Archive for Jeurys Familia

Jeurys Familia has had his ups and downs this season, but he hit a new low on Wednesday when he did not retire any of the four batters he faced in the Mets’ 5-3 loss to the Pirates. He began the top of the ninth inning with a 3-1 lead, and he allowed three straight singles. Familia stayed in to face Jordy Mercer with the bases loaded, but a four-pitch walk cut the lead to a run and ended his night. He was relieved by Anthony Swarzak, who did him no favors by allowing David Freese‘s two-RBI single and Josh Bell’s sacrifice fly.

While this most recent outing was particularly bad for Familia, he had been struggling on and off for a month and a half. Over a span of 15.2 inning entering Wednesday’s game, Famila had compiled a 3.45 ERA and 1.72 WHIP, and a .408 BABIP rate was key to the bloating of his ratios. Going back to May 13, Familia has allowed hard contact at a 34.0 percent rate, but that slightly-elevated rate hardly seems to be cause for an astronomical BABIP. According to Baseball Savant, there is reason to be skeptical — and hopeful — about Familia’s recent trend. While he has allowed batters to hit .353 against him over his last 15 appearances, his opponents’ collective xBA is just .277 over that period.
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In the nine days since Jeurys Familia was shelved with a sore right shoulder, the Mets have had just one save situation. They did not have one on Saturday against the Diamondbacks, but in holding a 5-1 lead over the final three innings, they were close to having one. Mickey Callaway went with the same late-inning combination that he used in the save situation against the Yankees on June 1o: Robert Gsellman providing the bridge from the starter in the seventh and eighth innings to Anthony Swarzak in the ninth.

Both pitchers performed admirably in Familia’s absence, but they are now expected to return to their prior roles, as the Mets are planning on activating their closer on Sunday. Familia is expected to move immediately back into the closer’s role.
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Happy Zach Britton Day! The Orioles are planning to activate their once-and-future closer on Monday, though not surprisingly, he will likely be eased into the closer’s role. It’s also not a shock that, according to a report from the Baltimore Sun, the Orioles may deal Britton, along with Brad Brach and Darren O’Day, prior to the trade deadline. If all three are dealt, perhaps current setup relievers Mychal Givens and Richard Bleier could get save chances later in the season. The Sun report also cites Tanner Scott as having received more work in high-leverage situations prior to his getting optioned to Triple-A Norfolk on Saturday, so he could be a late-season candidate for saves or holds as well.
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For the third time in the last four games, Greg Holland pitched the ninth inning for the Cardinals. The last two times, it was in a tie game with the Cardinals as the home team. When Holland was brought in to face the Mets on Tuesday, incumbent closer Bud Norris was unavailable, but that was not the case in the series finale on Thursday afternoon. Norris pitched the eighth inning, and curiously enough, he did it with the Cardinals trailing by a run. Tommy Pham tied the game up with an RBI single in the bottom of the eighth, and then it was Holland’s turn to keep the Mets off the board in the top of the ninth. All he yielded was a leadoff single by Michael Conforto.
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Sometimes you try things and they don’t work out. The Brewers’ offseason signing of Neftali Feliz to be their closer always seemed a little superfluous, but it had a certain logic. The $5.35 million they paid for his services was less than what Joaquin Benoit and Koji Uehara got, and he was following up a comeback season with the Pirates. You could see the possibility of Feliz finding some consistency as the Brewers’ closer, and then they could always flip him at the trade deadline.

Feliz was 8-for-9 in save chances, but he was not consistent and certainly did not build up any trade value. When he coughed up a three-run homer to Mookie Betts in the top of the ninth on Thursday, Feliz was en route to his fourth loss. That was enough for Craig Counsell to make a change. He went on MLB Network Radio and said he was going to give Feliz “a break back there and get him right.” He also said Corey Knebel “has been outstanding,” but that doesn’t mean you should run out and pick Knebel up. Counsell told MLB.com he wants to use Knebel in a variety of situations, so essentially, the Brewers are going to a committee to close out games. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeurys Familia had been one of the most valuable and reliable closers over the last two seasons. Now, less than two weeks after returning to the closer’s role for the Mets following his 15-game domestic violence suspension and a brief “easing in” period, one has to wonder how secure his job is.

Familia blew his first save of the season Wednesday in a 6-5 loss to the Giants, but signs of trouble had been brewing for awhile. Upon his return to the Mets, Familia struggled with control, and while he has improved in that regard lately, he hasn’t been fooling many hitters. He has thrown 61 pitches in the month of May, and has coaxed exactly one swinging strike. That was back on May 1. Read the rest of this entry »

Two of the more noteworthy closer developments occurred off the field on Wednesday. Terry Collins told the Bergen Record that Jeurys Familia has been returned to the closer’s role. This means the end to his phase-in period following his 15-game suspension for a violation of Major League Baseball’s domestic violence policy. Collins had used Familia in non-save situations for his first three appearances. This also means the end of Addison Reed’s solid run as the Mets’ closer, which resulted in four saves but also a loss to the Marlins in which he gave up a walk-off home run to J.T. Riddle to break a ninth-inning tie.

In his 2 2/3 innings to date, Familia has six strikeouts and 11 swinging strikes, but he has also walked four batters. If I own Reed, I’m hanging on to him if possible, at least until Familia shows that he will be reliable now that he is back in the closer’s role.

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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.

Closer/Setup Men:

Fishing for a closer?

Draft Jenrry Mejia and you may feel like doing this:

Jenrry Mejia. So pumped. pic.twitter.com/iy8HR5yrZu

— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) July 26, 2014

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There are a sundry of middle/set-up relievers that can succeed in the closer role if given the opportunity. A few obvious: Wade Davis if something happens to Greg Holland… Wil Myers for James Shields and who?!; Ken Giles if the Phillies can somehow find a trade partner for the grundle-grabber; and Brad Boxberger if not Jake McGee. I assume David Robertson signs elsewhere and Dellin Betances steps in.

Lets’ look at potential closers using reliever outcomes. Here are the average contact and balls in play-related outcomes for all relievers that qualified and specifically relievers with 10+ saves:

Our Filters: 

• Contact-related outcomes: For K-BB%, Ct% and SwStr%, I filtered simply by the general relief pitcher averages. Everyone below average in these 3 categories was filtered out.
• Command-related outcomes: For zone% and first-pitch-strike%, I used 1 standard deviation below average and 1.25 SD’s below average in BABIP as filters. 1.25 SD allowed me to omit only the relievers that had career BABIP’s higher than we would like to see for a closer or in general. I didn’t want to screen out Jenrry Mejia (1.24 SD below the mean) or Tim Stauffer (1.19 SD below), because there’s a possibility for BABIP regression.
• Balls In Play-related outcomes: I was lax on the balls in play outcomes. I went with a 40% Grounder rate and 45% Flyball rate as my filters versus the averages that you see above because below average fly-rates don’t mean much in places like Tampa (where Boxberger is elite but below average in fly-rates); and above average grounder-rates don’t mean as much with atrocious defense behind you (hence Corey Kluber’s unlucky BABIP, which should have been closer to .299 per end-of-season xBABIP/Inside Edge data), but I digress.

Using these filters, we’re left with a robust list of above-average relievers beyond just closers (scroll down for the noted filters):

What happens if we use the command (K-BB%)/contact (Ct% and SwStr%) related averages for relievers with more than 10 saves this year? 

…We’re left with some elite closers and then a few interesting names.

Last year, Danny Farquhar (just missed the list this year) had a top 20 swinging-strike rate – about a percent better than Fernando Rodney, but it was masked by his BABIP and left-on-base rate that killed his surface stats (4.20 ERA vs. 2.40 xFIP). This year, he actually outperformed his xFIP with a 2.66 ERA. After an early season MASH Report on Rodney’s velocity, I eyed Farquhar. At least keep him in mind next year if anything does happen to Rodney.

Josh Edgin (Mets for those of you that don’t know) has a top 65 contact-rate sandwiched between Mark Melancon and Jake McGee and even induced grounders 50% of the time. He has a pretty extensive repertoire as well. In order of usage: Fourseamer, Slider, Curve, Change, Cutter and Sinker. According to his Brooks Player Card, he has great swing and miss rates on his Curve (>56%), Cutter (50%), Slider (>42%) and Sinker (33%). Even his Change approaches 30%. This isn’t the case on his Fastball, but at 93+ MPH, it induces a decent amount of grounders (1.8 GB/FB). Keep in mind he had late-season elbow issues which effected his velocity by a MPH or so, but he could be called upon to get Mejia out of a jam. I like him better than an unhealthy Bobby Parnell and Jeurys Familia from a command perspective for another year.

Zach Duke did his best Craig Kimbrel impression prior to the R2M monster hitting him in August. Prior to 8/1, Duke had a 34.9% K-rate and 27.3 K-BB%. Kimbrel ended the year with a 38.9% K-rate and 28.3 K-BB%. I think August and September brought him back to his realistic value (~2.50 ERA, 1.15 WHIP). It will be interesting to see who closes for the Brewers if they let Francisco Rodriguez go. Both Duke and Will Smith have above average (even for RP w/ 10+ saves) swing-and-miss. Will Smith should have additional command next year, but Zack Duke induces grounders better which I like in my closers/in Milwaukee. They also have Jonathan Broxton. The hierarchy seemed to be K-rod-Broxton-Smith late last season. If that’s the case, they should use Duke more (former starter) and in higher leverage situations. He was equally solid against both lefties (.258 wOBA) and righties (.262 wOBA).

Oliver Perez everybody! I thought I could filter him out by his splits being a lefty, but like 2012, he was more effective vs. righties (and faced 44 more of them). The D-backs have Addison Reed, up-and-comer Evan Marshall as well as Daniel Hudson caught touching 97 MPH so if not by outcomes or splits, we can filter Perez out by opportunity.

Darren O’Day and Andrew Miller is part of one dominating Baltimore bullpen – one that gets referenced by anyone who thinks the Orioles can beat the Tigers in the ALDS. Notice that Zach Britton didn’t make either of the above lists! He was filtered out by his below average K-BB% (13.70%). It’s his 75+% grounder rate (hence the 81+% left-on-base rate and .215 BABIP) that keeps him elite in Baltimore. The only concern you can have with O’Day is a fastball velocity almost 2 standard deviations below the mean for relievers, but his arm angle combined with that slider still induces a 30+% whiff-rate on both pitches. Miller’s slider though is a world apart from O’Day’s: only Pedro Strop, Will Smith, Jake Diekman, Greg Holland and Oliver Perez induces more whiffs than Miller’s 55% according to Baseball Prospectus’ Pitchf/x Leaderboards.  I doubt we’ll see a closer-transition next year in Baltimore unless Britton’s GB/FB ratio takes a drastic dive because his HR/FB ratio, which approached 18%, could be an issue.

An xBABIP review

On the last day of the season, @jeffwzimmerman provided me with Pitch xBABIP based on inside edge data. Let’s look at some of the bigger xBABIP differentials to keep in mind:

The last column depicts the z-score for BABIP differential. Francisco Rodriguez was expected to have a BABIP about 120 points above his actual BABIP. I highlighted (red/bad; green/good) the xBABIP z-scores as well so that you know whether or not to actually be concerned meaning sure Aaron Sanchez has the 5th biggest BABIP differential (over 2 standard deviations from the mean), but a .239 xBABIP is still utterly elite (3.34 SD’s from the mean). On the other side of the equation, it’s nice to see Evan Marshall, Carlos Martinez and Adam Ottavino (albeit in Colorado) with large BABIP differentials. Marshall and Martinez even have xBABIP’s over .5SD from the mean.

The last bit of fun

It was a very fun year to be doing bullpen reports for RotoGraphs. Aroldis Chapman broke the single-season strikeout rate of 2012 Craig Kimbrel (50.2%). He struck out 52.5% of the hitters he faced. Andrew Miller (42.6%) and Brad Boxberger (42.1%) also made the top 10 seasons ever. Dellin Betances (39.6%), Wade Davis (39.1%) and Craig Kimbrel (38.9%) made the top 20. Chapman’s swinging-strike% of 20% beat ’12 Kimbrel by .8%, but he couldn’t pass ’04 Lidge, ’03 Gagne, ’04 Gagne, ’02 Gagne or ’05 Lidge. Chapman, Miller, Doolittle, Boxberger, Betances (Wade Davis and Kenley Jansen close behind) all had historical, top 20 K-BB rates. Relievers dominate this list: only ’99 Pedro Martinez (#12), ’00 Pedro Martinez (#21), ’01 Randy Johnson (#27) and ’01 Pedro Martinez (#28) make it into the top 30, but it’s clear that we have a growing list of elite relievers.

From a fantasy perspective, thanks to 45+ saves totals out of Holland and Kimbrel, we had two relievers ranked in the top 20 pitchers. If Chapman didn’t miss time and Betances and Davis consumed the closer role, we would have had 3 others. Last year, Craig Kimbrel and his 4 wins, 50 saves, 98 SO’s, 1.21 ERA and .88 WHIP campaign made him the 3rd most valuable pitcher. This year with Kershaw, Cueto, Felix and Kluber, it would have taken even more.

If we combined the 3 more dominating performances exclusive of saves this year: Aroldis Chapman’s K-rate (52.5%) and saves total (36), Dellin Betances IP (90) – who was dominating in his own right, Wade Davis’ ERA (1.00) and Wins total (9) and Sean Doolittle’s WHIP (.73) – let’s call this guy Aroldellin Dooldavis, we would wind up with a 10.95 z-sum…just above Corey Kluber (10.72), but under Clayton Kershaw (13.74), Johnny Cueto (12.95) and Felix Hernandez (12.50). Even 50 saves wouldn’t have done the trick (12.43 z-sum):

Reds at Pirates: The Josh Harrison show included a triple in the bottom of the 8th that gave the Pirates the lead for a Mark Melancon save (#25).

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