| [GAIL BURTON | Associated Press] |
| Is this a bullpen blip or should you be worried? |
| So let’s get the obvious out of the way: The weekend series in Baltimore was inexcusable. It’s bad enough to lose two out of three against the American League East’s last-place team, but to blow late leads on Friday and Sunday? Commit five errors in the two losses? Fail to take advantage of Baltimore losing its starting pitcher to injury after three hitters on Sunday? Yeah, that’s all kinds of ugly. Still, you’re bound to have a series like that during a long season. By itself, there is no reason to be overly concerned. Except for this: The Rays bullpen is suddenly leaky. That is, if you consider eight blown saves in 15 games to be “leaky” and not a full-on flood. And that doesn’t even include five other cases of giving up the winning run in a tied game in the eighth inning or later during that same span. To break that down even further, in the last 13 games in which the Rays had a lead or were tied in the fifth inning or later, the bullpen had failures in nine games. Obviously, that is not close to sustainable if you’re planning on playing in October. And it’s particularly brutal for the Rays because they rely on their bullpen more than any other team. Now, you might argue that that is part of the problem. The Rays have already thrown 203.2 innings of relief through 42 games, which is easily the most in the majors. With a workload that high, you’re bound to have hiccups and you may even run the risk of eventually burning out some arms. So do the Rays need to adjust their strategy? I don’t think so. First of all, they’ve been doing it this way for a lot of years and have had remarkable success. To seize on a small sample size in May and declare it a failed philosophy would be disingenuous. And Tampa Bay is also biding its time while waiting for some pitchers to get healthy. Luis Patino and Shane Baz could be in the rotation before the All-Star break. Also, Andrew Kittredge is on the injured list with a bad back, and JT Chargois, Pete Fairbanks and Nick Anderson are all on the 60-day IL. That combination of starters and relievers could take a lot of pressure off a beleaguered bullpen. The question is how significant is the cost in the meantime? In other words, how many losses can the Rays absorb before it starts seriously affecting their postseason hopes? Because the Rays use their bullpen so frequently, they can’t always hide a struggling reliever. Tampa Bay starters have thrown five innings or more in only 19 of 41 games. That means the bullpen has had to cover at least four innings in more than half the games. The result is Ryan Thompson has three blown saves, Kittredge and Matt Wisler each have two, J.P. Feyereisen, Brooks Raley and Ralph Garza all have one. Meanwhile, Thompson, Wisler, Kittredge, Garza and Dusten Knight have all allowed the winning run in a game tied in the eighth inning or later. Basically, the only late-inning reliever who has not faltered is Jason Adam. So is it unfair to single out a reliever for one or two failures in the first six weeks of the season? Probably. But when you’re using a half-dozen or more relievers in high-leverage situations, and each of them have a couple of blunders, the numbers add up pretty quickly. Overall, the Rays’ performance in relief is pretty darned good because the bullpen was lights-out in April. Their collective ERA is 3.40, which is ninth in the majors. And, considering the number of innings they’ve covered, that’s impressive. Ultimately, the solution may be putting more responsibility on the starters. The Rays have been very conservative with Corey Kluber, Drew Rasmussen and Jeffrey Springs due to age/injury/past usage issues. Between them, they’ve averaged about 4.2 innings in their 20 starts. The Rays are not going to suddenly have their starters throwing seven innings a night, but occasionally going six innings would alleviate stress on the pen. |
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