’t consider it wasting bullets since I don’t think he’s very good anyway) at AAA so he can build innings. That said, he’s going to have innings issues next year anyway.
He’s not going to get any meaningful innings this year, but that’s what happens when you struggle for the entire 2nd half of last year, come into camp overweight, get hurt and then show mostly mediocrity upon your return. He’ll have to deal with being a long-man type out of the pen – and hopefully he won’t get much work because if he does it means our SP has stunk. The handwriting is on the wall – Nova is not being removed from the rotation nor is AJ. Apparently Girardi mentioned all the starters in his interview with Francesca today except Phil- so there’s no doubt what the decision is going to be.
A slight misspelling of my last name and a reply in a different thread and — voila! — I almost missed this altogether.
Hughes has pitched 344 minor league innings. Clearly that’s not as many as Jeremy Hellickson (580.1), Michael Pineda (404.1) or other young arms that came up this year but, despite that, has the following MiLB stats:
2.35 ERA
0.0927 WHIP
10.1 K/9
4.53 K/BB
0.3 HR/9
It’s hard for me to see what else he could accomplish in the minor leagues, given how clearly he dominated each level.
Moreover, the notion that Hughes has to figure out other pitches besides his FB doesn’t ring true. According to FanGraphs’ Pitch Type Values, Hughes had incredibly positive results for both his FB and his CT in 2009 and 2010. His CB was average in 2009 and below average in 2010 but I wouldn’t send Hughes to the minors to tweak what can be fixed at the major league level.
Now, if you don’t think he’s going to be very good, that’s your personal evaluation and you’re entitled to it. But I think the Yankees respectfully disagree and aren’t sending him to the minors for that very reason. They see someone that would gain nothing by just working on his CB in AAA. He’d most likely dominate AAA hitters and what the heck would be gained from that?
Not sure I can phrase this properly, but a thought hit me–Is having a good bullpen usually associated with having a good group of starters, or does it detract from it? Or is there no difference?
In other words, does having a good group of starters make it easier to handle a bullpen? Are there mangerial moves that help a bellpen at the expense of making starters look bad, or the other way around? Or do they have nothing to do with each other? Is there a way to test that?
Weird timing for this post after last 2 games
What does Mariano blowing saves have to do with Girardi managing the pen? Once you get to the point where you should put in Mo your job is done. There is no second guessing putting in Mariano in a save situation to close a game, or in a tie at home. These are just obvious moves that work over 90% of the time.
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@roadrider: In response to your comment to Moshe at 10:50 AM:
“You’re giving Girardi and Cashman far too much credit. Yeah, they have gotten good results – no question. But I think they’ve been luckier than good and luck has a way of evening out.”
I think the entire point of Moshe’s column was to demonstrate that the Yankees have succeeded in building good bullpens from 2008-present and the stats back that up. If it were simply luck, there would be less consistency of performance in the metrics that Moshe cited. On the contrary, however: the fact that the Yankees have ranked so consistently in the top of each category would suggest that skill, not luck, is a primary factor.
Further, if what you say is true — that the faces in the Yankee bullpen keep on turning over — then it’s even less likely that dumb luck could keep the Yankees bullpen as one of the best in the game. The greater the turnover, the higher the likelihood that bad luck would intervene.
To keep getting such consistently good performances over the past three-plus seasons from what you deem an ever-changing bullpen would indicate that there is some real talent/skill involved in identifying the actors and deploying them in a generally-successful way.
Well said. This is exactly what I logged in to say.