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.
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