Cubs fail-pen and bullpens in general

The Cubs just lost in excruciating fashion, blowing a 3-1 lead in the 8th inning to lose 5-4.  Esmailin Caridad gave up a grand slam to Drew Stubbs after Caridad couldn’t find the plate to start the inning.  Caridad is a rookie, throwing only 19.1 innings coming into this season.  He and John Grabow were the primary two setup men in the bullpen this year, and were expected to be the best two relieves.  Each of them now have a loss and blown save to their name.

Last year, the bullpen ERA was 4.11, good for 20th in the MLB.  To upgrade, the Cubs didn’t really do much, as they just signed John Grabow to an extension and called up a few younger guys.  Should the Cubs have signed some bullpen help?  In short, no.

1) Payroll restrictions – Tom Ricketts only gave Jim Hendry so much money to work with this off-season.  With that money, he had to find an outfielder, find another starter, add pieces to his pen and figure out second base.  He had about $10M – he gave 18M over three years to Marlon Byrd, signed Grabow, traded for Carlos Silva and had to pick up part of his deal and most of Milton Bradley’s.

2) Jeff Gray and Angel Guzman  are hurt – Guzman was supposed to be the setup man for Marmol this year, and Gray was supposed to be the 4th best reliever.  Did anyone know that Angel would be lost for the year?  What about Gray getting off to a slow start due to his injury?

Basically, it’s not really Jim Hendry’s fault.  The pen could be really bad this year, but it’s game four, the year isn’t over.  Caridad still has good stuff, but he’s young and these things are going to happen when you can’t throw strikes.  I just don’t think he could have gone out and gotten anyone much better.

When you look at high priced relievers, you can see that they rarely work out in terms of Fangraph’s valuation.  That’s okay, because the Cubs can afford to overpay for the pen.  But just because you buy a pen, that doesn’t mean much of anything.  Since I’m too lazy to point out the stats, I’ll name those that have received big contracts only to fail as relievers.

• Brad Lidge
• BJ Ryan
• Mike Remlinger
• Jamie Walker
• Danys Baez
• Latroy Hawkis
• Fernando Rodney
• Scott Shields
• Scott Eyre
• Bobby Howry
• John Grabow
• Doug Brocail
• Russ Springer
• Matt Mantei
• Steve Karsay
• Kyle Farnsworth
• Juan Cruz

That’s just a few recent ones.  Now, building a pen is hardly predictable.  I couldn’t do it.  Scouting is extremely difficult, because the stuff a guy has one year may not translate.  Stats are tough to use, too.  There are leverage index’s, fielding-independent stats, different ratios, etc.  But can you really quantify the pressure a pitcher has in the 8th compared to the 6th?

One of the best bullpens in baseball history was the 2003/2004 LA Dodgers.  LA’s closer was Eric Gagne, who set the MLB record by recording 84 saves in a row.  He was a failed starter, couldn’t find the plate early in his career, and was very similar to Kyle Farnsworth.  Then he turned into the most dominating closer baseball has ever seen for a year and a half.  The guy setting up Gagne was Paul Quantrill, who the Dodgers traded for in 2002 to be the closer.  The Blue Jays took Luke Prokopec instead of Gagne in the trade.  Who was the 7th inning?  Guillermo Mota, a converted shortstop from the Mets system that was drafted in a minor-league draft.  Who would have thought that would be the most dominant pen in baseball?

The teams that make the playoffs always have very good bullpens.  If you use ERA to judge how good a bullpen is (collectively, not an awful idea, but an individual pitcher’s ERA out of the pen is a bad idea) then the teams that have top 5 ‘pens always finish over .500.  The bullpen is very important, but there’s just no way in having certainty in it.  The ‘pen is extremely important to this year’s Cubs team, and with the struggle to score runs, it’s going to be even more important that they hold down late leads.

But, with a team that’s going to be around .500 for most of the year, it seems silly to invest a lot of money into a bullpen when the rest of the team isn’t very good.  The Cubs pen was bad last year, but so was the offense.  If the offense was a top-five offense, you go and gamble with signing free agent relievers.  Since it’s not very good, you might as well check on what you have.  What the Cubs have is probably pretty bad, but I’ll take the extra money they don’t spend on relievers this year and put it towards a bigger player in the future.

EDIT (1:54 AM) I took the stats that Baseball Prospectus uses to rate relievers.  They call it runs saved.  If you want to read more, check out their site.  Anyways, here are the leaders in 2008.  Next to their 2008 rank, I have their 2009 rank and the change.

I don’t think I have to say anything more here.  It’s tough building a pen, even tougher to keep a bullpen good for a long time.  Notice the elite pitchers in the game didn’t have much change.