The Bullpen - Would You Make Henderson the Closer

[slappzilla]

I believe it is.

[SoCal Brew Crew Fan]

"The bullpen single handedly has taken down the 2012 Milwaukee Brewers."

 

"If they bullpen performs at league average, the Brewers are atop of the division right now"

 

No, I don't buy that. Let's run through some math we did on one of the last bullpen threads. The average NL team ERA for bullpens in 3.85. The Brewers are at 4.57, a difference of .72. Our relievers have pitched 34.7 pct of their innings. This means they have been about .25 runs/game worse than average, and have given up 22.4 earned runs over 90 games more than would be expected if they were average. Granted, a fair amount. Somebody will have to help me with the next step on wins. This much I can figure out, it's not 8 games or 22 or whatever. Probably 3-5 games is a better estimate.

[slappzilla]

Probably 3-5 games is a better estimate.

If the Brewers were 3-5 games better, we'd be talking about who they may buy and not who they are going to sell right now.

[RockCoCougars]

Last year, everyone complained about the defense, but I think that this year proves that a good bullpen with a bad defense trumps a good defense with a bad bullpen. Nothing worse than a horrible pen in my view.

 

I've got to think with last years bullpen, this team probably has at least half a dozen more wins. With an average bullpen, the 3-5 estimate seems about right.

[rluzinski]

I believe it is.

 

I assumed as much, since you said it.

 

If the Brewers were 3-5 games better, we'd be talking about who they may buy and not who they are going to sell right now.

 

If you want to claim the bullpen cost the the Brewers the season because it shifts them from a possible contender to not a real contender, that is a more reasonable position. Of course, when the Brewers make the playoffs in 2013 with the aid of some players picked up at the 2012 deadline, we'll have no one but the 2012 bullpen to give credit to, though.

[HiAndTight]

The Brewers, as of today, 7/17/2012, have blown 16 saves this year.

 

The Brewers, as of today, 7/17/2012, are 8 games out of the division lead.

 

If the Brewers had just cut the blown saves in half, they'd be atop the division right now.

 

When this season began, I had little to no worries about the bullpen. I remember MLB channel, when they previewed the Brewers on the 30 clubs in 30 days program, gave the Brewers bullpen a 4/5 rating, with wild thing Mitch Williams giving them a 5/5 rating.

 

Despite all the injuries and the slow starts/under-performers of the offensive side of the ball, The Brewers would be atop their division if it wasn't for the bullpen. There is only one guy in the brewer bullpen with an ERA under 4...and it's KRod....and his ERA isn't that far off from 4...and one would assume he won't still be on the team come Aug 1st.

 

The bullpen single handedly has taken down the 2012 Milwaukee Brewers.

 

 

To have "cost," the Brewers the season, the Brewers would have to end up not making the playoffs. I don't think any of us could count the number of teams on one hand in the last decade who came back from a 8 game hole, much less a 6 game hole for the wild card, and the team's playing much better baseball.

 

Fiers, Gallardo, Estrada and Wolf's slowly showing signs of getting it back together. Wolf has seen his velocity spike and has really been a tough lucky pitcher, so it wouldn't surprise me to see him match last years second half. And then you have Greinke.

 

In the pen, K-Rod's velocity is up, he's throwing 93-94 and hitting 95. That makes that nasty change and plus curve that much more impressive.

 

One game, but Veras, Parra, Loe now being used in situational relief(which I love) and now throw in Tyler Thornburg, and the pen just might come around.

 

Oh, and by the way, this has probably been mentioned, but you can't just count blown saves as a loss. We've won several games in a game in which we had blown saves.

 

In fact, I thought 540 ESPN had a stat that the Brewers where 32-3 when leading after 8. That was before Axford's monumental screw-up.

 

 

 

-Our bullpen, Rickie's early struggles, Wolf's struggles, some relievers not throwing like they did last year, and Rammy's slow star have all cost the Brewers in the 1st half.

 

The good news is the Brewers are still an extremely talented team. Once they get Marcum back they should have a rotation of Greinke/Gallardo/Marcum/Fiers/Wolf-a BP of K-Rod, Veras, Loe, Parra, Thornburg, Estrada and Axford who'll pitch better.

 

And they've been hitting the ball well as of late. So it's pretty premature to declare the season over.

 

Though some think it would take a "miracle," to win the division. Again, the number of teams we're behind is not totally irrelevant, but almost totally irrelevant. Get to the middle of August and it starts to become MORE relevant. Get to Sept. 1, and it's obviously incrdibly important. But on July 17th, the way this team has been playing sans Axford, and K-Rod as a SU guy and there is still plenty of reasons to be encouraged to me.

 

It's not hard to envision Veras throwing like he has in the past with his mid 90's heater and nasty curve ball.

Loe's great vs RH'ers.

Parra looked dominant last night. If he can go out and attack rather than nibble...

Estrada as a BP piece is absolutely huge.

Thornburg has the chance to establish himself as a key late inning reliever.

 

And I think Axford will come back. He's different than Turnbow to me, a guy I ALWAYS thought he'd end up being, and now I beleive Im wrong. He's simply not throwing the curve for strikes. I think he lacks confidence in it. Once he gets that back, you shorten the game by an inning.

[slappzilla]

You should put that in the optimism thread.

[Oxy]

"The bullpen single handedly has taken down the 2012 Milwaukee Brewers."

 

"If they bullpen performs at league average, the Brewers are atop of the division right now"

 

No, I don't buy that. Let's run through some math we did on one of the last bullpen threads. The average NL team ERA for bullpens in 3.85. The Brewers are at 4.57, a difference of .72. Our relievers have pitched 34.7 pct of their innings. This means they have been about .25 runs/game worse than average, and have given up 22.4 earned runs over 90 games more than would be expected if they were average. Granted, a fair amount. Somebody will have to help me with the next step on wins. This much I can figure out, it's not 8 games or 22 or whatever. Probably 3-5 games is a better estimate.

 

Well "the bullpen" is a bit of a misnomer. The "average" numbers are bad, but they would be more tolerable if there were even ONE pitcher the team could rely on to hold a lead. A bullpen that makes a 2-5 deficit into a 3-9 loss isn't really a big deal, but makes the "average" numbers look bad. A bullpen that makes a 5-2 lead turn into a 6-5 loss is a gigantic detriment to the team, and that is basically what the Brewers bullpen has been this year. In summary, Axford and Krod have been horrible, which is monumentally more significant than Dillard, Parra, Estrada and Loe being bad (which is too bad, because some of these guys are actually having okay seasons). Situation matters, but the "average" doesn't take it into account.

[endaround]

Axford has a WPA of -2.09. It been bad

[Jimbo]

Scanning through fangraphs, I dug this up:

 

There have 49 games where at one point the Brewers had a 90% win possibility. Their record is 44-5. (Losses 6/14 @KC, 6/17 @MIN, 6/19 v.TOR, 7/4 v.FLA, 7/16 v.STL)

There have 52 games where at one point the Brewers had s 90% possibility of loss. That record is 2-50. (Wins 5/11 v.CHC, 7/3 v.FLA)

 

The first punch-in-the-gut loss didn't occur until June 14, and IMO it was already obvious by that time this year's team was struggling to be a playoff contender.

 

Maybe more focus should be on why can't the offense muster more comebacks?

[MNBrew]

While I agree big time that our bullpen's horrible and cost the team many games, I'm equally dissatisfied with our offense. Why can so many teams seem to get just a couple hits and put the Brewers in an unconquerable hole, yet for the Brewers it takes nothing short of a minor miracle to string together a few hits to net more than one run, and especially so more than once per game.

 

This team has plenty of talent & skill, but it largely seems to lack the kind of killer instinct that the teams they play against seem to have when they get the Brewers down. That's not quantifiable, but it sure seems quite evident.

 

I'd still hope to see the Brewers make moves to add to the bullpen. Selling off other pieces doesn't improve our bullpen. I wouldn't mind seeing Nyjer traded to get Schafer into the bigs. And I'd gladly dump Corey Hart for Taylor Green (for the moment) and Mat Gamel (next year, assuming he's fully healthy again). But if the bullpen's not improved, this team will continue to be in a world of hurt.

[pebadger]

Don't understand the desire on the part of many to ship Hart. Not saying he's untouchable, but he's a top 25/30 offensive player in the NL. Frankly, the team probably has a better record at this point than they would have had had Gamel not gotten injured. Hart to first opened up the full-time OF slot for Aoki. Aoki and Hart are both better offensively than Gamel, and given how Hart has played defensively at first it's hard to image that the team has suffered any defensively.

[brwrsfan]

Chalk another one up to the stellar crew known as the Brewers bullpen. Only Axford looked good, go figure.

[xisxisxis]

Chalk another one up to the stellar crew known as the Brewers bullpen. Only Axford looked good, go figure.

 

I don't see all the games, but it seemed like Axford threw more sliders today than all season. He needs his secondary pitches to set up the straight rocket fastball..

[MNBrew]

This isn't a knock on Roenicke, but rather a condemnation of the current so-called conventional wisdom....

 

Why does a manager almost always manage the 9th inning differently than an earlier inning when the closer just plain doesn't have it?

 

With how inconsistent Rodriguez has been -- with as many walks as he's given up this year, with how he was having a hard time throwing strikes tonight, and how he could only get 1 of the first 7 batters out -- someone certainly should've been ready in the bullpen once Howard's hit scored 2. . . . .

 

Wins have been so much harder to come by this year -- perhaps more accurately, harder to hold onto without blowing -- that these are the kind of giveaway wins that sink teams already on bad downward spirals, and therefore Roenicke should've pulled the plug sooner to get a different pitcher into the game. Heck, Hernandez, Veras, Thornburg, & Loe were all available. I don't know that I can say I really trust any of those guys any more than I trust K-Rod, but K-Rod wasn't going to get the job done. But K-Rod's the closer and it seems only in the rarest of instances does the closer ever get yanked when he stinks.

 

This one tonight just hurts so doggone badly. Ugh.

[markedman5]

"This one tonight just hurts so doggone badly. Ugh."

 

No it doesn't....season is already over. It's brutal to watch but it really doesn't hurt at all.

 

The pen is so bad it's almost funny now.

[MNBrew]

"This one tonight just hurts so doggone badly. Ugh."

 

No it doesn't....season is already over. It's brutal to watch but it really doesn't hurt at all.

 

Speak for yourself. It's sadly & seemingly completely predictable at this point, but it's still incredibly demoralizing.

 

What's worse (yes, there's worse) is that this present team just can't pull off a "have to" game pretty much ever this year when it seems they need to.

[pebadger]

An old friend I hadn't seen for a while visited tonight. Right after Gomez hit his homer, I turned to him and said "Looks like we have a ballgame." Been using it as a joke/sarcasm line here at bf.net this season, but sadly I've come to really mean it.

[Baldkin]

This years team are masters of the come from ahead loss.

[RockCoCougars]

These guys are an absolute joke- the worst pen that I've ever seen in all my years as a Brewer fan. I say that you trade, sell, whatever anyone that you can in the next week. Then start the DFA's with the clowns no one wants. I wouldn't mind exchanging bullpens with Nashville at this point, and I'm completely serious. These guys should be embarrassed.

[theavrock]

These guys are an absolute joke- the worst pen that I've ever seen in all my years as a Brewer fan. I say that you trade, sell, whatever anyone that you can in the next week. Then start the DFA's with the clowns no one wants. I wouldn't mind exchanging bullpens with Nashville at this point, and I'm completely serious. These guys should be embarrassed.

 

Couldn't agree more. None of them should be with the team next year and we might as well see what we have in Nashville/Huntsville.

[Bombers]

Axford should be the only one returning ... The rest can just be gone.

[JackNicholson1974]

I came here to post more or less the same thing. The entirety of the bullpen should not be back next year and I would be okay with them all being gone as of tomorrow.

 

Veras

Loe

Parra

Rodriguez

 

Trade all of them now just for salary relief and call up people from Nashville. They cannot be any worse.

[Team Canada]

Agreed, there's really no excuse for inviting anyone else back. This is bad.

[And That]

Going by FanGraphs WAR, the Brewers' bullpen has been the 6th worst in baseball entering tonight's action, with a 0.6 WAR. MLB median bullpen WAR is 2.1 and eyeballing it, it looks like the average may be slightly higher. That's about 1.5-1.75 wins (hey, round up to 2 even) the bullpen has cost the Brewers away from average.

 

For perspective, the Royals have the best bullpen WAR at 4.4. Teams worse than the Brewers: Blue Jays, Mets, and then wouldn't ya know... Astros, Cardinals, Cubs. The last three, apart from being in our division, are the only three MLB bullpens with an aggregate negative WAR.

 

Of course, all caveats about WAR apply.