Bullpen Report: September 14, 2014

-After a 1-1 duel for eight innings, Darren O’Day and David Robertson conspired to take those two runs and double them (and then some!) in the ninth. The sidearming O’Day allowed a towering home run to Brian McCann to originally tilt the balance of power towards New York. The issue was a blip in the radar for O’Day, who owns a fairly sizable split between his 3.29 xFIP and 2.65 SIERA. The difference is whether or not you believe his BABIP suppression is real. xFIP thinks massive regression is due from his .224 mark, but SIERA sees his GB% and infield popup/hit rates and says “there’s some weak contact there.” I tend to think the truth is somewhere in between, making him still a useful cog in holds leagues or just for rate purposes in standard roto.

Robertson was working day number three and it showed. After leaving multiple cutters up in the zone, he gave up back-to-back doubles to start the bottom of the ninth. He did induce a J.J. Hardy fly ball, but former Yankee (turned Red Sox, turned Oriole) Kelly Johnson lined another high pitch into the gap to bring Baltimore’s magic number to three. Robertson’s 1.87 SIERA is still quite sexy (even if some New York fans gripe about his 7 meltdowns) and he’ll be an interesting pawn in free agency. Don’t expect him to be available tomorrow, so Dellin Betances makes for a nice speculative play in leagues where he is available. I also assume the Betances is gone in most moderately active keeper/dynasty leagues, but he has a statistically significant (what’s the p-value?!) chance of being the Yankee closer next year, so make sure he’s scooped up.

-Weirdness in Tampa. Jake McGee had gone over a year without allowing a homer, but now has allowed two in the span of three games. The Rays lefty took the “BS” today after John Mayberry took him yard for a two-run tater. It wasn’t all bad for Joe Maddon and company, as Jeff Beliveau notched his first career save by retiring the last hitter in the bottom of the tenth. McGee is still elite talent, but with the Rays pen already teetering on the edge of a full-blown committee due to manager proclivities, it wouldn’t be terribly shocking if Brad Boxberger got the next opportunity. Beliveau is a mildly intriguing talent given his 36% K% in Triple-A this year but he’s 27 and those numbers haven’t translated terribly well over to the bigs. Feel free to snag him in deep, deep leagues, but I don’t see a lot of value there for the remainder of 2014.

–Joaquin Benoit is on the road to recovery. The Padres closer has been sidelined with a sore shoulder for a few weeks now, but was scheduled to toss a bullpen session earlier today. Assuming it went well, Benoit is one session (probably Tuesday/Wednesday) away from returning to the San Diego bullpen. It remains to be seen whether he would jump right back in the closer role, but with Kevin Quackenbush having a couple hairy outings during his reign as temporary stopper, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Benoit thrown into the fire. This late in the season, you can only be hoping for (at most) a handful of saves from him, but if you want to dig for a few more roto points, see if he (and his 2.79 SIERA) was kicked to the curb in your league.

–Jonathan Papelbon, uh, adjusted himself today and got the patented “Joe West ejection.” More importantly for fantasy owners he pitched horribly, but hey, we’ll touch all the bases (no pun intended). His sparkling ERA may be backing up a bit to match his less sparkling (but still decent!) peripherals.

Closer Grid:

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