Some Relief For The Bullpen

By Jack Flynn
Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008

That wasn’t so hard now, was it?

For all the worrying and hand-wringing about the state of the Mets’ bullpen that Monday afternoon’s disturbing loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates wrought, Joe Smith and Pedro Feliciano certainly made the relief corps look like world beaters last night.

That’s how it is with bullpens – some nights they are on and some nights they aren’t. Ralph Kiner once said that if you don’t like the weather in Chicago, wait 15 minutes. It’s the same thing with relievers – if you don’t like your team’s bullpen one day, wait 24 hours.

This is not to say that the bullpen’s woes have miraculously been solved, of course. Reliever performance tends to be volatile, so it’s dangerous to read too much into one outing, one week or even one month of appearances. It’s especially dangerous to expect consistent performance from middle relievers, almost always the worst pitchers on any baseball team.

With All-Star closer Billy Wagner on the disabled list and stalwart set-up man Aaron Heilman having the worst season of his career, the middle relievers in the Mets’ bullpen haven’t shown much of an inclination to step up and take over their roles. There’s still some time for general manager Omar Minaya to make a waiver-wire deal, but it’s unlikely that the Mets will get the chance to add another useful bullpen arm by August 31.

At a time when the world seemed to be crashing down around him, Mets manager Jerry Manuel gave Mets fans some food for thought in his post-game press conference after Monday’s devastating loss. To his credit, Manuel tacitly admitted that he is losing confidence in his bullpen and that he was going to begin considering alternative solutions to the problem as soon as possible.

Two possibilities began to emerge on Tuesday afternoon – Eddie Kunz could be installed as the temporary closer until Wagner returned from the disabled list, and a starting pitcher may end up fortifying the bullpen until things are straightened out down there. Unfortunately, neither move is a particularly good idea, and both are more likely to harm the Mets’ playoff chances than help them.

Kunz wasn’t dominating Double-A Binghamton when he got the call to the big club earlier this month, even if he had a superficially pretty 26 saves to his name. It’s too much to ask a rookie hurler just 14 months removed from pitching in the College World Series to consistently close out games for a professional baseball club in a tight pennant race.

Duaner Sanchez had back-to-back meltdowns in late July (one of which led to a six-run ninth inning and a horrible loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on July 22), but has had seven straight scoreless appearances since. He is clearly a better candidate for the traditional closer’s role than Kunz, but it appears that Manuel is still skittish about using Sanchez in that fashion.

Actually, Manuel would be missing an opportunity here if he stubbornly clings to traditional closer usage patterns, even as he claims in press conferences that he’s willing to try anything to win games. On a team currently featuring a bullpen with four specialists (Kunz, Smith, Feliciano and Scott Schoeneweis), two set-up men (Sanchez and Heilman) and a nominal long man who probably belongs back in Triple A-New Orleans (Brian Stokes), why even bother trying to shoehorn players into a role they clearly aren’t suited for?

With Wagner out, the Mets don’t have to employ any of their relievers in a traditional closer’s role. Rather, they can play the match-up game in the ninth inning to give their pitchers the best opportunities to survive and escape with a Mets win. Manuel appeared to be set up to do just that on Tuesday night, before deciding to simply roll the dice with Feliciano.

Kunz initially seemed to be in line to pitch the ninth in an attempt to notch his first save as a major leaguer. Instead, Manuel used Feliciano to get the first out, the left-handed hitting Willie Harris. Once Harris flew out to Carlos Beltran, Manuel could’ve gone to Kunz to face the right-handed hitting Wil Nieves.

Instead, Feliciano remained in the game, striking out Nieves and the switch-hitting Emilio Bonifacio to nail down the 4-3 win. It worked out for the Mets, so there will be no complaints from the faithful today, but for the time being Manuel has to consider purposely using multiple relievers in the ninth inning based on the batters coming to the plate. He should be more concerned with exploiting favorable match-ups and less concerned with giving one reliever a chance to pile up saves.

After all, who cares which reliever gets credit for the save, as long as the Mets get credit for the win?

The talk of moving a starter exclusively into the bullpen to close games is short-sighted and would ultimately be harmful to the Mets’ playoff chances. Notice that I use the term exclusively, because I’ve long been a proponent of occasionally using starting pitchers in relief on their “throw days” to get maximum value out of them.

Every starting pitcher has a throw day, generally two or three days after their last start, where they throw pitches on the side and work on some things for their next appearance. In the heat of a pennant race, where one bad outing from a middle reliever can cost a team a playoff spot, a manager must do everything in his power to get the most use out of his best pitchers.

One way to do that is by asking your starters to pitch an inning in relief on their throw day, giving the manager one more late-inning strategic option in the heat of a pennant race. Who would you rather see trying to hold the lead in the seventh inning of a 4-3 game in September – Schoeneweis or Johan Santana?

Although this particular strategy has vanished from today’s game, it is not without precedent. Former Yankees great Allie Reynolds was famous for sometimes pitching in relief between starts; Reynolds earned at least one save in every season he pitched in the Bronx and even saved four World Series games for the Yankees.

Instead of creating a hole in his starting rotation in order to fill a perceived hole in his bullpen, Manuel could simply ask each starter to be prepared to pitch on their throw day if the situation calls for it. Sure, the starters will have to complete their side sessions after the game on nights they aren’t used in relief, but with six weeks to go in the season, it’s a small sacrifice to make. It’s a far-fetched notion, to be sure, but Jerry Manuel said he was willing to try anything to win games, right?

The bullpen situation is the biggest test of Manuel’s managerial career in New York. How he handles it will go a long way toward determining if he will be in charge of the club in 2009. If Manuel is wiling to look outside the box for solutions, the Mets will be handsomely rewarded in October.

Jack Flynn reads Weaver on Strategy at least once a year and always takes Earl Weaver’s 10 Laws into consideration when managing his Strat-o-Matic baseball team. He has other all sorts of ideas on his blog, Productive Outs and Crackerjack.