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After a couple of seasons spent shuttling back and forth between Toronto and Buffalo, Ryan Tepera finally spent a full season in the majors in 2017, becoming the main setup man in the Blue Jays bullpen.
He had 17 holds in 2017, pitching mostly in the 8th inning.
It was nice to see from a guy who spent 8 seasons in the minors. We hoped for more of the same and we pretty much got it.
| W | L | ERA | G | SV | IP | H | ER | HR | BB | SO | HBP | BK | WP | ERA+ | FIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 5 | 3.62 | 68 | 7 | 64.2 | 55 | 26 | 9 | 24 | 68 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 116 | 4.17 |
He ended up with 19 holds, 8 blown saves (mostly in hold situations).
Baseball Reference has him at a 1.3 WAR, FanGraphs at 0.4, which would give him a value of $3.1 million to the Jays.
Ryan had a 4.17 FIP and a 4.02 xFIP. His ERA has been better than his FIP in each of his MLB seasons.
Batters had a .291 BABIP against him, up from .260 last year.
He had a rougher time with RISP (.271/.372/.486 this year, .225/.370/.375 last).
Compared to last year, Ryan’s strikeouts were up a tiny bit (25.9%, from 25.4) and walks down a bit (9.1%, from 9.7).
Line drives were down (16.9%, from 17.8), ground balls up (44.0, from 41.6) and fly balls down a bit (39.2%, from 40.6). A lot more of his fly balls left the park (13.8%, from 8.8).
He gave up a little more hard contact than last year (32.3%, from 29.6) and a little less soft contact (24.0%, from 25.1).
Ryan was much better vs RHB (.212/.297/.394) than LHB (.274/.343/.463).
He was much much better at home (2.25 ERA, batters hit .206/.273/.341) than on the road (5.34 ERA, batters hit .274/.363/.519). Last year was the opposite.
Ryan had a much better ERA in the first half (2.90 first, 4.91 second) even though batters hit much the same (.243/.308/.417 first, .227/.327/.432 second.
Ryan by month:
- April: 1.98, batters hit .213/.275/.383 in 13.2 innings.
- May: 4.73, batters hit .280/.362/.520 in 13.1 innings.
- June: 2.19, batters hit .244/.277/.356 in 12.1 innings.
- July: 10.38, batters hit .333/.455/.667 in 4.1 innings.
- August: 3.29, batters hit .229/.304/.354 in 13.2 innings.
- September: 3.67, batters hit .125/.276/.375 in 7.1 innings.
He had the one bad outing in July that messed up his stats for that month, 3 hits, 2 hit batters and 4 earned without getting an out.
The Jays were 44-24 in games he pitched in. Gibby tended to use him when we were winning.
Baseball Reference lists stats by inning pitched. Batters hit Ryan hardest in the 9th inning:
9th inning: .292/.333/.462 in 69 PA.
8th inning: .240/.317/.446 in 139 PA.
7th inning: .154/.298/.308 in 47 PA.
6th inning: .143/.250/.286 in 69 PA.
Kind of a small sample size thing, but he seemed to have more troubles in the 9th inning. He was much the opposite last year, so I’m not going to read too much into it, but it would be nice if it didn’t happen that way next year.
The bad part about getting to the majors at a later age is that, Ryan turned 31 last week and he’s just getting to his first shot at arbitration this winter and he can’t be a free agent until 2022, when he’ll be 34. He made league minimum this year. He’ll end up getting something around $1.7 million this year.
Maybe he’ll get to be an ‘opener’ this year with our new manager.