Bullpen Report: April 30, 2015

• Huston Street saved his ninth game of the year with a large thanks to Mike Trout for doing this. Street allowed four base runners and was somehow able to only allow one earned run, even including Trout’s game saving catch. Street owners should be thankful for Trout, as this could have been a disaster of an outing. Today’s earned run was the first allowed on street this year and he will enter his next appearance with an impressive 1.00/1.95/3.59 ERA/FIP/xFIP line. This is the Bullpen Report, but Mike Trout is so good he becomes the lead.

• Sean Doolittle continued his rehab, throwing a 25-pitch bullpen today.  Assuming no set backs, Doolittle should have a few more bullpens before starting the rehab appearances in the low minors. The A’s have only handed Tyler Clippard two save opportunities thus far, so Clippard owners expecting a few saves while Doolittle comes back from injury might be out of luck with him nearing a return. However, Clippard should seamlessly move back to his familiar set up role, netting holds and vulture wins.

• Drew Storen wasn’t given a save opp but he still pitched a perfect inning with two strikeouts, securing the win against the Metropolitans. It’s a pain when your closer gives up runs on a work day, so it’s refreshing for Storen owners to see him pitch a clean inning in a non-save situation. Also of note in this game, Nationals prospect Sammy Solis made his majorleague debut, throwing two scoreless innings, allowing one hit and striking out one as well. Solis is an older prospect but was mentioned by Kiley McDaniel as a top 20 prospect for the Nationals earlier this year. Solis has a power arm and was touching 96+ mph in his outing tonight. Every year there are young arms that come up and are quite impressive, Solis might be a sleeper to keep an eye on and could factor into more higher leverage innings as the season moves on.

• Brett Cecil didn’t enter the game with a save situation, but he still threw a scoreless ninth, holding the four run lead for the Blue Jays. He allowed a base hit but otherwise retired all the other batters without issue. Innings like this, regardless of a save situation or not will go a long way towards Cecil maintaing the job. As we mentioned before, the biggest impediment to Cecil’s save total now may not be his fellow bullpen mates but whether or not Aaron Sanchez stays in the rotation. Roberto Osuna entered the game in the sixth and finished the seventh with Aaron Loup pitching the eighth. This might be the order of operations moving forward, but it certainly looks like Cecil’s job to lose for now.

Closer Grid:

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[Green light, yellow light, red light: the colors represent the volatility of the bullpen order.]