The Boston Red Sox picked up a Jonathan Papelbon replacement on Wednesday, acquiring Andrew Bailey (and Ryan Sweeney) from the Oakland A’s for Josh Reddick and prospects Raul Alcantara and Miles Head. The five-player swap has plenty of fantasy implications for both Boston and Oakland, so let’s briefly break down the big storylines.
Earlier in the decade, the Angels were known for consistently cobbling together top-tier bullpens. From 2002-2007, L.A. ranked in the top three in the American League in reliever xFIP, taking top honors in 2003 and 2004.
The names, outside of $900,000 bonus baby Francisco Rodriguez, were hardly glamorous. Those Angelic bullpens were anchored by guys like Brendan Donnelly (a 27th round pick of the White Sox who passed through six organizations), Scot Shields (the Angels’ 38th rounder in 1997) and Ben Weber, a 20th round pick of the Blue Jays who didn’t get a legit big league shot until age 31.
Given the Angels’ track record of uncovering bullpen gems, one might find it strange that the team has laid down a big chunk of change on free agent relievers in recent off-seasons. Justin Speier pulled down $18 million while contributing -0.2 WAR. Brian Fuentes compiled 0.4 WAR in 2009 while making $8.5M. He’ll earn $9M in 2010, and has a $9M vesting option for 2011. Fun fact: Donnelly came out of nowhere, again, to post a 0.6 WAR season with the Marlins in 2009. The cost? A minor league deal.
Add Fernando Rodney to the list of high-profile relief signings. The long-time Tiger, 33 in March, inked for two years and $11M recently. It’s a level of compensation that Rodney has not justified during his major league tenure.
The first thing some will point to regarding Rodney is: 37 for 38. As in, he converted 37 of 38 save opportunities in 2009. That sounds impressive, right? Well, looks can be deceiving.
Rodney posted his lowest strikeout rate (7.26 K/9) since an 18-inning stint 2002. His control, never a strong suit (career 4.64 BB/9) was again middling, with 4.88 walks per nine frames in 2009. On the positive side, the righty with mid-90’s gas and a hard changeup did post the highest groundball rate (57.9 percent) and first pitch strike percentage (62.7) of his career.
Even so, he was nothing special. Rodney’s xFIP was 4.42 this past season. For reference, 138 relievers pitched 50 or more innings in 2009. Fernando’s xFIP placed 89th. His 1.49 K/BB ratio ranked 115th. Even by Rodney’s own standards, it wasn’t a banner season. His 77.9% contact rate was his highest since ’02, and well above his 73.3% career mark. His ’09 xFIP was actually his worst full-season mark.
With the Angels, Rodney could now compete with last year’s big-ticket disappointment, Fuentes. The 34 year-old southpaw posted a K rate (7.53 per nine) well below his career level (9.92 K/9), while handing out 3.93 BB/9. His xFIP was a grisly 4.94.
Fuentes couldn’t seem to find his breaking stuff last year. His recent Baseball Info Solutions pitch data lumps all of his mid-70’s breakers together, but the Pitch F/X data suggests Fuentes tosses both a slider and a curve.
The slider has been worth a healthy +0.76 runs per 100 pitches since 2002, with the curve posting a run value around the major league average. But in 2009, those slow, sweeping pitches (all called sliders by BIS) were pummeled for -0.42 runs/100. Fuentes’ contact rate spiked to 80.3 percent, well above his 73.6% figure since ’02.
Here are the 2010 CHONE projections for Rodney and Fuentes:
Rodney: 57 IP, 7.9 K/9, 4.9 BB/9, 4.58 ERA, 0 runs above replacement
Fuentes: 56 IP, 7.9 K/9, 3.5 BB/9, 3.54 ERA, +8 RAR
If Rodney and Fuentes were to perform around this level, the Angels would be paying $14.5M for less than one win above replacement.
Heading into 2010, Rodney will garner attention based on his save total and the possibility that he usurps Fuentes for ninth inning glory in L.A. Don’t get carried away, though. For all of the press and cash Rodney and Fuentes will get, the best reliever in the ‘pen might just be pitching in middle relief.
When Brian Fuentes was signed by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to replace their record-breaking closer of old, they brought in an unconventional (read: non-fireballing) closer. Fuentes doesn’t do it with speed on his fastball (90 MPH), but rather with a funky delivery that produces three average- to above-average pitches.
But Fuentes is certainly having issues this year. His career high 11.78 K/9 was not sustainable last year, but his current 7.82 K/9 is down almost a quarter from his career 9.99 K/9.
There are little differences here and there in his repertoire beyond the curveball (which he’s pretty much given up on – he doesn’t use it and it’s lost over five inches of movement). His slider velocity is a little down (75.7 MPH) from its regular spot (77.4 MPH), but he’s been effective at that velocity before. Perhaps his changeup gaining velocity (74 MPH, up from 72.6 MPH) could be seen as a negative, but it’s only a slight bump.
Way down in the pitch f/x data, there’s a change that may be significant, however. Fuentes has lost almost three and a half inches of vertical movement on his slider. As his second-most used pitch, that seems important. It’s probably the reason he’s lost five runs worth of effectiveness on that pitch and almost 25% of his strikeout rate.
Queue Mike Scioscia creating a controversy by talking about Kevin Jepsen and the closer role. “If there are some matches that could be advantageous [with Jepsen], we will try to take advantage of [them],” Scioscia said to MLB.com. So far Scioscia has replaced Fuentes with Jepsen four times in a save opportunity, and brought out Jepsen to start the ninth twice. Who is this newcomer? Does he have staying power? Is this a full-blown closer controversy?
Jepsen does own the blazing fastball of a traditional closer (96.4 MPH this year), and with his two primary pitches coming down the pipe over 90 MPH (he owns a 90 MPH cutter that’s been worth 2.5 runs this year) he is a decent change of pace from Fuentes.
In fact, Jepsen profiles very differently from Fuentes in other ways. Fuentes is more of a fly-baller (46.9% fly balls), while Jepsen is inducing ground balls in bunches this year (58.6% ground balls). Jepsen is doing a great job supressing line drives (13.6%), and batters are centering Fuentes better (17.5%).
So Jepsen has more velocity, strikes out as many batters, induces more ground balls and is walking three-quarters of a batter fewer than Fuentes? Sounds like he should be closing.
The note of caution with Jepsen comes from his walk rate. While it’s currently nice (2.74) it was consistently over four per nine in the minors. If the control goes again, Scioscia will be glad he kept Fuentes in the role at least nominally. He can always use Jepsen to come in and induce a ground ball if Fuentes doesn’t have it any given night.
Brian Fuentes recently inked a contract with the Angels to replace Francisco Rodriguez as closer. And as weird as this may sound…the Angels may have upgraded.
I won’t argue the merits or drawbacks of Rodriguez (although I have in other places). However, Fuentes has quietly been very good over the last couple years.
Last season was particularly good. Fuentes struck out nearly 12 batters per nine innings, while walking 3.16. He also allowed only three homers in 62 innings – although this is mainly due to an inordinately-low homer rate, as only 4.5% of his fly balls became homers. However, in his career, only 8.7% of his fly balls have become homers, so even though he tends to allow a lot of fly balls, he doesn’t allow too many homers.
Last season seems like it’s somewhat of an outlier in Fuentes’s career – but not by that much. His career strikeout rate is 10.24 per nine innings, and his career walk rate is 3.82. It’s fair to assume that Fuentes won’t quite approach last season’s peripherals or ERA, but it’s very reasonable to assume that Fuentes will strike out more than one batter per inning and will post an ERA in the 3.50 – 3.80 range (if that seems high, keep in mind that Fuentes will be moving to the more difficult league, even if he’s also leaving Coors Field in the process).
The key to Fuentes’s value in fantasy leagues is his situation. Fuentes signed a big-dollar deal to be The Closer for Los Angeles, a team which has thrived on having relievers in set roles. Therefore, Fuentes’s job is very safe – even if he pitches poorly in back to back outings, he’s unlikely to be relieved of his closer duties permanently. Furthermore, Fuentes has relatively little injury history, so even though he’s risky by definition (most relievers are fairly risky), he’s not a huge injury risk.
Additionally, although this may seem somewhat counterintuitive as a positive for Fuentes, the Angels aren’t going to be very good next year. Their offense overachieved in 2008 and they have lost Mark Teixeira and Garrett Anderson, leaving their offense as potentially one of the worst in the American League. This actually bodes well for Fuentes, because it means that the Angels aren’t going to blow many teams out. Rather, when they do win games, chances are the games are going to be close, leading to a lot of save opportunities for Fuentes. This is what allowed K-Rod to rack up so many saves last year, despite being no better than average at converting save opportunities into saves.
All in all, Brian Fuentes is a low-risk, above-average reliever who is likely to have a lot of save opportunities. Furthermore, he’s unlikely to be removed from the closer’s role if he struggles a little bit, and he should post solid numbers, even if they regress from last year’s numbers. Fuentes is likely to be available after the “top tier” of closers have been taken, and is the exact type of pitcher you should be targeting.