The MLB season’s first weekend provided many illustrations why managerial infatuations with their bullpens can be dangerous.
Among trends emerging from the 2019 season’s opening weekend, one of the clearest was the extent of the problem represented by the suicide pact MLB managers have written with their own bullpens.
Through the season’s first 54 games, managers have called on their pens to pitch more than 379 innings, which basically translates to 3.5 innings per game per team. As a rule and with exceptions, relievers have shown themselves spectacularly unprepared for the task.
They’ve allowed more than 1.4 baserunners per inning and the equivalent of 4.8 runs per nine innings of work, and those numbers do not factor in inherited baserunners they allowed to cross the plate who were charged against the starters they replaced.
More from Call to the Pen
- Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
- Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
- Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
- Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
- 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals
It’s no secret that in their infatuation with the lure of the 100 mph fastball, managers have increasingly followed the strategic line that de-emphasizes the role of a starter for any purpose beyond two trips through the opposing team’s lineup. In its place, they have accepted the dictum that a game is best won by employing three, four or five pitcher successively and in defined roles.
The universal adoption of this strategic maxim, however, brings into play a little-discussed problem, which is best characterized as bullpen roulette. The more frequently a manager relies on his pen, the greater the chance he calls for the pitcher who, on that particular day, anyway, simply doesn’t have it.
That scenario, with all its lethal consequences, played itself out time and time again on Opening Weekend.
Of the 30 major league teams, six – the Orioles, Royals, Rangers, Cubs, Diamondbacks, and Nationals – ran out relievers who accumulated staff WHIPs in excess of 1.75, meaning their pens were in virtually constant peril.
A few survived that recurring jeopardy because their offenses adapted and overcame. Despite their bullpen allowing 2.46 runners per inning, the Rangers won two of three because their opponents, the Cubs, allowed 1.97 baserunners per inning, 13 of whom scored.
The Cubs were poster children for the perils of bullpen reliance. In their Saturday loss, the pen coughed up a three-run lead. On Sunday, relievers gave up a three-run lead and then — when the offense re-tied the game — they wild pitched that opportunity away as well. That gave the Cubs a unique but hardly coveted distinction: They managed to lose a three-game series in which they averaged more than a run per inning.
The Nationals lived a similar dissolute bullpen life. They lost to the Mets 11-8 on Saturday because their pen allowed seven runs – on seven hits and two walks – in just the final two innings, more than negating the four runs Washington’s offense produced over that same period.
Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo called on his pen for a weekend-high 19.2 innings of effort, but his plea went unheeded. The Arizona pen allowed 26 hits, 17 walks and 19 runs, more than enough explanation for the team’s 1-3 record against the Dodgers.
There was a noticeable inverse relationship between bullpen use and bullpen performance. The six teams with weekend bullpen WHIPs above 1.75 went to their pens for an average of 4.1 innings per game, meaning they got just4.2 innings from their starters. Seven other teams – the Angels, Astros, Padres, Phillies, Pirates, Cardinals and Mets – compiled more orderly bullpen WHIPs below 1.1. Those teams’ starters averaged 6.1 innings per game.
There is a lesson to be discerned from that first weekend’s data, although in the current pen-centric environment it is not an easily learned one. Contrary to conventional wisdom, bullpens are often not the solution in MLB, but the problem. They can be dangerous to a team’s health when used profligately.