Last year the Oakland Athletics bullpen ranked in the top 10 in terms of ERA and FIP. More advanced metrics didn’t find as much favor with their body of work, as the A’s pen ranked middle of the road in terms of SIERA and xFIP. Given the park they call home, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the A’s relievers posted the second best HR/FB rate, coming in second to the Mariners. Being satisfied with the status quo usually isn’t Billy Beane’s style, and this offseason he moved around plenty of parts. There are some new faces to don the white cleats as well as some returning contributors, but the key is this team has fantasy relevant talent in this pen outside of the closer.

The closer
Jim Johnson

Johnson may be one of the new guys, but his job is secure as the club’s closer. His strong ground ball rate helps make up for his lack of swing-and-miss stuff and it is impossible to argue his recent work. Over the past two years Johnson leads baseball with 86 shutdowns against 15 meltdowns. For context, Aroldis Chapman has 80 SD and 14 MD and Craig Kimbrel has posted a 76:9 ratio. Johnson is a solid bet to gain saves and good ratios even if he lacks in the strikeout department.
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If there’s one thing you want to say about Seattle’s bullpen it’s… well, it’s pretty cheap. Like getting paid “what fell out of Robinson Cano’s coin purse” cheap. But while it’s cheap, it’s filled with guys who throw hard. Guys who throw hard tend to get whiffs. Guys who get whiffs have a chance to be valuable. And if you’re concerned with middle relievers in your fantasy leagues, guys who get whiffs are exactly who you should be targeting as upside plays.

The closer
Danny Farquhar

Farquhar burst onto the scene in 2013, notching 16 saves in the stead of a certain former bartender-turned-closer who shall remain nameless (but appears below). Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve seen it said that bullpens win championships, but I think it’s probably just the last piece of the puzzle for a contending team. That’d be hard to tease out in the numbers, but it certainly doesn’t make sense for a team like the Astros to spend resources on their bullpen. They’ve taken it to the extreme in some cases, by trading any and every reliever that had any interest on the market.

That’s how you get an Astros bullpen that was by far the worst in the league last year. By a large margin. At 5.09, their FIP was almost a full run worse than second-worst (Cubs, 4.23). And they ‘accrued’ -5.4 wins. The other four teams with below-replacement pens lost .2 wins or less to their relievers as a group. So, yeah, it was a really bad bullpen.

Two thoughts come to mind about a bad bullpen. The first is that there’s always opportunity in situations like those. Bad teams make for sleepers, since the traditional media focuses on better teams and those players get more name recognition. So don’t ignore the team. But! Bad teams — especially those that don’t score a lot of runs and have bad bullpens around the closer — bad teams do not provide a lot of save opportunities.

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In the tumultuous world of relief pitching, where closers seem to come and go day and night, the San Diego Padres have stood as a model of consistency. For 16 years, Trevor Hoffman closed the door on opponents to the tune of Hells Bells, before giving way to Heath Bell’s three-season reign, until current closer Huston Street took over the ninth inning duties in 2012.

Street will enter 2014 entrenched as the team’s ninth inning man again, but whether or not he remains in that position all year may be less of a sure thing than it seems. Let’s dive in.

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One pitcher subset I like to exploit is relief pitchers (RP) with starting pitcher (SP) qualifications. In leagues with each SP and RP slots and daily lineup changes, these pitchers can be extremely useful. Starters can only throw every five days and then can’t accumulate any stats the rest of the time. On their off days, a SP qualified RP can be moved into the SP spot to help with rate stats and in a few rare cases, accumulate Saves. These pitchers got abused in Ottoneu to the point the rules got changed. Not all leagues ban them yet. Today, I am going to look at some of the better pitchers who may fill this requirement.

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The back end of the Arizona bullpen was a mess last year. They tied with the Astros for the most blown saves in the league. J.J. Putz was spotty early in the season as the closer, and Heath Bell struggled in the role as well early in the summer. Brad Ziegler finally brought some stability to the role as he saved 13 games and blew only two after taking over the role in early July. But the D’Backs front office obviously didn’t feel comfortable with Ziegler maintaining the closer job, so they acquired Addison Reed in the offseason.

The bullpen should be much better this year, in part because of the added depth Reed gives them. But they should also be better because of some positive regression for Putz and David Hernandez.

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Adding Holds as a category to any fantasy league opens up a new pool of pitchers to the mix. No longer are teams focused just on just starters and closers, now middle relievers have more value. Holds are an impossible category to predict, but today I will give some ideas about guesstimating Holds and some pitchers who may accumulate them in 2014.

If a reliever comes into a game to protect a lead, gets at least one out and leaves without giving up that lead, he gets a hold.

MLB Miscellany: Rules, regulations and statistics

Two things must exist for a pitcher to a get a Hold, opportunity and talent. Starting with opportunity: Holds are just like Saves, the manager must trust the pitcher enough to put them in a Hold situation. Two types of pitchers are given Hold opportunities, stud setup men and LOOGYs. A setup man will pitch the seventh and/or eighth since their peripheral data is similar to a closer. They will throw one inning and be done. LOOGY’s will be used to get one or two tough left-handed batters out and be done.

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No one will replace Mariano Rivera. In 2009, the top-10 relievers in WAR with a minimum of 20 saves were Jonathan Broxton, Andrew Bailey, Brian Wilson, Jonathan Papelbon, Rivera, Joe Nathan, Rafael Soriano, Heath Bell, David Aardsma, and Joakim Soria. In 2013, only Nathan of those players rejoined Rivera in the top-10. Six others no longer close. And that is just since 2009. Rivera was already an established, consistent closer a decade before.

That unprecedented track record of consistent effectiveness makes big shoes for an heir to fill. David Robertson has already suffered from those unreasonable expectations. After taking over for Rivera following his season-ending knee injury in 2012, Robertson’s quick blown save started the discussion of his lack of a closer mentality. Within the week, Robertson strained an oblique muscle, and he never had another chance to close as veteran Rafael Soriano took the job and ran with it.

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Writer’s Note: Perkins ranked 8th on Zach Sanders’ 2013 closer rankings.

Glen Perkins’ rebirth as a pitcher has been nothing short of amazing. Perkins’ days as a starter were nothing to write home about, even when his home isn’t more than about a half hour drive from Target Field.

There’s a reason Perkins’ career K/9 rate is still under 7 — 6.85 to be precise — despite three consecutive years of 9.5-plus K/9. As a starter, Perkins was a bulldog who liked to work inside with a fastball that routinely checked in somewhere between 89-91, sometimes reaching 92 on average. Armed with that, a changeup, and a curve (and later a slider in lieu of the curve), Perkins compiled a 19-12 career record with a 4.81 ERA, 1.44 WHIP, and a Blackburn-esque 4.7 K/9. Read the rest of this entry »

This must feel like déjà vu all over again for Joakim Soria. Back in April of 2003, Soria had his first Tommy John surgery and didn’t pitch for two full seasons. He scratched and clawed his way back to form and by the end of 2007, he was one of the better closers in baseball. Fast forward to 2012, he had his second Tommy John in March and scratched and clawed his way back to form, actually appearing in 26 games in 2013, although he played second fiddle to Joe Nathan at the back of the bullpen.

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