40 Game Evaluation :: Bullpen
May 18, 2011 at 10:52 pm by Kevin Orris under Atlanta Braves
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – 40 games is a safe mark to evaluate the true strengths and weaknesses of a team, and Frank Wren tends to agree. With the draft quickly approaching, baseball operations departments around the league are busy evaluating talent for the upcoming draft as well as the performance of their Major League team to date.
With all of that in mind, I feel it’s appropriate to write up a position-by-position evaluation of the organization. Over the next week you’ll see a series of posts detailing a certain aspect of the organization each day. So far, we’ve covered the infield, outfield, and starting staff. Today it’s time for the bullpen.
Bullpen
Johnny Venters has been the best reliever in baseball this year. His ground ball rate is over 85% and he’s stranding over 87.5% of baserunners. It’s impossible to expect him to keep up those rates, but he should still be among the best in baseball upon regression. Not only is he helping himself, but he’s also passed along his sinker grip to Jair Jurrjens whom I wrote about yesterday.
Like Venters, closer Craig Kimbrel has been absolutely dominant this season. Through 21 appearances, he’s striking out 14.8 batters per nine innings and has racked up 1.0 WAR. At this point, it’s clear that Kimbrel is the closer of the present and future with Fredi Gonzalez at the helm and it shouldn’t be any other way (unless we were going by “The Book” then it’s totally different).
I know that I’m beginning to sound like quite the homer, but in addition to Venters and Kimbrel, Eric O’Flaherty has evolved into a larger role in 2011 with tremendous success. Through the first quarter of the season, O’Flaherty has appeared in an astonishing 24 games. He’s striking out a batter per inning in addition to a 1.17 ERA (2.49 xFIP). Like the previous two, O’Flaherty is safe at the deadline, but will hopefully see a slightly reduced workload as the season continues.
Beyond the former three pitchers, there really isn’t much to be excited about. Scott Linebrink hasn’t been as effective as anticipated, but thankfully the White Sox are on the hook for most of his contract. His xFIP is nearly three runs lower than his ERA (6.92>3.93), signaling his misfortune. One can only hope that Linebrink will improve with time, but the Braves must look into alternates if things fail to pick up.
George Sherrill has been used as expected this year, as a nearly true LOOGY, hence the 2.25 ERA. It amazes me how at one point in his career, he threw four pitches (fastball, slider, curve, and changeup) but abandoned both the curve and the change although they were both statistically effective. More movement on his fastball has been vital in addition to increased velocity. This has been a solid acquisition to this point.
The front office couldn’t have asked for better results from Cristhian Martinez to this point – 3.00 ERA (3.81 xFIP) and 21 IP in 11 appearances. Perhaps my favorite thing about Martinez is that each day during BP he tells Martin Prado to “hit a home run,” before Prado reminds him that it’s not his job. Yes, that’s a terrible story, but it’s all I’ve got.
Unfortunately Peter Moylan became injured and then suffered a setback that will keep him out for an extended period of time. I’ll write more on his impact later this week.
Outside of the previously mentioned pitchers, only Cory Gearrin has pitched enough innings to evaluate, but he’s recently been demoted to Triple-A. Therefore, I’ll try to cover him in the minor leagues portion of this series.
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yep.
I’m aware this one’s boring. The real meat and potatoes is still to come. That’s when everyone gets to yell and scream at each other.
There seems to be a few Righty arms that we could call up from the farm but to reduce EOF’s workload would probably mean more IPs for Sherrill?
Medlen is scheduled to be back from rehab in August so I guess we cannot count on him being ready down the stretch. Would there be takers for Rodrigo Lopez (Pitching stats from AAA seems pretty good) get us a reliever before the deadline?
KK salary looks like a sunk cost for this season! $6m+ would’ve been handy at the start of this season.
what’s going on with the infield singles in the 11th? It seems Kimbrel has been pretty hit-able of late. Is he losing velocity or just not locating or what? Also, how was Mather tagged out at 3rd…bad baserunning again?
I just cannot stand how everyone from ESPN to CAC continues to hail Kimbrel as one of baseball’s best closers and absolutely dominant when the guy flat out sucks. Who cares what his K rate is? I for one care about him doing his job which he very clearly is not. Four blown saves in seven weeks makes him the second coming of Kevin Gregg. I don’t know what can be done but it’s maddening to know that your closer stands between you and first place while the Phillies get great work from the guy who is third on their closer depth chart.
@ 5
Ryan Madson is only #3 on the Phillies’ closer depth chart due to the organizaiton’s ignorance of his skill. If he brandished the official “closer” tag, he’d be one of the five best closers in baseball.
Translation: I’m really really pissed about the Braves losing tonight’s game. Tons of things went wrong, but losing it in extras with your closer on the mound is tough to swallow so I’m going to take it out on said closer. Obviously losing this game means he isn’t any good, even though two of the “hits” he allowed were infield singles and the defense/poor luck is just as much to blame for losing the lead in the 11th as Kimbrel is. Also, he has blown 4 saves in 7 weeks which makes him the next Kevin Gregg, even though it would take me about 30 seconds to find that Mariano Rivera has blown 4 saves in 7 weeks before.
Seriously, dude. Chill out and take a look at the big picture. I understand you’re pissed about the game. I’m not too happy about it myself. Don’t let your emotions obscure reason, though.
Craig will get hit hard from time to time, I can see that. When he is in trouble, he simply throw in the mid of the zone. His amazing stuff can only get him to so far but not further. I believe he can learn from exprience and become a great closer but I think Gonzales should let him off the closer duty from time to time. I thought the sharing closer duty was his original idea.
When Kris Medlen and Peter Moylen come back, the bullpen should be pretty solid for second half as well, unlike the break down similar to last year because of the tireness.
With Kimbrel, it’s just a matter of control. In three of his four blown saves, he walked a batter in the inning in which he blew the save. Two of them were leadoff walks (including last night). On one of them, he gave the runner another base by throwing a wild pitch to move him into scoring position.
His BABiP right now is .386, despite a fairly average line drive percentage of 18.2. While his ERA is 3.00, his FIP is 1.11 and his xFIP is 1.87. The guy has yet to give up a HR in the Major Leagues in 41.2 IP now and has 74 strikeouts in those 41.2 IP. HE WILL BE FINE!
I missed this post. I know that EOF/Venters/Kimbrel are going to be used/misused for most of the season, but I hope that they’re not completely overused. Despite that, I think that the Braves could be fine if they used Gearrin until Moylan comes back, and keep him as a ROOGY.
From the beginning of the season, who thought that we’d be slightly more relieved to see Scott Proctor than Scott Linebrink?
Kimbrel has never allowed a homerun. That’s bound to change, but a 40+inning homerless streak for any reliever is pretty good.
For the Kimbrel haters:
With Kimbrel only available for save opportunities, that SHOULD leave Venters available for more higher leverage situations than Kimbrel. So be happy he is the closer instead of Venters.
With that being said, Kimbrel is absolutely filthy, and there is not a single pitcher I enjoy watching more. He’s still a rookie with four months of experience, expect some growing pains.
Fredi has already proven he doesn’t understand the leverage of different situations, let’s just hope he doesn’t over work some arms in to the DL.
Some things have come up that will prevent me from continuing the series tonight – I’ll have more coming up this weekend/next week though.