Farrell's Favorite Toys

I (awesomely) had this post marinating for the better part of a week. The Jays bullpen went through an incredible stretch before Jon Rauch gave up two squarely hit baseballs. Balls hit about as squarely as one could ever ask, really.

It is difficult to separte the quality of the bullpen's performance from the wise hand of John Farrell as he smartly deploys them in depending on the situation. Some might counter that allowing Octavio Dotel to pitch against a lefty in anything close to a leveraged situation is a mistake. Impossible to argue as that may be, I think he's doing a good job so far.

Below is a graph of the main Jays bullpen arms - graphing their shutdowns against their meltdowns with the average leverage upon entering the game represented by the size of the bubble. It is a similar study to one I undertook for Getting Blanked but all Blue Jayed up.



Hmm. Call me crazy but it looks like, outside his Capital C closer, manager John Farrel uses his best two performing relievers in the highest leveraged spots to great success. RZep has just one meltdown on the season (That Game) and pitches in some of the toughest hitters.

Odd that Dotel and Frasor have nearly identical numbers. Frasor saw a massive dip in game leverage when he entered blowouts against the Red Sox and Yankees. Dotel has been good when properly deployed HINT HINT.

Another way I want to look at this is including average batters faced. More windows into the mind of a madman!


I used xFIP- because it seemed like the weirdest thing I could possibly do. I actually used it because it helped spread the bubbles out in a way that pleased my eye. The bubble size still indicates average game leverage (when the pitcher gets the call.)

I think this does a solid job of laying out which guy has which role. Breaking it down by batters' faced shows us that Villanueva is clearly the long(ish) man and RZep is closest thing to a LOOGY. Casey Janssen does an admirable job in his low leverage chances.

Jon Rauch, prepare to have you leverage dialed down a touch. Probably very soon.

In the end, the bullpen's been great and Farrell runs them out there in an orderly fashion. Something to certainly keep an eye on as he continues to "learn on the job."

Reuters image courtesy of Daylife, all stats from Fangraphs.

Borepen

Far be it from me to criticize Alex Anthopoulos and his great love of compensatory draft picks. As you're read numerous times, it is a good bit of business to snag these picks before the league closes the loophole. AA and his crack staff did a great job acquiring both players in this boat and other decent stop gaps.

The pen is jammed with right-handed arms of varying levels of competency, all that remains is sorting out the roles and responsibilities. Which bums me out. The last few years the Jays have a few intriguing bullpen pieces, guys with an intoxicating mix of youth and plain stuff who I hoped would one day figure it out. This year's pen has none of that.

These guys all are what they are. An injury or trade might move them up or down the leverage ladder but expecting anything shocking from anybody currently slated for the Jays bullpen is foolish. David Purcey still owns a significant chunk of my heart though I worry for the quality and quantity of innings tossed his way.

Jon Rauch, Octavio Dotel, Jason Frasor, Frank Francisco might pitch well or they might pitch poorly but all the steps in their career are behind them. They can either hold on to levels achieved in the past or decline. If they all pitch well, it is something. If they all struggle badly, it is something not too different. I guess this is the price to pay for the wise foresight of not overpaying for a closer.

Image courtesy of flickr user roopez123

Clarence and the Bullpen

One truism of the Blue Jays fandom goes like this: Cito doesn't relate to the pitchers. Cito doesn't deploy his bullpen well, he falls in love with guys and their Roles and waits too long to change them. With a bunch of interesting takes on evaluating bullpen usage floating around last week, I thought I'd try my hand.

Before we go any further: a refresher on leverage index. Leverage index measures the degree which any given event impacts the final game outcome. Bases loaded in a tie game = high leverage. Two out, nobody on in a blow out = low leverage. Fangraphs tracks more than just LI, they track the average LI of all plays for a given player (pLI), the average LI for pinch hit appearances (phLI), as well as the average LI when a pitcher is introduced into the game (gmLI). This one will work for us in this instance. xFIP normalizes home runs in using a myriad of components to generate an ERAish number. In this situation it might serve as a good "who's throwing well" barometer, the kind of thing Cito might have internally.

I'm opting for gmLI rather than player LI because of Jason Frasor. Basically, Jason Frasor took a few high leverage situations and pitched himself into even higher leverage situations by walking and/or allowing the lead-off man to reach nearly all the time. And that isn't The Manager's fault, not in a way I can prove. (Yet.) Another time I'll look at each player's deployment (like the Fangraphs link above) but we'll use this as a long view for now.

What you see below is a graph of gmLI against xFIP. In a perfect world, the better pitchers (lower xFIP) would have the highest gmLI - they're used in the most important times. This isn't always the case, let's see how Cito does.



Anything interesting here? Shawn Camp continues to pitch nearly as well as anyone on the team, yet his usage suggests he isn't considered as important as Frasor or Downs. Accardo and Casey Janssen threw that ball equally poorly in nearly the same type of situations. Josh Roenicke, Rommie Lewis, and Merkin Valdez don't really have the innings to make their xFIP worth much, but they're straight up mop up dudes. Roenicke got into the game a little later on Saturday and promptly ruined the sheets. Consider that your shot Josh.

The Jays and Cito are in a unique situation because this bullpen doesn't really have a LOOGY. Downs is Cito's second favorite with good reason, The Manager asks him to both get tough lefties and pitch the 8th inning against whomever. Overall, the Jays graph looks pretty much as it should, or as you'd expect. Better the pitcher, the higher the leverage.

For fun and reference, let's look at two other examples (and we'll include a trendline for ease of use.) The backwards-ass White Sox — who use the unhittable Matt Thornton in odd situations — and the Rays: the most match-up wacky team around, thanks to Overmanagin' Joe Maddon.



Poor Ozzie. Well not, poor Ozzie. Lucky Ozzie in that he's blessed with a great pen full of fire-tossing animals. Poor White Sox fans have to watch him continue to lean on Bobby Jenks and ineffective lefties-only guy Randy Williams while Matt Thornton sits around eating planets, waiting for his chance to save a damn game.

OJM uses his bullpen well, using his two best pitchers when it matters most. The Rays long man — Andy Sonnanstine — is a Litschian 5th starter time reduced to relieving because the Rays are just too fucking good.

No real shocks here. The Jays bullpen had a tough two weeks or so but are now keeping them team in enough games for their magical bats made of hanger-attracting magnets & sprinkled in stripper smell to win them game after game they have no business being in. One thing the bullpen clearly lacks: an exceptionally hard-throwing enigma with a boatload of tattoos, bad glasses and penchant for ground balls. Other than that, it's a wonderful time to be a Jays fan.

Thanks to Royals Review, Beyond the Box Score and Fangraphs for the ideas and Fangraphs for the LI data. Getty Images took the picture that Daylife stole. I only borrowed it.

My Worst Fears Confirmed

Remember a week ago when I warned the bullpen could become a concern this year? Remember when I said the combination of starters with high pitch counts mixed with a bullpen primed for a regression could spell disaster?

It might have only been one game, but outings like yesterday's could haunt the Jays all season long. Brandon League will NOT be this bad going forward. He'll probably lose his "prime right handed set up guy" job to Jason Frasor's fosh, but he'll get to work out the kinks at the big league level. If I knew about such things, I'd be inclined to believe League's problems are a combination of mechanical and mental. Whatever the source, he forgot how to locate his pitches. That's bad. Moderately effective Shawn Camp couldn't find the plate either, and hasn't all week. That's not as bad, but it still isn't' good. The Jays pen has already allowed 16 walks. That sucks. The staff ERA is up around 4.75; a figure made worse by their (very early, of course) bloated FIP, currently hovering near 6.

Obviously getting hysterical about a 5-2 team isn't worth the effort (PLAYOFFS!), but the starters are going to continue to place the bullpen in tough situations. Just throw strikes people, it's really that simple.

Weekend Mechanical Goats/Simulated Hero-Figures

You'll be shocked to learn that Saturday's win came courtesy of real life Simulated Hero-Figure Roy Halladay. Aaron Hill's bases loaded single in the second inning matched Jason Frasor's strike out of Victor Martinez in the 9th in the race to become the game's biggest play.

The sweep didn't pan out and we have Marco Scutaro to blame? If the robots tell me so, it much be true. I suppose his strike out with runners on second and third with one out in the seventh inning of a one-run ballgame will do that. I can't stay mad at Scutaro as he's playing so far above his replacement-level head right now. This is all house money anyway.

I Find Satisfaction in What They Lack

A funny thing happened on the way to a win over the Twins. The Jays took the lead late, and that meant the game was over. Over. No longer a contest. So awesome is the Jays bullpen, they only threw 14 balls over 6 innings. 14 non-strikes! Are we unwilling to give JP credit for assembling and maintaining this excellent core of relievers? What about Brad Arsnberg? Can the pitching coach not be worthy of praise for taking journeymen and drifters, guys traded for Bubbie Buzachero and guys plucked from the Expos and turning them into the best bullpen in baseball? Can we not give more credit to JP for signing the team's best reliever to a very modest contract? Other than Ryan, the entire bullpen is on the cheap! Note: Wilner keyed on many of these same points today. Not only am I a hack, I'm lazy and put off writing this last night. I get what I deserve.

Cito's bullpen management leaves a little to be desired. He's an old-school "roles" guy. Scott Downs is the 8th inning guy, so you'll see him in the 8th. I would have brought him in to face Mauer and Morneau, but Carlson did a great job. Cito doesn't manage the bullpen as well as Gibby did, so it might be an even bigger compliment to the guys down there when you consider they aren't being deployed as effectively.

Mystery Call Up Theatre

This year's edition is lacking. Not even a Coats-based pun in the offing. Curtis Thigpen in sink or swim mode? Or Curtis Thigpen being turned out by JP the Killer Pimp? Either way, this year's additions aren't the sexiest. Not even a Romero! Travis Snider now represents JP's wad; embarrassingly blown all over the back seat of his Civic.

The National League, decidedly terrible

It must be a coincidence, but Manny Ramirez moved from the 4th best hitter's haven to one of the preeminent pitcher's park in baseball, lost any real line-up protection (which may or may not be bullshit), and had to adjust to life three time zones away. How did he respond? By adding 300 points to his OPS of course! CC Sabathia went from being a former Cy Young winner having a decent season to Bob Gibson. His ERA+ has tripled. That is insane. There can be no debate, the NL is laughably bad.

It's Wednesday, that means JP gets yelled at on the radio tonight! A.J. Burnett will beg and plead for a win tonight, hoping that the Yankees and Red Sox may become embroiled in a bidding war! Oh, the boos he'll hear.