Archive for bullpens

Emilio Pagan woke up on Monday morning to find himself near the top of the most-added lists for relievers on ESPN, CBS and Yahoo. (I’m actually guessing he probably didn’t check.) Owners were certainly responding to Pagan’s one-out save against the Orioles on Sunday, as well as his growing prominence in high-leverage ninth-inning situations for the Rays.

If there is a reliever in the Rays’ bullpen to own right now, it’s clearly Pagan, who has two saves in the team’s last five games. However, it is premature to assume that Kevin Cash is going to rely solely on him for saves. Diego Castillo is still only four days removed from being activated, and it is not yet clear what his post-IL usage patterns will look like. Especially with Jose Alvarado (oblique) on the IL, it would hardly be surprising to see Cash turn to Colin Poche for save situations that involve left-handed hitters.
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Thursday night’s schedule wasn’t so much of a slate as a pebble. The Rangers’ 5-0 win over the Astros was the only game on the first night of the second half, and it was a closer-free affair featuring five low-leverage relief appearances.

The only reliever worthy of mention was the Astros’ Cy Sneed, who did the bulk of the mopping up after Framber Valdez, who retired only two of the nine batters he faced. Sneed gave up just one run in five innings while striking out seven batters.
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Greg Holland picked a very bad time to lose control.

The Dodgers have been the most selective team in the National League, swinging on only 28.3 percent of the pitches they have seen outside of the strike zone. On Tuesday night, Holland was on the verge of collecting his 13th save for the Diamondbacks, pitching to Chris Taylor with a 4-3 lead, two outs and an 0-2 count. None of his next four pitches were close to the zone, and Taylor walked. Then Holland walked Russell Martin, Alex Verdugo and Matt Beaty, allowing the Dodgers to tie the game without getting a hit. He was lifted for T.J. McFarland, and when he left he had thrown 22 of his 30 pitches outside of the strike zone. Martin swung at one of them — a slider that missed the bottom of the zone by more than a foot — and none of Holland’s other out-of-zone pitches induced a swing.
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Just as fantasy owners were likely questioning whether Raisel Iglesias would get another save for the Reds, he came through with his first one in three weeks on Sunday. However, the way Iglesias’ performance unfolded raises more questions than it answers.

David Bell brought Iglesias in for a two-inning save after Amir Garrett walked Jason Heyward to lead off the eighth inning, with the Reds out in front of the Cubs, 4-3. Iglesias preserved the lead, and with the Reds scoring four times in the bottom of the inning, he came back out for the ninth. Though he yielded a single and a walk, Iglesias appeared to be headed for an uneventful save, as he had Heyward in an 0-2 count with two outs. That’s when the Cubs’ outfielder pulled an inside fastball into the right field seats to cut the lead to two runs. Iglesias did retire Javier Baez for the final out, but that one swing increased his ERA to 4.41.
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Roughly 24 hours ago, we may have wondered how soon the Cubs would use Craig Kimbrel as their closer once he was called up. That question was answered quickly and definitively on Thursday night. Mere hours after getting promoted from Triple-A Iowa, Joe Maddon called on Kimbrel to protect a 9-7 lead against the Braves in the top of the ninth inning. He got off to an auspicious start to his tenure with his new team, throwing strikes on each of his first six pitches and retiring former battery mate Brian McCann and Johan Camargo. Kimbrel struck out McCann on three pitches, though the called third strike did appear to be just outside the strike zone.

After getting Ronald Acuna into a 1-2 count, Kimbrel’s night took a slight turn for the worse. Acuna worked his way into a seven-pitch at-bat, ultimately blemishing Kimbrel’s debut with a ground rule double. Then his control briefly abandoned him in a four-pitch walk to Dansby Swanson. It only took one pitch for Kimbrel to end the threat, as Anthony Rizzo snagged a Freddie Freeman grounder hit down the first base line and got to the base just in time to get the final out.
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For nearly three months, Jordan Hicks put on a breakout performance in 2019. He became a much more prolific strikeout pitcher and seamlessly moved into the Cardinals’ closer role, locking down 14 of his 15 save opportunities. Now his 2019 campaign is officially over, as he is scheduled to undergo Tommy John surgery on Wednesday morning. Carlos Martinez is officially the Cardinals’ closer now.

In his 15 innings this season, Martinez has not been especially proficient at getting swings-and-misses (9.8 percent SwStr%) or strikeouts (23.3 percent K%), but he has been masterful at inducing ground balls (61.5 percent rate) and soft airborne contact. Of the 447 pitchers who have allowed at least 40 batted balls this season, only one (Taylor Cole) has yielded a lower average exit velocity on flyballs and line drives than Martinez has (86.0 mph). Given that Martinez has pitched barely more than a month’s worth of innings, as he started his season late due to a shoulder strain, it’s hard to know if he will be better, worse or about the same now that he will serve as a closer. Even with that uncertainty, Martinez is worth adding in just about every league where he is available.
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Kirby Yates doesn’t get the attention he deserves in this column, because he has literally been automatic. Entering Sunday’s series finale with the Pirates, he had converted all 26 of his save opportunities this season. Only twice had he allowed more than one hit in an appearance, and he had yet to allow more than two hits in an outing.

Yates entered uncharted territory on Sunday, as he did not protect the Padres’ 7-4 lead in the bottom of the ninth inning. His inning began with Elias Diaz reaching as a result of a Manny Machado error, and he subsequently allowed an Adam Frazier double and RBI singles to Kevin Newman and Bryan Reynolds. Yates would not allow any more hits, but thanks to Starling Marte‘s sacrifice bunt that advanced Newman and Reynolds, Melky Cabrera’s lightly-hit grounder down the first base line was enough to bring Newman home to tie the game. Cabrera was out at first, and then Yates retired Colin Moran to send the game into extra innings.
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The showdown between Frankie Montas and Charlie Morton on Thursday night lived up to expectations. Montas dominated the Rays for eight innings, allowing just one run (on a Tommy Pham solo shot), while a Jurickson Profar solo homer was the only run allowed by Morton over 6.1 innings. Emilio Pagan relieved Morton and kept the game knotted at 1-1, giving the Rays’ offense a chance to take the lead against Athletics closer Blake Treinen.

Instead of the game being defined by a matchup of two of the American League’s best starters, it became a story of two struggling closers. Treinen began the top of the ninth inning by walking Pham and Brandon Lowe, and then the Rays pounced with a double steal and back-to-back RBI singles by Avisail Garcia and Ji-Man Choi. That was it for Treinen: four batters, two runs scored, no outs. He was relieved by Ryan Buchter, who let Garcia score on a one-out Willy Adames sacrifice bunt.
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Alex Colome has been perfect in his 14 save opportunities with the White Sox this season, and if not for having thrown 39 pitches against the Nationals on Tuesday, he almost certainly would have had a crack at his 15th save on Thursday against the Yankees. However, with Colome apparently unavailable, Rick Renteria gave us a possible preview of what the bullpen pecking order could look like if (or more likely when) Colome is traded.

The game was tied, 4-4, heading into the top of the seventh inning, and Renteria gave the inning to Evan Marshall. After keeping the Yankees off the board (Marshall is now up to 16.1 innings with a 0.00 ERA), the White Sox grabbed the lead in the bottom of the seventh with a Leury Garcia leadoff home run off Adam Ottavino. Kelvin Herrera took over in the eighth inning and received his sixth hold. Aaron Bummer, who has recently moved into an eighth-inning setup role, came in for the save and allowed nothing more than a Clint Frazier single. The save was the first of Bummer’s career.
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Blake Treinen captured his 15th save of the season on Tuesday night against the Rays, but he was fortunate to have had a two-run cushion entering the bottom of the ninth inning. In starting off with a four-pitch walk to Brandon Lowe, Treinen followed in his recent trend of not throwing enough strikes. Over his six innings pitched in the month of June, he has issued seven walks while locating in the strike zone at an anemic 31.9 percent rate and throwing first-pitch strikes just 41.4 percent of the time.

The walk came back to hurt Treinen, as Lowe scored on a two-out Willy Adames single to cut the Athletics’ lead to one run. However, he stranded Adames by getting Kevin Kiermaier to ground out for the final out.
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