Bullpen Report: June 8, 2013

Mariano Rivera faced two Mariners over the minimum en route to his 22nd save of the season today in Seattle. The future Hall-of-Famer surrendered a leadoff single and issued a free pass, but eventually struck out the side to seal the deal. Tonight’s save raised Mo’s career total to 630 and he now sits just one save behind league-leader Jason Grilli (23) for the current campaign. Two more historical tidbits on Mo: He’s saved 630-of-670 games over the course of his career.  And if Mo were to hang ’em up today, Joe Nathan, whose 316 saves rank second-most among active players, would need just 314 saves to catch the Yankee.

Addison Reed returned to the bump today after surrendering five earned runs on Wednesday in a three-inning, 55-pitch effort against the Mariners. The 24-year-old right-hander needed just 20 pitches in today’s outing to retire the visitors in the top of the ninth, securing a White Sox 4-1 victory over Oakland. The save was Reed’s 18th in 19 chances this season and the the first step the righty needed to take to return his ERA closer to his FIP (2.32) and May’s 2.25 ERA. And although Reed failed to whiff any batters, he’s been inducing swing strikes at a 13.4% (SwStr%) clip, leading us to believe his 27.5% K% is for real. The one concern regarding Reed is the slip in velocity on his fastball. He’s not relying on it as much as he has in the past — it appears he’s beginning to favor the slide-piece — but when he unloads the fourseamer, it’s coming in just a tick slower than it has in the past. Despite the hiccup earlier this week, I still value Reed as a top-5 closer going forward.

Jose Valverde allowed a single and a walk, but struck out a pair of Indians to lock down his eighth save of the year. Valverde is now 8-of-10 in save opportunities with a 4.02 ERA and a 1.02 WHIP. Aside from two poor results in his last four outings in which the closer allowed six earned runs — including four moonshots — the veteran right-hander has been fine since returning to the league. But he sports a .162 average on balls in play, indicating he’s been getting a bit lucky and we could expect to see his 4.02 ERA fall even further towards his 5.62 FIP.

Brandon Kintzler (9), John Axford (9) and Phil Coke (2) each struck out two batters while earning a hold on Saturday. Unfortunately, Kintzler allowed two earned runs on three hits while doing so.

Aroldis Chapman (16), Ernesto Frieri (14), Glen Perkins (12), Steve Cishek (6), Francisco Rodriguez (4) and Luke Gregerson (2) also notched saves on Saturday.