There are plenty of ways to characterize David Phelps‘ success in 2016. Among pitchers who threw at least 80 innings, he posted the 5th-best ERA (2.28), 6th-best xFIP (3.15) and 7th-best FIP (2.80). That’s a big deal, although it’s a decidedly smaller deal considering the bulk of Phelps’ innings came from the bullpen.

The reason for Phelps’ success — the cause to the effect, that is — is fairly obvious:

Phelps added more than 3 mph to his four-seamer and sinker as well as a tick or two to each of his off-speed pitches.* In an August edition of his NERD game scores, Carson Cistulli quipped, “As with most other pitchers, Phelps at 94-95 [mph] is markedly different than Phelps at 91.” Indeed, Cistulli. Phelps looked like a changed man.

It’s easy to attribute his sudden late-career success to his almost-full-time move to the bullpen. It’s how the narrative typically plays out: a pitcher’s velocity plays up better in short spurts. It’s why we expect failed starters can become elite relievers. It’s a cognitive bias, but it’s a bias we have because it tends to be true. This shorthanded logic, however, undersells Phelps’ gains both under the hood and on the mound.

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Britton ranked third on Rotographs’ End-of-Season rankings among closers.

I can’t help myself; I’m like most other saber-inclined baseball people — I love strikeouts. I mean, I love a lot of things about pitching. I love that guys can seemingly come out of nowhere and be studs, like Corey Kluber, Dallas Keuchel or countless others.

As a person who has spent most of their life watching the Minnesota Twins, I can also appreciate guys who don’t walk anyone. Year after year while I watched the club as a fan in my teens, the Twins led or were near the top of the league in fewest walks allowed. Not walking batters isn’t always necessary, but if you’re going to have guys with a paucity of strikeouts — like non-Johan Santana starters in those days — keeping the bases clean is key.

I also really like grounders. The holy trinity of pitching for me — and probably for everyone else — is strikeout and walk rates married with groundball rates. It’s very, very rare to find a pitcher who is solid across all three aspects who isn’t a wonderful pitcher. Each of these things in isolation can lead to a tremendous pitcher, provided he checks off other necessary boxes further down the list.

But when you find someone who checks off all three boxes — oh boy. Read the rest of this entry »

Entering 2016, Liam Hendriks was one of my favorite relief sleepers. In fact, I fantasized in my Bold Predictions piece that he’d enter 2017 as an elite closer. And while the results are laughable in hindsight, you can understand why I was bullish on him.

Coming off an outstanding 2015 in Toronto, Hendriks entered a remade Oakland bullpen headlined by a formerly dominant but unequivocally injury prone Sean Doolittle. His other competition included renowned ball four-enthusiast, John Axford, rookie Ryan Dull, and a resurgent but Medicare-eligible Ryan Madson. All possessed as many risks as virtues and it seemed, given the lingering questions surrounding them, that Liam Hendriks’ big fastball, elite command, and strong ground ball rate should have put him towards the top of the queue once the inevitable arm injury befell Doolittle. So what happened?

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Last week I posted the year to year correlations for xStats and their standard variants, and it came up with a few interesting results.  The xStats variants were much more consistent year to year, for better or worse, and in general they were better at predicting future performance. Not by much in some cases, but hey, every bit helps, right?  It made me curious how it may translate to groups of players with smaller sample sizes, so this week I’ve taken these stats to relief pitchers, with those year on year correlations in mind.  Yes, it is frustrating that we only have two seasons to look at, but this is the best we have at the moment so let’s see where it gets us.

As you might remember, vertical launch angle was very consistent (.75) between 2015 and 2016 for all pitchers, and as it turns out this holds true for every innings limit you can imagine.  Whether you want to talk about guys with 30 innings, 200 innings, or anything in between.  Vertical angle appears to stabilize fairly quickly.  So, that begs the question, how does vertical launch angle change batter performance?  Hopefully this chart will answer your questions.

Between roughly 10 degrees and about 35 degrees batted balls have high value, with batting average peaking around 13 degrees, slugging around 25 degrees, and home runs around 27 degrees.  So, if we know vertical launch angle is stable between seasons, and batted balls between 10 and 35 degrees are bad (for the pitcher), then perhaps aiming for pitchers who have average launch angles outside of that zone would be ideal. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though relief pitching dominated the narrative of both the 2015 and 2016 postseasons, and even though Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen made his contract look looked relatively tame inside of two weeks, I still couldn’t believe that Mark Melancon got a four-year, $62 million contract. Prior to that deal, the two biggest reliever contracts were four years and $50 million for Jonathan Papelbon and five years for $47 million for B.J. Ryan, two contracts their respective teams no doubt came to regret.

Melancon himself has been healthy and productive in his four seasons with the Pirates. He has thrown at least 71 innings every season with ERAs between 1.39 and 2.23 each year. However, he has achieved that success because of beneficial contextual factors and excellent command—he has walked between 1.0 and 1.6 batters per season in those four seasons—with good but not exceptional strikeout ability. He struck out 8.2 batters per nine in 2016 and has done the same for his career. That is only the 60th best rate among the 85 relievers who threw 60 or more innings last season, and Melancon’s 91.8 mph fastball does not hint at any untapped strikeout potential. Chapman and Jansen each struck out more than 13 batters per nine in 2016.

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If you were inclined last spring to target an elite closer in your fantasy drafts, the 2016 season served as a cautionary tale as to why that might not be an advisable strategy the next time around. Several popular targets, most notably Wade Davis and Craig Kimbrel, didn’t quite deliver on their promise, while largely undrafted relievers like Seung Hwan Oh, Alex Colome, Sam Dyson and Edwin Diaz became reliable saves sources.

Brandon Maurer could be added to that list as well, though he won’t likely have the same appeal as the aforementioned closers. That’s because Maurer finished with a 4.52 ERA and 1.26 WHIP that would not only scare off ratio-conscious owners, but also signal his vulnerability to losing the closer’s role. After all, the Padres can also call upon lefties Ryan Buchter and Brad Hand, who had impressive 2016 seasons, or Carter Capps, once he completes his recovery from Tommy John surgery.

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The bullpen market is always a fascinating one for its unending volatility. In fact, delving into it this early might be a mistake just because of how quickly it can change, though in fairness a lot of the change occurs in season. We could still see trades (I’ll touch on one possibility here in a moment) and signings to shake up a few situations, but I’d say somewhere around 23-25 situations are pretty well settled right now. Here are a handful of my early thoughts on the market as it is right now:

The Wade Davis trade adds another stud

The Royals might have actually improved their closer situation with the trade of Davis to the Cubs as there is some risk attached to the 31-year old after a season riddled with injuries. Meanwhile, Kelvin Herrera enters the closer mix and looks like a bona fide stud. He’s coming off a career-year in strikeout (30%), walk (4%), and swinging strike (15%) rates and handled the ninth brilliantly in Davis’ stead, going 10-for-10 in saves (though he did lose two tied games) with a 2.35 ERA (all 4 ER in the two losses), 0.78 WHIP, 32% K rate, and 2% BB rate (1 in 57 PA).

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Actually Read This Intro

Today I have a weird thought experiment. You’ll need to pay attention for a moment. Back at the start of November, I secretly began my Way Too Early Rankings with a post about relievers. This article. As I was about to schedule it, friend Eno requested me to post my rankings in order (i.e. C, 1B, etc.), and kindly furnish End of Season rankings first. So this article was mothballed for two months.

What follows is that same article, unedited. I have provided commentary to my commentary in italics. The lesson is pretty simple – relief pitchers can experience rapid shifts in value. Now, let’s return to two months ago…

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Projecting future closers is always difficult. We can use a number of different frameworks that factor in environment, talent, pitch quality, and arsenals, and still scratch our heads marveling at how relievers are used. It’s a tricky proposition given the number of variables involved. Add to that the changing nature of bullpen roles, it’s not inconceivable, as we saw with Andrew Miller’s usage, that a progressive manager might not use his best reliever in a way that’s conducive to racking up saves.

In fantasy, saves are expensive and the inherent volatility of bullpens can make chasing them on draft day a dubious endeavor. The Chacon Zone’s goal is to identify non-closing relief aces. Those pitchers whose contributions in strikeouts, ERA, and WHIP, despite low innings totals, are significant enough to offset the lack of saves that you’d receive by rostering a closer in his place. By banking on talent, rather than simply opportunity, we can identify cheap relievers not only possessing high floors but also high ceilings should they be thrust into a ninth inning role. Think Edwin Diaz from last year. Luckily for us, the new Splits Leaderboard, provides yet another tool by which we can (attempt to) identify these pitchers. By isolating performance in high leverage situations, we can not only identify talented relievers but those whose managers entrust them in the most pivotal moments.

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Thus the series is concluded. Setting the reliever replacement level in the FanGraphs auction calculator is tricky. I did my best. You may think the values smell fishy, in which case you’re free to tinker with them. The top names certainly look correct, but it’s a bit jarring to see players like Kelvin Herrera and Dellin Betances score so poorly. Maybe that’s just a reflection of me and my biases. I expect Herrera and Betances to tally $8 even without earning saves.

In case you’re just tuning into this series for the first time, I recommend going back in time and starting from the beginning. Luckily, you won’t need a time machine. The post on catchers has notes on important methodological changes. You can also go straight into the calculator to tweak values for your league.

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