The 2014 Nationals will enter the playoffs with a familiar face at the back of the bullpen. After a turbulent 2013, Drew Storen has emerged as the team’s late option after Rafael Soriano went through a rough stretch. Storen has rewarded the Nationals’ faith this year, posting a 1.25 ERA, and 2.80 FIP, over 50.1 innings. That wasn’t the case last year. Storen posted a 5.95 ERA over his 42.1 innings and was demoted to Triple-A. Less than a year later, he’ll close things out for the Nats again.

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A’s at M’s: Sean Doolittle is back, looked sharp and earned his 21st save the season. Since his last save on August 23rd, there was one lonely save by Eric O’Flaherty. The A’s went 6 and 14 over that timeframe. It was a big win for the A’s who kept the Mariners one game back from their Wildcard lead thanks in part to Doolittle’s clean return (1 IP, 1K), but thanks more in part to a Fernando Rodney implosion (1 IP, 4 straight walks in the top of the 10th). To date, using 50 IP as the qualifier, Sean Doolittle owns the 3rd best K%-BB% rate in the history of baseball, 36.2%, thanks in part to the 20th best K% ever (38.6%) and the  26th best BB% ever (2.4%). Incredible. Enjoy his high fastball in a time where not many others have this lethal high fastball and hitters focus with their chins down.

Astros at Angels: Angels keep winning: their 10th straight behind two Trout homers. Lefty specialist and deep bullpen option Joe Thatcher was activated from the DL. Austin Powers has forever ruined his last name for me: Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day….Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day! Huston Street earned save 14 for the Angels (38 in total). He gave up 1 hit, struck out 1 and looks as though he’s fine after being sidelined with a hamstring injury. Noncloser note: Jered Weaver continues to deceive. I strolled across this while preparing a 2015 Mets Rotation post…Jered Weaver owns the 9th best zone-contact rate for starters this year, and despite diminishing velocity, hitters are relatively swinging at much less stuff in the zone against him (14th best SP rate) confirming his continued deception.

Rays at Blue Jays: Usually I’m pointing to just how dominating Brad Boxberger has been, but perhaps he needs a little break despite only pitching in 4 of the last 8 days. It’s 2 appearances in a row now he’s given up a homer. He earned his 2nd loss of the season yesterday. With less than a month left of the season, if you’re in a saves-only league mayyybe it’s worth dropping Boxberger since Jake McGee is still the (very effective) closer. Casey Janssen confirmed that he’s still the Blue Jays’ closer earning himself save #23.

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The Royals recently promoted 2014 draftee Brandon Finnegan to the majors to be a lefty out of the bullpen. So far the 21-year-old has thrown just a couple of relief innings. What I wanted to do is push the limits to discover what type of pitcher Mr. Finnegan may be in the future given this small sample of information. Today, I am concentrating just on his fastball.

Eno has been doing quite a bit of pitch benchmarks and I helped him out with some values. After using these values for a few months, I noticed heavy flyball pitchers like Chris Young and Danny Duffy had vertical movements, as defined be Pitchf/x, near or above 10. On the other end of the spectrum, ground ball pitchers, like Justin Masterson, had a vertical component near or below zero. By knowing the amount of downward break on fastball, I hope to get a range on their ground ball rate (GB%).

Additionally, a fastball is thrown fast with the hope to induce some swing-and-miss. So, additionally I looked to find the average swinging strike rate (SwStr%) just by knowing a pitcher’s velocity. Since velocity stabilizes quickly, just a few pitches will give us an idea of the pitcher speed and hopefully the average amount of swing-and-miss from their fastball.

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If you use large samples and go looking for pitchers with many different plus pitches by whiff type that aren’t yet fully appreciated by the masses, you’ll get guys that we’ve been talking about all year here: Carlos Carrasco, Garrett Richards, Homer Bailey, Jake Arrieta, and Marcus Stroman, to name a few.

But if you relax the samples a bit — in this case down to thirty pitches thrown per category — you get some names that might be interesting to dynasty leaguers looking to the future, or deep leaguers looking for a sneaky late-season play. Or even mixed leaguers looking for names to stash for next year.

So here are a few interesting pitchers that have at three non-fastball pitches that qualify as ‘good’ by the benchmarks set by Jeff Zimmerman and I.

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• No save situation for the Tigers today but Joe Nathan, who has been struggling with elbow tenderness of late, threw a scoreless ninth inning.  Joakim Soria threw a simulated game today and when he returns, he might be used as the 7th-inning option. Joba Chamberlain pitched the eighth allowing an earned run in the process but looks secure as the main setup option behind Nathan, even when Soria is back.

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First, the ?’s.

Second, the historical K%’s.

And of course, the Grid…

1) The ?’s

Angels at Twins: Glen Perkins has a sore neck (received a MRI after tingling, but there was no structural damage). Ron Gardy said he should be back within a few a days so I wouldn’t jump to the waiver wire for anyone. We didn’t get a chance to see who would have had the opportunity to close out the games for the Twins tonight. While it was presumably Jared Burton, he received the loss, getting beat by a Albert Pujols double after a single (Cron) and walk (Trout) and then Anthony Swarzak let in the inherited runner.  Huston Street earned save #37. That’s 3 straight appearances for Street and he could potentially use the day off tomorrow. He only has 2 k’s in through his last 5 appearances, and his win yesterday came from a blown save. He induced only 1 whiff from 6 swings tonight.

Astros at Athletics: Sean Doolittle had a successful bullpen session today and should be activated next week. Until then, it’s still Eric O’Flaherty closing out games. David Wiers called O’Flaherty a wild-card for the closing role prior to the season and the ground ball rate (58+%) and weak contact (.213 BABIP) holds true. Tonight, Luke Gregerson pitched a scoreless 9th for the win. Heck, if you’re own a hold league, why not own the entire Oakland bullpen next year?

Chad Qualls remains under the weather with a case of the shaky qualls. He let both of Scott Feldman’s inherited runners score and then gave up the winning single to blow a 3-1 lead in the bottom of the 9th. I would think and hope that Tony Sipp is next up  for the closing role. Other than a shellacking on 8/25 (4BB and 4 ER without recording an out), he’s been lights out since 8/12 (12 K’s, 0 BB’s and only 1 hit). Yesterday, he struck out 4 of 7 batters. I’d like to see him with the gig.

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The non-waiver trade deadline is now more than a month past, and when bullpens are subject to a shakeup due to new personnel or new opportunities, there’s always that scramble to salvage the save and holds scraps. With few exceptions, an ironclad master plan for who picks up the holds seems rare and the back end of the bullpen frequently goes through a series of trial-and-errors until roles start to coalesce. With holds in mind, it looks like a couple of those roles have emerged.

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Tigers closer Joe Nathan hasn’t had the type of season fantasy owners were expecting. While Nathan has notched 32 saves, things haven’t come easy. Through 50 innings, Nathan has a 5.04 ERA. The performance has been somewhat of a shock. Yes, there were some reasons to be concerned about Nathan entering the year, but it’s safe to say no one expected him to struggle this much. One of the main reasons for concern entering the season was Nathan’s age. It’s tough for any player to be dominant at age-39. Are Nathan’s struggles a product of his age, or is there more going on here?

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• As we mentioned last night, Kevin Quackenbush is currently closing for the Padres at the moment and today we learned we can expect that to continue for at least the next 8-10 days according to Corey Brock. With Benoit on the shelf until then, Quackenbush should get another couple of save opportunities, and maybe even a few more as it’s unclear how the Padres will deal with Benoit as we approach the end of the season.

• Sean Doolitte played catch/had a catch today from 90 feet but there is still no date on his return. However, it doesn’t “seem” to be too far off, if you are in need of saves and someone dropped Sean Doolittle due to some roster crunch, I’d definitely take a look at him. The A’s are trying to win the division and Doolittle could be back in his familiar rule as soon as he’s comes off of the DL.

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Hoping you all had a wonderful Labor Day, and ideally an extended weekend, as we leave August behind and say hello to September here at the Bullpen Report…

• Steve Cishek threw a perfect ninth inning for his 32nd save of the year today. Cishek struggled a bit/had some poor batted ball luck in August but he’s put up zeroes in his last three outings and his job certainly remains safe on the Marlins. Cishek received the save opportunity against the Mets after Carlos Torres and Jeurys Familia struggled in relief, giving Miami the lead. Familia is still first in line for saves behind Mejia, who hasn’t been Mr. Sturdy all season but still has a hold on the job.

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