Bullpen Report: August 4, 2017
I’m filling in on the BR from the road at Saberseminar so no chart today, but here’s a look at the relevant bullpen news from Friday’s slate:
- Bruce Rondon notched his first save of the year for the Tigers, but that was because Shane Greene had saved three straight and wasn’t available.
- Blake Treinen blew another save for Oakland, his third since joining the team on July 17th. The blown saves are the only runs he’s allowed (one of which was unearned) in 10 appearances with the A’s (1.74 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, 11 K, 3 BB in 10.3 IP).
- Bud Norris notched his second straight clean save for the Angels in that game that Treinen blew. Norris allowed 8 ER in 1.3 IP over three appearances before the two saves.
- Blake Parker got his 10th hold ahead of the Norris save and could get a look over Cam Bedrosian if Norris falters again.
- We saw what I think is the ideal bullpen deployment for Washington on Friday with a Kintzler-Madson-Doolittle finish. Sean Doolittle has only appeared in the ninth as a National so the addition of Brandon Kintzler doesn’t really pose a threat. The Cubs ninth was lefty-righty-switch, by the way.
- Zack Duke could be a sneaky holds option for the Cardinals the rest of the way. He logged a hold back on Wednesday and threw a scoreless 1.7 IP on Friday.
- Kirby Yates pissed away all of his good work in one fell swoop, allowed 6 ER in just a third of an inning. He had allowed 1 ER in his previous 14.3 IP before that with 21 strikeouts and just one walk. I imagine some NL only leaguers were less than pleased with the meltdown
- Felipe Rivero threw a perfect ninth in a non-save situation. Just want to give him some love for his 0.97 ERA, 0.72 WHIP, and 66 K in 55.7 IP this year.
- I don’t relish in the failure of players (except maybe Jonathan Papelbon), but it’s kinda funny when a guy named Aaron Bummer takes a loss. By the way, prior to that Tyler Clippard threw two perfect innings in the extra innings affair at Fenway and Jake Petricka finished the final out of Carlos Rodon’s eighth.
- Anthony Swarzak has logged his fourth hold in five appearances with the Brewers, giving 14 for the season.
- Arodys Vizcaino logged his second straight save with Jim Johnson setting him up. He’s the guy for now.
- Drew Steckenrider (real person, I swear) logged a clean ninth in a losing effort for the Marlins and could be a sneaky saves guy if Brad Ziegler falters.
- Newly acquired David Hernandez set up Fernando Rodney’s 25th save for the Diamondbacks, notching his second hold with them in the process.
- Greg Holland cut his finger in a kitchen accident earlier this week, but has pitched twice since, including a clean save on Friday.
- There was no further clarity on the Minnesota Twins situation because Bartolo Colon threw a complete game on Friday. And lowered his ERA to a cool 5.18!
Hope you enjoyed this abbreviated version of the BR. It’ll return to its customary form this weekend with Ben Kaspick.
Thanks for doing the job even while on the road.
Yates or Blake Parker going forward?
I prefer Parker
Thanks Paul, is Treinen droppable 5×5 12T mixers?
Hard to cut anyone getting saves but he’d probably chart bottom 5 if I did a closer rank (might actually do just that in the next weeks along with the upcoming SP update) so if you have some high end saves, I can see cutting him. If you’re scraping for saves, hang on for now.
Love your stuff; using decimal innings like you do is insane, lol.
Just put mixed numbers if you want, but 1.1 IP doesn’t mean “one and one-tenth inning,” it means one inning, one out. Mutual intelligibility is what we’re going for, and no one else on earth does that.
Good writeup as usual!
I’m still surprised that it bothers ppl when I do that 🙂
It looks like a typo at first, which is a really disconcerting thing on an article full of numbers.
When I remember that’s how you do it, I always backtrack to see if I glossed over any other numbers.
So it’s not really bothersome, but I imagine those are real concerns when you’re publishing articles!
It’s not very common to see something like “1.7 IP”. All boxscores use .1 and .2. Why would it be surprising that people don’t like seeing something that’s different from what they’ve seen in boxscores their whole lives?
It’s extremely common to say “…and a third” or “…and two thirds” to describe one or two outs so why is everyone so surprised at using .3 and .7 to show .33 and .67? You get what he’s saying. Math :-I
Has nothing to do with the math and everything to do with the visual aesthetics. It would be weird if an author wrote, “Thirty at-bats into the season he’s hitting .3” in an article. Yeah, .3 is technically right, but we’ve all been conditioned to read “.300”. The same way it would look weird if all the writers at FanGraphs, when mentioning batting average, wrote as.293103448275862 rather than just .293 for a guy who was 17-58.
Those examples are terrible and not applicable because those are NEVER written like that whereas innings are written with the proper decimal at times. It’s not at all confusing and while it’s more often written at 1.1 over 1.3, y’all are making WAY too much out of it.
I don’t mean to sound contentious when I say this; I’m genuinely interested: where else is it usually written 1.3/1.7? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that outside of your writing, Mr. Sporer. I agree that it’s not that confusing, but I would say that it is pretty rare.
Looks like Baseball Prospectus does.
“whereas innings are written with the proper decimal at times”
Citation needed.
http://37.media.tumblr.com/18901f25139347103d36e32deafdf22e/tumblr_n1zi5rWB2V1r7b6cio1_500.gif
If that gif is in response to me, I’m not trying to make a big deal out of anything. I was just curious. But if you don’t want to answer because you can’t find any other examples, then that’s cool too.
From nine seconds ago at Saberseminar
There we go! Another real example. Interesting that they use .33/.67 there.
Count me in the 1.3, 1.7 club. I didn’t even notice it as anything unusual when I read this report because that’s they way I’ve always done it. It makes sense mathematically.
What bugs me is a spreadsheet that uses .1 and .2 for 1/3 and 2/3 innings. I have to go through and change those all to .33 and .67 with the find/replace tool.
Your implication when you said that the Cubs ninth-inning lineup was lefty, righty, switch is that the handedness of the pitcher didn’t matter. But managers almost always prefer to have a lefty pitcher face a switch-hitter because the hitter’s splits are usually better against a righty.
Good evening Mr. Sporererer,
What’s your feel on Joe Jimenez? Think he is closing games next year?
Any idea who closes for the Twins?
Matt Belisle and Taylor Rogers are expected to share the closer role (per: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/245996944/twins-to-use-rogers-and-belisle-at-closer/), but it seems likely that Belisle will close more often than Rogers, because of their usage, recent pitching results, and just the simple fact that Belisle is a righty and more batters are righties.
ugh, by committee….I see
Nm
any sense as to how long andrew miller will be out?