The Jays bullpen and meltdowns

by siggian on Jul 8, 2011 2:08 PM EDT

After the horrible collapse by the bullpen last night, there was understandably a lot of anguish about how bad the Jays bullpen looks. The meltdown in the 9th hides the fact that the bullpen did a good job in the previous two innings. I do think the team suffers from not having a reliable arm to close a game, but as a collective, they seem to have reasonably well if you look at shutdowns vs meltdowns (data from Fangraphs).

A reliever earns a shutdown by collecting +.065 WPA and a meltdown by collecting a -.065 WPA (such as Perez last night). See http://www.fangraphs.com/library/index.php/pitching/sd-md/ for more information about these stats.

Team	SD	MD	SD/MD
Indians	75	24	3.13
Giants	97	35	2.77
Phillies	67	25	2.68
Braves	101	38	2.66
Padres	83	33	2.52
Yankees	71	31	2.29
Mariners	48	23	2.09
Blue Jays @ #8	73	35	2.09
Red Sox	60	29	2.07
Reds	72	35	2.06
Pirates	86	43	2.00
Athletics	65	33	1.97
Angels	74	38	1.95
Marlins	81	42	1.93
Royals	81	42	1.93
White Sox	62	33	1.88
Diamondbacks	73	40	1.83
Nationals	76	42	1.81
Mets	67	38	1.76
Rockies	72	41	1.76
Tigers	55	32	1.72
Brewers	67	40	1.68
Twins	60	39	1.54
Cubs	60	41	1.46
Orioles	55	39	1.41
Rays	45	35	1.29
Rangers	49	39	1.26
Cardinals	63	51	1.24
Dodgers	45	37	1.22
Astros	42	43	0.98

And here's the shutdowns and meltdowns for the individual Jays relievers*

Name	SD	MD	SD/MD
Casey Janssen	8	1	8.00
Carlos Villanueva	4	1	4.00
Jason Frasor	11	3	3.67
Octavio Dotel	7	2	3.50
Shawn Camp	10	5	2.00
Marc Rzepczynski	9	5	1.80
Jon Rauch	11	7	1.57
Frank Francisco	9	7	1.29
Luis Perez	3	3	1.00
David Purcey	1	1	1.00

* Scott Richmond and Mike McCoy excluded from the list because they haven't earned either one.

FWIW, after an entire season, an average reliever will have about 1.6:1 SD:MD and a replacement reliever about 1:1.

Tweet Comment 11 comments | 1 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

A couple of other observations

The Rays are way down in the list is a surprise but I attribute their low number of shutdowns due to their starters going deep into the game and having few opportunities to earn +WPA..

The Cardinals have a huge number of meltdowns, but having seen them recently, I’m not terribly surprised.

by siggian on Jul 8, 2011 2:20 PM EDT reply actions

nitpick

I think it’s +/- 0.06 WPA as the cutoff for SD/MD but I might be wrong

WAR... WAR never changes.

by benk on Jul 8, 2011 2:42 PM EDT reply actions

You could be right. Let me check.

by siggian on Jul 8, 2011 3:02 PM EDT up reply actions

Hat tip!

And corrected. Thanks

by siggian on Jul 8, 2011 3:07 PM EDT up reply actions

no prob!

and great post. I’d like to start using SDs/MDs more often, I think it’s a very useful stat

WAR... WAR never changes.

by benk on Jul 8, 2011 4:22 PM EDT up reply actions

Jason Frasor for closer!

by Nadia on Jul 8, 2011 3:28 PM EDT reply actions

I'm in agreement that he should get another shot at it

by siggian on Jul 8, 2011 3:33 PM EDT up reply actions

This

by Siver on Jul 9, 2011 12:34 PM EDT up reply actions

Janssen for closer?

I'm thinking that when the Leafs win the Cup, I'll lose my drinking problem.

by leafsfan4life94 on Jul 8, 2011 7:27 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs

I think that the big problem with the bullpen is that Francisco and Rauch are tied for the team lead in meltdowns and they are the ones that are being brought in in the 9th inning in close games.

I can hardly wait for Casey Jannsen to come off the DL. He does not get nearly enough credit for his awesome work out of the bullpen.

by IceRipper on Jul 9, 2011 6:20 PM EDT reply actions

They’re tied for the team lead BECAUSE they’re being brought in in the 9th.

If you only (mostly) come in with a lead and later in the game, there are fewer opportunities to earn positive WPA, and the chance of having a huge loss are also far higher.

The holy crusader of internal logical consistency

by Gerse on Jul 9, 2011 8:19 PM EDT up reply actions