- Thread Author
- #1
jdeb
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2011
- Messages
- 2,466
ESPN Insider Article by Paul Swydan
On the surface, the Tigers' bullpen in 2014 appeared to have all the necessary parts.
It had a proven closer in Joe Nathan. It had some well-regarded (or, at least one-time well-regarded) setup men in Joakim Soria and Joba Chamberlain. It had left-handed relievers in Phil Coke and Blaine Hardy. And it had a flamethrower in Al Alburquerque.
But appearances can be deceiving. The Tigers had one of the worst bullpens in the league this season (their 106 FIP- was the fourth worst in the majors). On top of this, rookie manager Brad Ausmus didn't exactly cover himself in glory in his handling of his ramshackle pen, and the end results were quite disastrous. While there may be no helping Ausmus in the short term -- one need look no further than Dodgers manager Don Mattingly and Cardinals manager Mike Matheny as examples that managers sometimes just don't learn how to be better tacticians as they grow into the job -- the Tigers can do a better job of building their bullpen for 2015.
Let's take a closer look at the Tigers' bullpen moving forward:
Who will be back
Nathan, Soria and Alburquerque will be back. Hardy and Ian Krol will ostensibly be back, as will Evan Reed and Patrick McCoy. If you're not inspired by this group, you shouldn't be. Only Soria and Alburquerque are worth keeping.
The big decision facing the Tigers is whether they will have the fortitude to admit their mistake with Nathan and send him on his merry way. Reliever performance can be volatile, and Nathan has risen from the dead before, as he did in 2012 with the Rangers. But this is not that situation. In 2011, his last season in Minnesota, his fastball averaged 92.3 mph, according to PITCHf/x. In 2012, when he came back with the Rangers, he had it humming back at 94.0 mph. It didn't last. In the next two seasons, it dropped, and his 91.7 mph average last season was the lowest of his career. His velocity charts don't offer any further encouragement. Whereas in 2012 and 2013, he was able to maintain a higher velocity late in the season, in 2014, there was a clear peak at midseason and then his velocity dropped off the table. Nathan was unable to adapt to the lower velocity, and his minus-0.39 win probability added (WPA) ranked just 112th of 142 qualified relievers last season, which is especially dismal given the high-leverage situations in which he pitched.
The Tigers may feel forced to keep him, however, because they don't have much payroll flexibility, and eating his $10 million salary might seem particularly unpalatable. They should do it anyway. Assuming Soria is healthy, he will be perfectly capable of handling the closer chores, and Alburquerque would fit in nicely as his setup man.
So what about the rest? There isn't much to love. Hardy is a left-handed reliever who couldn't get left-handers out, and essentially skated by on ground balls. Sometimes a player can consistently do this, and until he fails there's no reason to cut bait on him, but he should remain relegated to the middle innings. At the end of the game, you need pitchers who can get strikeouts. That's certainly not Krol, who is now two years into being a reliever and has not yet shown that he will be an adept option in the bullpen. He struck out batters at a lower than average rate and walked them at a higher than average rate, which is sort of the opposite of how things should work. His velocity has not played up in the bullpen; in fact, his velocity was down from 2013, which is especially concerning given that he was in only his age-23 season.
Reed and McCoy are much the same. They were prospects only in the sense that they didn't have any major league experience. Reed was essentially average, but given that he'll be 29 and hasn't yet faced 300 batters in a major league uniform, all indications are he's not a star. The same can be said about McCoy, who was hardly dominant in the minors and walked 13 batters in 14 major league innings in 2014, his debut season.
Where do they go from here?
So the Tigers essentially have three viable relievers and very little cash to spend. That's not exactly encouraging. The best route may be to take some chances on some reclamation projects. While reclamation projects might leave them in the same spot they were this year -- with a terrible bullpen -- if a couple of them hit, then it could give the team the boost they need to make a deep playoff run.
Of the hard-thrower set, Jason Motte, Ronald Belisario, Sergio Santos and Matt Albers all have had good seasons in the past, and should come at a sharp discount given their recent health issues. Belisario was actually pretty decent last season, though it didn't appear that way on the surface. The coupling of a .339 batting average on balls in play and 57.7 percent left-on-base rate were easily the worst marks of his career, but Belisario also lowered his walk rate significantly, and was the hardest thrower of the right-handed relievers who are set for free agency.
One pitcher who has come back from health issues and proved he can strike out hitters at a good rate is Kyuji Fujikawa. In the second half of 2014, he tossed 13 innings and struck out 17 batters. This is a thin track record, of course, but there was plenty of enthusiasm about Fujikawa when he came stateside in 2013 before he got hurt, and he could be a good find on the cheap. It would be hard to imagine him commanding a large salary, considering the Cubs chose not to pick up his modest $5.5 million club option.
From the left side, Craig Breslow could be one to gamble on. Breslow had a down 2014 season after being pretty great from 2011 to 2013, and after the season he admitted that he was a little run down after the Red Sox's long 2013 postseason. Assuming he is better rested from his lack of 2014 postseason action, he could be a good rebound candidate. Two other safe bets that might not come at premium prices would be Neal Cotts and Joe Thatcher.
There is the trade market, too, and few people have proved themselves as creative over the years as has Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski. That said, he will be limited this offseason. There is certainly plenty of gold to mine in the free-agent market, but the top names are unlikely to sign with the Tigers, who have so little wiggle room that they will struggle to re-sign one of Max Scherzer or Victor Martinez.
The Tigers then have two objectives in order to build themselves a good bullpen for 2015. First, they must admit that Nathan is nice and toasty and give him his release. Second, they need to work the edges of the free-agent market and evaluate which relief pitchers who have been good before could be good again. Doing that would be a better plan than counting on the pitchers remaining on the roster, who likely never will be good. If they rebuild it, which will certainly be a tough task, the team's bullpen around Soria and Alburquerque may not be the walking landmine that it was this season.
On the surface, the Tigers' bullpen in 2014 appeared to have all the necessary parts.
It had a proven closer in Joe Nathan. It had some well-regarded (or, at least one-time well-regarded) setup men in Joakim Soria and Joba Chamberlain. It had left-handed relievers in Phil Coke and Blaine Hardy. And it had a flamethrower in Al Alburquerque.
But appearances can be deceiving. The Tigers had one of the worst bullpens in the league this season (their 106 FIP- was the fourth worst in the majors). On top of this, rookie manager Brad Ausmus didn't exactly cover himself in glory in his handling of his ramshackle pen, and the end results were quite disastrous. While there may be no helping Ausmus in the short term -- one need look no further than Dodgers manager Don Mattingly and Cardinals manager Mike Matheny as examples that managers sometimes just don't learn how to be better tacticians as they grow into the job -- the Tigers can do a better job of building their bullpen for 2015.
Let's take a closer look at the Tigers' bullpen moving forward:
Who will be back
Nathan, Soria and Alburquerque will be back. Hardy and Ian Krol will ostensibly be back, as will Evan Reed and Patrick McCoy. If you're not inspired by this group, you shouldn't be. Only Soria and Alburquerque are worth keeping.
The big decision facing the Tigers is whether they will have the fortitude to admit their mistake with Nathan and send him on his merry way. Reliever performance can be volatile, and Nathan has risen from the dead before, as he did in 2012 with the Rangers. But this is not that situation. In 2011, his last season in Minnesota, his fastball averaged 92.3 mph, according to PITCHf/x. In 2012, when he came back with the Rangers, he had it humming back at 94.0 mph. It didn't last. In the next two seasons, it dropped, and his 91.7 mph average last season was the lowest of his career. His velocity charts don't offer any further encouragement. Whereas in 2012 and 2013, he was able to maintain a higher velocity late in the season, in 2014, there was a clear peak at midseason and then his velocity dropped off the table. Nathan was unable to adapt to the lower velocity, and his minus-0.39 win probability added (WPA) ranked just 112th of 142 qualified relievers last season, which is especially dismal given the high-leverage situations in which he pitched.
The Tigers may feel forced to keep him, however, because they don't have much payroll flexibility, and eating his $10 million salary might seem particularly unpalatable. They should do it anyway. Assuming Soria is healthy, he will be perfectly capable of handling the closer chores, and Alburquerque would fit in nicely as his setup man.
So what about the rest? There isn't much to love. Hardy is a left-handed reliever who couldn't get left-handers out, and essentially skated by on ground balls. Sometimes a player can consistently do this, and until he fails there's no reason to cut bait on him, but he should remain relegated to the middle innings. At the end of the game, you need pitchers who can get strikeouts. That's certainly not Krol, who is now two years into being a reliever and has not yet shown that he will be an adept option in the bullpen. He struck out batters at a lower than average rate and walked them at a higher than average rate, which is sort of the opposite of how things should work. His velocity has not played up in the bullpen; in fact, his velocity was down from 2013, which is especially concerning given that he was in only his age-23 season.
Reed and McCoy are much the same. They were prospects only in the sense that they didn't have any major league experience. Reed was essentially average, but given that he'll be 29 and hasn't yet faced 300 batters in a major league uniform, all indications are he's not a star. The same can be said about McCoy, who was hardly dominant in the minors and walked 13 batters in 14 major league innings in 2014, his debut season.
Where do they go from here?
So the Tigers essentially have three viable relievers and very little cash to spend. That's not exactly encouraging. The best route may be to take some chances on some reclamation projects. While reclamation projects might leave them in the same spot they were this year -- with a terrible bullpen -- if a couple of them hit, then it could give the team the boost they need to make a deep playoff run.
Of the hard-thrower set, Jason Motte, Ronald Belisario, Sergio Santos and Matt Albers all have had good seasons in the past, and should come at a sharp discount given their recent health issues. Belisario was actually pretty decent last season, though it didn't appear that way on the surface. The coupling of a .339 batting average on balls in play and 57.7 percent left-on-base rate were easily the worst marks of his career, but Belisario also lowered his walk rate significantly, and was the hardest thrower of the right-handed relievers who are set for free agency.
One pitcher who has come back from health issues and proved he can strike out hitters at a good rate is Kyuji Fujikawa. In the second half of 2014, he tossed 13 innings and struck out 17 batters. This is a thin track record, of course, but there was plenty of enthusiasm about Fujikawa when he came stateside in 2013 before he got hurt, and he could be a good find on the cheap. It would be hard to imagine him commanding a large salary, considering the Cubs chose not to pick up his modest $5.5 million club option.
From the left side, Craig Breslow could be one to gamble on. Breslow had a down 2014 season after being pretty great from 2011 to 2013, and after the season he admitted that he was a little run down after the Red Sox's long 2013 postseason. Assuming he is better rested from his lack of 2014 postseason action, he could be a good rebound candidate. Two other safe bets that might not come at premium prices would be Neal Cotts and Joe Thatcher.
There is the trade market, too, and few people have proved themselves as creative over the years as has Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski. That said, he will be limited this offseason. There is certainly plenty of gold to mine in the free-agent market, but the top names are unlikely to sign with the Tigers, who have so little wiggle room that they will struggle to re-sign one of Max Scherzer or Victor Martinez.
The Tigers then have two objectives in order to build themselves a good bullpen for 2015. First, they must admit that Nathan is nice and toasty and give him his release. Second, they need to work the edges of the free-agent market and evaluate which relief pitchers who have been good before could be good again. Doing that would be a better plan than counting on the pitchers remaining on the roster, who likely never will be good. If they rebuild it, which will certainly be a tough task, the team's bullpen around Soria and Alburquerque may not be the walking landmine that it was this season.