Navigation: Jump to content areas:


Pro Quality. Fan Perspective.
Login-facebook
Around SBN: NFL Owners Vote to Change Trade Deadline

The Jays bullpen and meltdowns


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).

Star-divide

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.

Comment 11 comments  |  1 recs  | 

Do you like this story?

Comments

Display:

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  

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  

Comments For This Post Are Closed


User Tools

Welcome to the SB Nation blog about our heroic azure-tinged corvidae, the Toronto Blue Jays.

FanPosts

Community blog posts and discussion.

Recommended FanPosts

Graffiti-cbgb-bathroom_small
You know what Grinds my Gears?
Hal2_small
Quantifying the Effect of Team Defense on Over/Underperforming the Team's FIP
Small
Brett Lawrie's historic defensive prowess

Recent FanPosts

Grain-of-salt_small
On random variation: LOB%, BABIP and FIP vs. ERA
Img_0569_2_small
Tell me where to go...
Small
Blue Jays Player Stats Multiplied by 4
Small
Petition to change Suckage Award Titles
Jaysfanimage_small
The Lansing 4: What to do when they outpitch expectations?
Misc_003_small
Jays' All-Star Alliterative Name Team
Kingkelly_small
Stats tools?

+ New FanPost All FanPosts >

Yahoo_full_count

Managers

Bluejayperched_small hugo

Rincewind-1_small Tom Dakers

Assistant Manager

Smith_up_small JohnnyG

Authors

Hiro_small jessef

Profile_small masterkembo

Profiel_small Woodman663

Minorleaguer_small Minor Leaguer

Tony_fernandez_small TonyFernandezSavedMyLife

Moderators

J_bau_small jays182

Aejfuulciaar18g_small Bowling_Guy25