Scioscia's Bullpens
by mattwelch on May 25, 2009 9:54 AM PDT
23 comments
So, as most of you know, the Angels pitching staff has been the definition of schizophrenic this year. We lead the league in starters’ ERA, and are last in the league in relief ERA. (I would bet, without looking it up, that that has never been done over a whole season in ML history.)
Anyway, in some of the comments on this site I have seen people argue that hey, we always have the best bullpen in the league, it’s just an aberration, cut Scioscia some slack, etc. While I agree with the macro sentiment -- there’s no way the bullpen will continue sucking this hard, and Scioscia is generally da bomb -- it just is no longer true that we have a reliably great bullpen year after year. The chart below shows starter & reliever ERA during Scioscia’s tenure, the difference between the two, and the ranking of each within the league. Check it out:
Year SP Rk RP Rk Diff
2009 3.84 (1) 5.69 (14) -1.85
2008 4.14 (5) 3.69 (4) +0.45
2007 4.22 (3) 4.24 (8) -0.02
2006 4.16 (2) 3.78 (5) +0.38
2005 3.78 (1) 3.75 (5) +0.03
2004 4.70 (4) 3.47 (1) +1.23
2003 4.90 (11) 3.15 (1) +1.75
2002 4.00 (4) 2.98 (1) +1.02
2001 4.49 (7) 3.54 (4) +0.95
2000 5.54 (12) 4.16 (2) +1.39
As you can see, we basically had the league’s best bullpen the first half of the decade, and have been toggling between good and mediocre ever since. Meanwhile, among the many ways Scioscia has transformed the character and composition of this franchise, we have gone from a sucky rotation to a reliably great one even when dipping down 8 and 9 places on the depth chart.
What does it all mean? If nothing else, I think it demonstrates one of the principles of competition -- reputation outlives fact. It also underscores what I’ve thought all along: 2009 is a transition year for the bullpen, and so far it has been a disappointment not just on the results level, but in the fact that we haven’t seen much development from the guys who are supposed to be the Bullpen of the Future: Arredondo, Jepsen, Bulger, Thompson. There was a time when the organization could pull donkeys out of a hat and produce brilliance year after year, but we are long gone from those days. Also, Troy Percival and Frankie Rodriquez were both really good pitchers, and we’ve enjoyed very good Scot Shields all the way until now.
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Great points, Matt
The decline of the pen has really coincided with the inability to pull the diamonds from the rough. Simultaneously, the FO started spending money of relievers: Speier, Oliver, Yan, Carrasco, Fuentes, and others while jettisoning useful arms well-suited to bullpen work: Jenks and Gregg come to mind – along with a couple of good years of Turnbow and others (Peralta, Wise and now O’Day) that could at least be as good as the Shane Loux’s of the world…
The Donnelly’s and Weber’s of the world don’t grow on trees; this team lucked into them to some degree. Now that the well has dried up – the pen is coming down to earth – to mix a metaphor or three. They needed to be more judicious with the arms in the minors, I think and not be so quick to throw away a good arm and $.05 cent head just to prove a point.
As an aside – Bulger has looked much better of late and add him to Fuentes, Shields, Arredondo and Oliver and I’ll cross my fingers that those five could hold a post-season lead if healthy. But, we’ll see…
Hopefully.
RIP Nick...
Jim Scully
Jim Scully Home
by jimmuscomp on May 25, 2009 10:32 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs
A point that people forget...
… is that the great bullpen-building started before Scioscia/Stoneman. They inherited some good talent, including the ability to spin gold out of scrap.
by mattwelch on May 25, 2009 10:40 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
Old myths just refuse to die
All this wining about Bobby Jenks and Derek Turnbow just don’t square with reality. Even Jenks will tell any interviewer that he was a selfish, moody and alcoholic player when he was in the Angels’ minors system. It was when he was claimed by the White Sox and given a last opportunity that he sobered up and grew up. This doesn’t mean the Angels gave up on him too soon or didn’t recognize his capability—the very fact the team put up with his antics and bailed him out of jails (literally) indicated it was willing to work with him and develop his talent. But any employer can take only so much insubordination, and Jenks played himself off the 40-man roster of a major league team.
Likewise, Turnbow frustrated the team for never being able to move beyond his impression of Nuke LaLoosh and show some control. The Brewers picked him off the scrapheap, and Turnbow did produce the sort of results the Angels had dreamed of—for one and a half seasons. Though Turnbow made the All-Star game in 2006, the wheels were already beginning to come off before the mid-season game, and he imploded in the second half—and all games since. Turnbow is currently at the Rangers’ AAA team in OKC, where he sports a WHIP of 3.33 in 8 appearances, as well as a BB/9 of 16.5 and a H/9 of 13.5. Apparently, he doesn’t have the tools to sign on with the Rangers for bullpen duty—and he’s only 31.
Gregg likewise managed one and a half good seasons with the Marlins, before he fell apart in the second half of 2008. With the Cubs, he is hardly setting the NL on fire as a closer and has been feuding with Pinella in the Chicago media over his role in the bullpen. This is after the Angels gave Gregg many, many chances to succeed in Anaheim.
If any player got more second-, third- and fourth-chances than Kevin Gregg, then that pitcher’s name is Chris Bootcheck—and I saw him pitch for the Indianapolis Indians the other night, the AAA franchise of the Pirates. If you’re not good enough to win a spot in the Pirates’ bullpen, then maybe you should be out of the game?
Enough with the hindsight heckling of the Angels for putting Jenks, Turnbow and Gregg on waivers. If those men had produced when the wore the Angels’ uni, they’d still be with the team.
by George Kaplan on May 25, 2009 11:23 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Jenks
was the one that really hurt. Of course hindsight is involved, but it’s still easy to question the logic of dumping a young pitcher who can touch 100 on the radar gun in favor of a career minor league catcher (Wil Nieves). Surely they could have counted on being able to pick up a Nieves equivalent somewhere along the line, while retaining the hard throwing, hard living phenom.
by jjackflash on May 25, 2009 11:38 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
Step away from the board
…and go read up on Jenks. He was a one-man crime wave when he was in the Angels system, freely admitting to alcohol abuse.
The primary page was immaturity, manifested in personal and professional setbacks. In 2000, Jenks dropped out of high school and was drafted by the Angels in the fifth round, despite having not pitched in two seasons because he hadn’t been academically eligible. He signed his first contract inside a Hooters Restaurant, and when he did report to spring training in 2001, he did so with burns on that powerful hand and arm, according to a 2003 ESPN the Magazine story by Tom Friend.
‘’In a drunken stupor one night," Friend wrote, ’’he took a lighter and burned the backside of his pitching hand, opening a wound the size of a silver dollar. He then torched his left hand and the underside of both forearms before passing out."
According to Friend, Jenks led Angels executives to believe he’d burned himself lifting the engine out of his car. In May 2002, according to multiple published reports, he was suspended for bringing beer on the Double A Arkansas team’s bus and was demoted to Single A.
The Angels simply got fed up after years of trying to get him to grow up. At some point, if the team doesn’t draw a line at insubordination, the other players get the idea that they can live the way they want to.
by George Kaplan on May 25, 2009 11:52 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
I know
I remember all of those transgressions. Coupled with his injury history (elbow), he was not a sure thing by any stretch. But at the time, the Angels publicly stated that they felt that Nieves was more important to the organization, and if that really was the thinking, it was lame. While this might have been a good reason to release him, it wasn’t the given reason. They waived him after the 2004 season. In other words, they kept him around for another year AFTER all of this, then decided that a career minor league catcher was more important to the organization.
by jjackflash on May 25, 2009 1:16 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
amazing post
It is nice to read an informative and sane post every once in a while.
by Brody on May 25, 2009 1:01 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
Wise words as usual, George
Even so, I think it was extremely foolish to let Jenks and Turnbow go for absolutely nothing.
by rspencer on May 28, 2009 10:42 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
Stoneman
Every one wanted to run Stoneman out of town, for his lack of guts at the trade deadline. But, Stoneman does not get enough credit for building our farm system and our pitching. Our farm system was ranked in the top 3 every year with Stoneman, I thought he also drafted well.
by ca1forniaangels on May 25, 2009 10:48 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs
180 degree turn in bullpen building philosophy
2002 bullpen:
Percival – converted catcher, home grown
Weber – scrapheap
Donnelly – scrapheap
Shields – 194th round draft pick
Pote – scrapheap
Levine – scrapheap
Cook – actual, real free agent LOOGY signee
Schoenweis – failed started, home grown
2009 bullpen:
Fuentes – free agent signee
Shields – long term contract
Oliver – free agent signee
Arrendondo – converted SS, home grown
Speier – free agent signee
Bulger – obtained in trade for (eventually) KC’s starting 2B
"There's nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you." - Woody Hayes
by johnnyangel101 on May 25, 2009 12:29 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs
there was a time in the not-so-distant past
when almost all of our players — regardless of position — were “home grown.” We are not experiencing a 180-degree shift in bullpen philosophy, but rather an evolution as a franchise. We now are able to supplement our own players with a greater number of free agents at numerous positions of need — hence Vlad, Torii, Abreu, Rivera, Escobar, etc.
In addition, although we have brought in Fuentes, Oliver, and Speier, we still have promoted our own guys within the bullpen, just as we have at other positions. Shields, Arredondo, Jepsen, Bulger, Rodriguez, and Thompson have played their entire careers with the Angels (notwithstanding Bulger’s 9 appearances for Arizona). Frankie also was a mainstay for over six years, and he — rather than Fuentes — would still be with the team if he had accepted our offer and not made contract demands that the front office found to be excessive.
Finally, guys like Donnelly and Weber do not routinely come out of nowhere, at least not anymore. According to most accounts, those journeymen used more than “luck” to turn around their careers, and it was more than coincidence that they busted again once MLB banned performance-enhancing drugs.
by Brody on May 25, 2009 1:28 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
Good points - I disagree about the bullpen philosophy, though
Great bullpens are oftentimes put together through scraps, kids, veterans, and washed out starters. Do stud closers help? Of course. And luck, or whatever one may call it, is definitely involved, too. I prefer to see it as a good manager seeing each pitcher’s strengths and utilizing (milking) it for whatever its worth (see Gregg, Kevin). Studies have shown that relievers performance is the most volatile of any on a baseball team. Good managers, therefore, must adapt. Skill, luck, science, or talent – good managers seem to get the most out of their bullpens.
Is it all Scioscia’s fault? Maybe not. The scouting department, the front office, the player development people – all have a hand in finding spare parts (see Sunday’s LA Times article). Scioscia, however, is the one actually pushing the buttons, so, yes, he shoulders much of the blame for the performace decline. It doesn’t make him a bad manager. He just needs to do a better job in this area.
Jake Woods, Joel Peralta, Derrick Turnbow, and Bobby Jenks are examples of players that good organizations (and I’m not saying the Angels AREN’T) use up and throw away when their usefulness is done.
Philosophically, I believe the early Stoneman/Rowland era was more willing to utilize minor league veterans (or Donny Rowland was a better talent evaluator). Excepting Matt Palmer, we haven’t had the same run of luck lately, as Matt Welch is pointing out. In my opinion, they are changing their philosophy and are now “overcompensating” by “buying” a bullpen. Unfortunately, teams that try to continually “band-aid” things by signing major league free agent relievers to expensive multi-year contracts have been disappointed all too often. We can never know this, but it’s possible that we could have had the same, or better, results from a cheaper, less recognizable bullpen. Relief pitchers are just too tough of an animal to ever really gauge.
THAT BEING SAID, this year is far from over. Our current bullpen is sporting a .346 (!) BABIP (last in the AL) – far above the .283 BABIP our starters are allowing. Once the BABIP “luck” starts evening out, I believe the bullpen’s overall numbers will improve significantly. But we won’t be #1.
"There's nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you." - Woody Hayes
by johnnyangel101 on May 25, 2009 4:39 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
Is anyone in our bullpen in the middle of their career?
Fuentes is the only one that comes to mind. Everyone else is a declining veteran or a unproven newbie. That seems to be the crux of our issues.
I think the bullpen problem is going to be an issue for awhile. We are going to see alot of faces go through that pen until we land upon the right combo that works. It is becoming quickly obvious that the foundation of our pen (Speier, Shields, Oly) are deteriorating and will be probably be by next year or the year after that. This will be supplemented by a whole bunch of new guys and a whole bunch of question marks…
Get ready for the growing pains.
Do it for Nick '09
by BryanHarvey'sMoustache on May 25, 2009 1:44 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs
probably *be gone* by next year....
Do it for Nick '09
by BryanHarvey'sMoustache on May 25, 2009 1:45 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
A point to remember in ALL of this discussion...
…and this is one of the best quality threads I have read this season…nice job guys!
…is another that mattwelch has made in earlier posts, “the upcoming draft.” The upcoming amateur draft and our plethora of early picks is our opportunity to restock and reload our entire team, bullpen included!
Miss you Nick...! RIP
by K3YEROUT on May 26, 2009 10:12 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
Some stats to illustrate the difference between the Angels dominant bullpens (2003 and 2004) vs. today
(all ranks within the AL)
Fastball velocity
2003: 1st
2004: 1st
2009: 9th
K/9
2003: 2nd
2004: 1st
2009: 7th
FIP
2003: 2nd
2004: 1st
2009: 6th
ERA (as noted by Matt in his post)
2003: 1st
2004: 1st
2009: 14th
( stat breakdowns from fangraphs )
The 2003 and 2004 bullpens were overpowering. While this year’s crew is not on par with the 03/04 editions, the peripheral stats suggest that they should not be posting a league-worst ERA. Hopefully there will be improvement going forward.
by Fan Since 1981 on May 25, 2009 2:47 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs
sorta funny that you didnt mention 2002...i mean....after all we DID when the WS that year.
Do it for Nick '09
by BryanHarvey'sMoustache on May 25, 2009 4:04 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
Was the bullpen actually dominant that year?
RIP Nick Adenhart.
"When the Babe tries to call his shot, I hope Nick puts one in his ear."
--RallyMonkey5
by Clutch on May 26, 2009 5:56 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
one of the principles of competition -- reputation outlives fact
I will be stealing this line
#34 Nick Adenhart always an Angel
by UCIHalo on May 25, 2009 10:57 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs
If you observe enough...
…you will find that reputation outlives fact in many areas of life beyond competition. It is actually quite universal…
by sothball on May 26, 2009 4:18 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
I think the future will have
Jepsen/Arredondo/Thompson at the core. Jepsen takes alot of slack here, but when he straightens out he will be dominant
That'll only happen if that one prospect is the second coming of Christ and redemption for mankind can only be achieved by smacking many balls out of the yard.
-The Limey
by anaheim angels on May 26, 2009 1:46 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs
sure can't happen soon enough...
Miss you Nick...! RIP
by K3YEROUT on May 26, 2009 10:14 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs
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