Blue Jays Pitching

What is wrong with the Blue Jays bullpen? It is not that this is a recurring question this year but ... it seems like a perennial question.  To be 100% fair, the year began on a bad note for the Jays' bullpen. Yates went down before the season. Merryweather almost right away, and Borucki and Mayza have been on and off the IL.  And,  Pearson, who was supposed to provide some depth somewhere, went down early too and seems to be stuck in some kind of funk. Let's be fair again. The Jays upper management rebuilt the bullpen.  Trades were made for Cimber, Richards and Hand, and Saucedo, and Snead were called up. Finally, the bullpen has had to pitch in ... well ... not major league parks and move home field three times. I know the rest of the team has as well (and, the effects might be showing) but this has to be a particular problem for pitchers because it allows hitters to take advantage of smaller fields. In short, while the bullpen has taken a lot of heat for the Jays recent struggles and have taken heat over the entire season, the current context has created a situation where problems seem almost to have been bound to occur and where a serious effort was made to (1) create a good bullpen and (2) to rebuild it after it problems started to occur.

Earlier this year, Jays Manager Charlie Montoyo expressed some frustration (which is rare) with the bullpen when asked about the situation by reporters.  I forget his exact reply but, in effect, he said "these are the pitchers I have. I don't have much else that I can do other than use them." This is true. He can only use the players on his team.  I don't think there is an easy solution  but I also think part of the problem is the way the Jays manage their bullpen and the frequency with which bullpen questions occur suggests that this is an institutional problem.  If we go back to the days Gibby managed the team or even before it, what the Jays have tried to do institutionally is foolproof the bullpen. Using the current strategy -- common to most teams from what I can tell across the majors -- the goal is for the starting pitcher to get through the sixth inning, fifth if they look like they are starting to struggle ... or, even if they are not. The mantra is don't let the other team see your starter for the third time because by that point they have figured him out and batting averages will rise.  Going along with this, relief pitchers are to be geared to "maximum effort." Ideally, they will pitch no more than one inning, throw as hard as they can so that fastball speeds ranging into the high 90s (Romano is +99) are now common. One inning, 14-15 pitches, and make way for the next guy.  This is a strategy that the Royals used in their good years. The overall management of the staff might be complicated by using an "opener" (in the manner of the Rays) and then having a "bulk" pitcher (instead of a starter) come in for five innings or so, until giving way to the bullpen. 

It is more-or-less this strategy that the Jays have tried to implement and it is this strategy that has almost consistently (with the exception of the back half of one season) failed under both Gibby and Montoyo. Like many strategies, I think it developed for a number of reasons but I also think we might ask questions about its universal applicability. More exactly, if it is not working for the Jays, might it be time to consider a different strategy? 

This strategy has a number of implications: 

• It forces teams to carry a larger number of pitchers than they used to
• This means that most teams have short benches and I'd not be surprised if the Jays did not have one of the shortest benches going. 
• Because one is carrying fewer position players (so one can carry more pitchers) it means that there is an on-going search for the "super sub," a player who can play multiple positions. Under Gibby, for instance, the Jays tried to play infielders in the outfield (with predictable effects) and Montoyo has done this occasionally (with predictable effects) as well. IOW, it creates defensive weaknesses.
• These defensive weaknesses are further augmented by the fact that the larger number of pitchers means that teams (like the Jays) can't really carry defensive subs. I could be wrong about this but I have a sense that in my youth, more teams used defensive subs to shore up their defence late in games. 
• Platooning has become less common for the same reason.  Bobby Cox, back in the day, used to carry five outfielders;  the Os carried six for a while. One year the Jays platooned in LF, RF, 1B, DH, 3B and at catcher. Now that kind of extensive platoon system is not possible. There just is not enough room on the active roster.
• The regular (perhaps even "over") use of the bullpen also means that pitchers get tired. There is an on-going need, it seems, for "fresh arms" and so teams make just a bazillion roster moves over the span of a season.  Pitchers, in particular, but also bench players, seem to always be going up and down to AAA to make room for a yet another pitcher. I haven't checked this but I'd guess that the Jays average considerably more than one roster move per week. This creates a lot of instability on a team. If your regulars know that they are there come what may (and, not going to come out because there is less platooning and fewer defensive subs), the reserves and the bullpen seem remarkably unstable over the span of season. I can't say for sure, but I wonder what this does to players' sense of belonging? 
• It also takes the thinking out of the game for managers. In effect, in-game decision making shifts upward to upper level management and analysts. Managers implement a strategy that has been determined for them.  I am sure there have always been tensions between managers and general managers and presidents, but I am a bit surprised by how few there seem to be. GMs seem to look for managers who can implement a plan, rather than, say, Filipe Alou or Earl Weaver who can develop one. The best managers today (Dusty Baker, Dave Roberts, Dave Cash) still seem to be in charge. It is not at all clear to me that Montoyo is in charge with the Jays. The game seems to become like a flowchart. If starter reachers 90 pitcher or 2+ times through and we are ahead, pitcher X is brought in in the 6th, X1 in the seventh, X2 in the eights, etc.  If we are behind, pitcher Y, etc.
• It also makes the game predictable. If this system works as it should and you are the opposing manager, you basically know your opponent's game plan with regard to a number of things before the game begins. 

I know that there always were game plans and that is a good thing. What it means for a staff, however, is that you need, almost every game at least four pitchers (a starter and 3 relievers). Often more. I think the Jays used 6 pitchers the other night in their loss to the Nats. 

This is the point at which this strategy becomes counter productive. Because one is using so many pitchers, the chances that one of them will be have a bad night seem to magnify. Bill James made this point years ago back in the Baseball Abstract days (I think, don't quote me).  It seems to me that this is common sense. Roy Halladay, a starter but I person who I think we could conclude knew what he was talking about, once said that he felt he had his best stuff only about 10% of the time. The other times, he needed to feel his way, be crafty, work through problems. His goal -- an intelligent one -- was to minimize the number of opposing batters on base to minimize the number of runs if he made a big mistake (a home run).  Now if this is true for a guy as good as Halladay, how much is it true for other pitchers? To restate the problem: the more pitchers one uses in a game the greater the chance we will find one who just doesn't have it that night. 

One of the interesting things about this strategy is that it worked for some teams, but there is an important distinction. The managers who developed this -- and, other, strategies, like the "opener" -- were responding the talent they had. Yost used the one pitcher per inning for the 7th, 8th, and 9th innings because he had the talent to do that and he was making the optimal use of his talent.  Joe Maddon, in Chicago, used a different strategy, bringing in his best relief pitcher early in games (particularly in the playoffs) to ensure that his team kept the lead (rather than saving the best relief pitcher until the end of the game to get the save). Tito Francona did the same thing in Cleveland. IOW, the pitcher pilling up the saves -- the usual marker of a relief pitcher's value, or one of them -- was not the best pitcher on the staff. Cash used an opener because that was the talent he had available to him. He has moved away from it -- to no discernible negative effect -- because he has different talent and he responds to that.  Said differently, in attempting to foolproof the bullpen, the Jays (and other teams) have misused a strategy. They have taken a strategy designed to respond to a particular coalescence of talent and tried to use it compensate for a lack of talent. It is like trying to use a rock as a hammer. It might work to pound in a nail but without the claw on the back end, it won't easily pull out a poorly driven in nail. Said differently, I am not surprised that the Jays efforts to make use of the strategy have not worked. I am a bit surprised that they have stuck to it as along as they have.

What should they do? Well, first they should acknowledge the bad luck they have had and accept that a significant part of the problem lies in bad luck injuries. I also think they should congratulate themselves on trying to rebuild their bullpen. The third thing is that they need to re-evaluate their management of the pitching staff.  That might not be possible this year. We might be too far down the path of this season to make any change possible but we are also approaching the point of now return. I don't see how the Jays can mathematically catch Tampa for division title so they need to look at a wildcard playoff spot. That means they need to make up 4.5 games between now and the end of the season. That is possible. It is one good streak combined with the As having a bad string of games. It is a problem that they have to climb over Boston and Seattle, too, but there are enough games left for the Jays to make up the difference and they've got at least six games in the next short while against the Tigers. But there is little room for error and so if they pile up another loss on two (or, the As go on a winning streak), there might be no reason *not* to try to innovate, if we are not making up ground with the existing strategy. 

Here are some potential innovations or at least things to think about: 

• Is there any way for starters to go longer in games? By having starters go a bit longer, the number of innings that the bullpen needs to carry lessens.  The pitch count is useful but it also can't be a tyranny and there is no reason that a major league pitchers should be removed (unless they are in bombing) if their pitch count is lower than 90. 
• Can we consider a long reliever? Tampa has messed around with this this year using a veteran former starter. Back in the day, all teams had a long relief pitcher (usually either a veteran who was no longer up to starting or a kid looking to get into the majors). In the days of four pitcher rotations, the long-relief pitcher doubled as a spot starter (particularly for double headers).  Having a pitcher who can come in an eat up three or four innings saves a lot of wear on the bullpen. 
• Can relievers -- particularly closers -- pitch more than one inning. Romano has done that ... what ...  once this year? I forget the results.  Imagine, however, this scenario. It is the eighth inning; two on, we're up by one. The game in on the line. Who do we want in pitching? Do we want our best pitcher or do we want to save that player until the ninth so they can start with a clean slate? Even if the closer does not actually close the game, I think we need to get our best chance of winning in the game. 
• Could we regenerate the middle relief pitcher. If 2 times through the lineup is some sort of limit (and, I will confess, I am not sure it should be. I'd like to see some comparative data on it), why should we pull a reliever after one inning? In this case, the interpretation of the data seems contradictory. If you start a game or are the "bulk" pitcher that comes in, in the 2nd, you can see the other team twice. If you come in, say, in the 6th, you can see 3-6 batters. Why should the inning in which one enters the game, have such an effect? 

I think the combined extension of starters (and the Jays starters have not been bad) and the use of long and middle relief would allow them to lower the number of relievers they need to carry. This could, then, also serve as a way to expand the bench. I don't think we will get to this point and strategy has changed enough that it might be impossible, but in the strike shortened year, Alou used what was, in effect, a 5 pitcher bullpen. That creates a lot of extra space on the bench. The kind of strategy also bring in your best pitchers in key situations, rather than having. then sit on the bench, or defines specific roles for pitchers and allows them to develop into them. 

The pennant race might prevent such a strategy this year and I am not saying everyone word that comes out of my keyboard is gold. But, if we get to a point where we have to press the panic button, why not try something different? What we are doing is not working. 

Blue Jay Blues: Injuries and Starting Pitching

There are a couple of matters with the Jays that merit some comment. First, as I noted before, this is what a rebuild looks like. Rebuilding teams are often wildly inconsistent. Players play well one game and really bad the next. A pitcher (think Thornton) looks lights out one start, cannot get an out to save their soul the next one. A batter (think Vladdie) gets on base four time one game, but can't seem to figure out a change up the next.  You see where I am going ... those people and commentators who react as if the Jays were (a) contending and (b) not rebuilding are focused on short terms solutions. We hear this with the "bring up Vladdie. He will save us." And, now the corresponding "send Vladdie back down, he is not ready, he has not saved us" comments. These come from people who really don't know much if anything about baseball, team development and player development. I've noticed some people have already started asking where is Biggio and, even worse, where is Pearson (who was just promoted to AA and so will ... well ... at best a September call up). So, yes, the Blue Jays are not playing well, but this is (a) predictable because (b) this is what a rebuild looks like.

There is, however, a bit more that could be said. The second thing to note is the spate of injuries that have hampered the Jays starting rotation. Clay Buckholz, Matt Shoemaker, Ryan Borucki, David Phelps, and Clayton Richard are all on the IL, prompting a trade for Edwin Jackson to get some more rotation depth. Injuries have long been a Jays bug-a-bear and it has prompted Buck and Pat to periodically -- usually about once per game but sometimes more often -- to say "you can never have enough starting pitching."  They say this as if these injuries were not predictable and therefore come as a surprise so we need to have a storehouse of starters in reserve.

This goes along with another old saw "you can't predict injuries." Well ... actually you can and the Jays may have needed a storehouse of starters to get through the season but the number of pitchers the Jays have on the sideline is completely predictable. In fact, if you had bet against it at the start of the season I would have told you that you were going to lose your money.

Why? Because, for reasons of wanting to flip the team, the Jays upper management loaded up with low cost, injury prone pitchers until such a time (later this year? next year?) that the team's pitching prospects were ready for the majors. The aim this year, from what I could tell, was to try to sort out the pitchers a bit and figure out who went where for the future. To fill out their rotation they picked up pitchers at a low cost who were low cost because no one else really wanted them, in part because of their injury history.  This is the same strategy that the Jays followed (with regard to pitchers and others), more or less, last year. Gather up a bunch of spare parts (a sort of Kijiji of team development) that can have some short term value to the team and, ideally, someone else so you can trade them for more prospects. The Jays picked up Thornton and Pannone this way. I don't think anyone in the Jays front office thought they were going to get rich using this strategy but it put experienced pitchers on the mound to keep the games close and it was likely going to add another pitching prospective or two or three by the end of the season.

I am not slagging this strategy. It is more than possible that this is not the strategy I would have followed but I don't run a major league baseball team. I would have gone with the kids and seen how they performed over a season. IOW, I would have tried to get Pannone and Reid-Foley or Borucki into the starting rotation in addition to Sanchez, Stroman and Thornton to see how they held up. The Jays went in a different direction and it was really the only other option available to them. Once they (whomever they might be) had decided that Reid-Foley was on the farm and Borucki was on the IL and Pannone and Gaviglio were in the bullpen ... then the strategy the Jays followed was really the only other one available to them. There was no point in attempting to trade for or sign better pitchers because those would add appreciable costs to a team that is not competitive so trading or signing bigger name free agents (say, Keuchal) does nothing for you. It simply increases team costs at a time that you actually want to keep them down so as to maintain your flexibility for the future (and, the Jays, you will recall, recently has very little flexibility because of the big contracts that were weighing the team down -- this is not a critique but simply a statement of fact -- Tulo, Martin, Battista, Donaldson, Morales).  Without a lot of room to maneuver, the Jays were paying a lot for a team that was not very good. Why would anyone want to go back to that?

How does this relate to injuries? Well, injuries are the downside of the strategy on which the Jays fixed. If you are not going to spend a lot of money, what is available to you? Unless you somehow believe you are a manifestly better judge of talent than other people who are paid a tonne of money to judge talent (a shakey proposition), then what you have at the low cost end is pitchers no one else wants. In the case of the Jays, Buckholz, Shoemaker, Norris, Phelps, Richards, Hudson, Richard and now Jackson are all players with injuries histories ... some of whom have appreciable injury histories. And, all are on the + side of 30, making them older to old in baseball terms.

Leaving aside the specific injuries, you can see point: if you sign a bunch of relatively old pitchers who have a history of injury problems ... you should not be surprised that they become injured, should you? The issue is not that "you can't have enough starting pitching." The issue is that the pitchers the Jays signed were almost guaranteed to break down. Sanchez has missed only one start so far this year but after two injury plagued years, no one should be surprised if he has further injury issues.

The point is not to simply critique a way of looking at pitching; the point is to understand why the Jays are having the problems they are having and these are not random. What can/should the Jays do with their pitchers? Let's leave that off for another time. The point is that the Blue Jays Blues are part of the rebuilding process. They are what happens when you rebuild. It can be troubling. No one likes to see potentially career ending injuries. I don't. But, injuries are not random. They occur in specific demographics for specific reasons.

I am also not surprised that the Jays traded for Jackson. After all, they had committed themselves to this strategy and it is working, more or less, in that it is allowing them to separate out the pitchers that they want in the rotation from those who are bullpen bound. There was, at this point, no other real alternative; thus one might as well stick with it. I still think the future rotation will look a lot different than what we are seeing and that is the point.  And, that is not a bad thing. It will make for an exciting season as it goes along.