July 11, 2003

WITHOUT A GOOD BULLPEN TEAMS CAN KISS A TITLE GOODBYE

       Baseball parlance says that good pitching will beat good hitting, but in this day and age there is such a shortage of good pitching that teams load up with hitting and hope for the best from their pitching staff.  Baseball players used to look more like soccer players or golfers, but now with the added advantages brought on by weightlifting and by substance abuse ballplayers now resemble football players and professional wrestlers.  Pitchers suffer like never before; any mistake can be propelled into the third deck.  As such when putting together a contending club organizations try to accumulate as many hitters as possible, then trot out as many quality starting pitchers as possible.  Hopefully those starters will be proficient enough to get the team into the seventh inning so that the team won’t have to go too deep into its bullpen.  But if a team harbours any desire to win a title they better have enough quality arms down in the bullpen to finish games.

       It used to be that a starter would pitch late and allow a team to use one, maybe two relievers to close out a particular game.  Three good starters and a dominant closer and a team could consider itself a contender.  The remainder of its pitching staff was filled with has-beens and never-weres, pitchers who didn’t possess enough quality pitches to be a starter and didn’t possess that one dominating pitch to be a closer.  These pitchers were used in blow-out games, to save the arms of those more valuable to the team.  But times have changed.  Middle relievers, long relievers, situational relievers are each vitally important to a team’s success.  Non-closing relievers are no longer paid the major league minimum; they are no longer shuttled back and forth between the majors and the minors, and they are no longer laughed about during all-star consideration.  Teams now try to out-bid each other for the services of these very valuable men.

       Is it a coincidence that the Yankees continue to spend mega-millions on players but have not won a championship in three years since they divested themselves of valuable bullpen components like Jeff Nelson?  Is it any wonder that the Cubs went out and spent millions to sign lefthanded reliever Mike Remlinger away from the Braves?  Contenders like the Mariners and the Dodgers can bring in a string of tough relievers whenever their starters flame out.  The Mariners have Arthur Rhodes, Shigetoshi Hasagawa and Nelson to set up for closer Kaz Sazaki.  The Dodgers can bring in Paul Shuey, Paul Quantrill, and Guillermo Mota before bringing in overpowering closer Eric Gagne, and for the Dodgers it is a strong pitching staff that has kept them in contention despite a very weak line-up.

       The Yankees, despite their millions, will have a very hard time in the playoffs because their starters are old and unable to take the game to Mariano Rivera.  The Yanks will be scouring the majors before the trade deadline looking for bullpen help, and if they don’t get any they will not win the World Series.   The Oakland Athletics are in a similar situation in that they don’t have a lot of depth in the bullpen.  The A’s have an advantage over the Yanks, though; they have starters who are young enough to actually get to their closer.  Boston has been playing shadow games with their bullpen all season and only recently slotted B.K. Kim in as their closer.  This has allowed season stalwarts like Brandon Lyon, Alan Embree and Chad Fox to return to a more comfortable position as set-up men.  If the Sox get solid performances from their bullpen they could easily overtake the Yanks and win the division.

      In the National league the Braves are dominating again, but unlike past seasons this years’ squad is winning because of its offense.  Its starters are strong and its bullpen—headed by unhittable closer John Smoltz—is solid, and its traditional conservative and even-tempered style of play is serving the team well during the lengthy regular season.  Inevitably it will fail however come playoff time, as the Braves have typically been unable to raise their game when it counted the most.  The Dodgers need hitting—badly—as they cannot continue to play 3-2 and 2-1 games and hope to win most of them.  The Giants have incredible depth in their pitching staff and this has allowed them to compete with the Braves for the League’s best record despite having lost closer Robb Nen to season ending surgery. 

       The tight battle in the central between the Cubs, the Cardinals and the Astros is intriguing as each team has its strengths—the Astros and the Cards can hit, and the Cubs can pitch.  The Astros have the division’s best bullpen, followed closely by the Cubs but the Cubs inability to sustain any offense and the Astros inability to find any starting pitching has kept each team around the .500 mark.  The Cardinals have problems up and down their pitching rotation, but with closer Jason Isringhausen having returned and pitching well it may enable the other veterans in the bullpen, who are more suited to long relief and to set-up roles, to find their comfort levels and begin contributing.  If this happens then the Cards will run away with the division.

       The best bullpens in baseball belong to the Mariners and to the Dodgers.  Since L.A. can’t hit enough to compete it looks like, at this stage of the season, that the Mariners have to be considered the favourites to win the World Series.  And they wouldn’t be in this position without solid contributions from the guys who used to be considered the leftovers of a pitching staff.