The Washington Nationals are arguably the most complete team in baseball. They do have one area where they look considerably less impressive than the others – the bullpen. None of Washington’s relievers project to be elite and only one youngster seems to have the components necessary for a breakout. While relief isn’t a strength for the Nationals, it isn’t a weakness either.

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Pundits and projection systems don’t always agree. When they do, it often signals some underlying truth. Everybody, human and computer, expects the Philadelphia Phillies to be bad this season. Really, the only debate is the degree of awful. Will they be merely bad or downright terrible? With the doom and gloom, it’s easy to forget the Phillies project to be among the best in baseball in one regard – relief pitching.

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Contributing to RotoGraphs’ Bullpen Reports last year brought me much joy: opening infinite Brooks Baseball player cards for sabermetric outcomes and watching glorious GIFs. Oh, Marcus Stroman’s Two-Seamer:

GIF: Marcus Stroman’s Two-Seam Fastball from last week’s outing. It may be our favorite of the year – http://t.co/vyJM8ltUir

— Pitcher List (@ThePitcherList) August 31, 2014

Mmm.

My last Bullpen Report from October looked at possible closers through outcomes and presented BABIP differentials (actual BABIP versus expected BABIP using Inside Edge data).

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This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will continue to break them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

When rounding to one decimal place in WAR, the Royals and Yankees were tied for Best Bullpen of 2014. Both teams received dominant—historically dominant, even—breakout performances from set-up men. Both had excellent closers. The difference between the two teams going into 2015 is not so much one of quality, as both bullpens project to be among best in baseball again; rather, it’s a difference of roles. The Royals are returning all of their major relievers for 2015, with Greg Holland set to resume his role as closer. The Yankees, on the other hand, saw their 2014 closer leave via free agency, and brought in another excellent set-up man via the same method.

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At some point over the last calendar year, we added K%-BB% in our advanced stats tab. It appeared without warning, and I’ve been using it ever since. The statistic captures pitcher dominance in a way that can be lost using K/BB. For example, Aroldis Chapman’s 4.42 K/BB is good (25th among qualified relievers). His 40.6 percent K%-BB% ranks first by over five percent.

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I am huge proponent of the pitch type work which has led to the Arsenal Score here are FanGraphs. One possible issue with pitch type data is a reasonable amount of data needs to be collected before any conclusions could be draw. I am going to take it a step further today and look for MLB ready fastballs knowing just the pitcher’s velocity and break. Just knowing how the pitch’s speed and trajectory, some conclusions can be drawn on how the pitcher will perform in the future.

This past summer, I found how to estimate a pitcher’s fastball ground ball (GB%) and swinging strike rate (SwStr%) knowing just the velocity and break. The ground ball rate was the same for all pitches while the swinging strike rate varied a bit. Well, I went into meld/average mode to come up with a method to find a simple way to determine how productive a fastball may be knowing its current break and speed.

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Allow me to start by saying that I really dislike holds as a category. Saves plus holds makes plenty of sense – you’re basically telling owners to draft the best relievers regardless of role. Separating the two baffles me – at least in a standard league. I’m sure there are some unusual league configurations where it can work. I don’t like the category, but I still have to live with it in some leagues. What follows is how I cope with with holds.

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The FanGraphs slow mock is complete – huzzah! While I did not participate, I did occasionally peek in to observe. The 22nd round struck me as curious. Four non-closing relievers were drafted in the round including three names that could have been picked ahead of David Robertson (late seventh round) if they had a closers gig. Let’s take at the value to be had late in the draft.

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Mat Latos began and ended his 2014 season by missing time because of injuries. Between the two layoffs, he seemed to produce like he did in the past with a 3.25 ERA (3.34 for his career). One difference between his previous couple of seasons and 2014 was a huge drop in strikeouts. They went from 8.0 K/9 in both 2012 and 2013 to 6.5 K/9 in 2014. The biggest reason for the decline in strikeouts was a near 2 mph drop in his fastball velocity. This off season he was traded from the Reds to the Marlins where he hopes regain some of the zip on his fastball, but I wouldn’t count on it.

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Allen Webster was on my “to investigate” list because his strikeout rate was low compared to the number of swings-and-misses he got in 2014. The numbers intrigued me enough to watch one of his starts for one of my Quick Looks (full report on Friday).

What I found is he can’t/doesn’t throw pitches in the strike zone. Hitters need to chase his pitches out of the strike zone if they want to make contact. Most of the time they don’t though.

In an effort to figure him out further, I found out how much to adjust a pitcher’s predicted strikeout rate knowing his strike zone percentage and swinging strike rate, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.

Time for a little math. A simple way to estimate a pitcher’s strikeout rate (K%) is to double their (SwStr%). Taking all of the 2014 pitchers (min 50 IP), the r-squared between K% and two times the SwStr% (pK%) is 0.66. Good, but not great. Usually early in the season, I look for pitchers with high differences between these two values to find potential break out or bust candidates.

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