Brandon Bullpen comment worrisome?

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, NCRaven said:

Players also prefer to have a defined role in which they are comfortable.

I think that's generally true.  What we don't know is the magnitude of the impact of sticking to strictly defined roles.

I also think it's difficult to implement a bullpen based on the leverage of situations as they come up.  You would like to immediately insert your best reliever at the most important points of close games.  That's not always easy.  It might be that the most important part of the game is the bottom of the 7th of a 2-1 game, just after your pitcher walked the first two batters of the inning.  But you have to warm up your best reliever beforehand, and you didn't know those two walks were coming until now.  And you have to be confident that a more important situation won't come up in the 8th or 9th or extras.  This type of setup worked better in 1977 when you just brought Goose Gossage in with two outs in the 7th and let him go 2.1 innings and hoped his arm didn't snap throwing 132 innings of relief.

The current setup/closer construct is a fairly decent approximation of getting your best pitchers in the most important situations, and it's way easier to implement and manage workloads than the construct in my second paragraph.

[NCRaven]

37 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I think that's generally true.  What we don't know is the magnitude of the impact of sticking to strictly defined roles.

I also think it's difficult to implement a bullpen based on the leverage of situations as they come up.  You would like to immediately insert your best reliever at the most important points of close games.  That's not always easy.  It might be that the most important part of the game is the bottom of the 7th of a 2-1 game, just after your pitcher walked the first two batters of the inning.  But you have to warm up your best reliever beforehand, and you didn't know those two walks were coming until now.  And you have to be confident that a more important situation won't come up in the 8th or 9th or extras.  This type of setup worked better in 1977 when you just brought Goose Gossage in with two outs in the 7th and let him go 2.1 innings and hoped his arm didn't snap throwing 132 innings of relief.

The current setup/closer construct is a fairly decent approximation of getting your best pitchers in the most important situations, and it's way easier to implement and manage workloads than the construct in my second paragraph.

Great points.  You only know when the most pivotal point in the game was after it's over.  And, anything that you do at one point in the game can have an effect on something that happens later.

[Aristotelian]

What is the context of the quote? "You'd like to have ..." could be suggesting that since we don't have Britton/O'day that we will need a different strategy built around guys that we do have.

[weams]

4 hours ago, Frobby said:

Eh, let’s just see how it plays out.   I just hope we have some leads to protect in the late innings.   

I hope that the bullpens are good. I don't care about roles or new age relief belief. 

[interloper]

His lineup comments are VERY encouraging, though. "Going to put my best four hitters in the first four spots". 

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, interloper said:

His lineup comments are VERY encouraging, though. "Going to put my best four hitters in the first four spots". 

Third is fifth.

[interloper]

1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

Third is fifth.

Whatever I'm not going to be that picky.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, interloper said:

Whatever I'm not going to be that picky.

I'm not going to be very encouraged by someone getting it wrong.

[interloper]

1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

I'm not going to be very encouraged by someone getting it wrong.

Well, he's probably going to still bat Davis third for awhile so gird your loins.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, interloper said:

Well, he's probably going to still bat Davis third for awhile so gird your loins.

Better third than first, second, fourth or fifth. 

[atomic]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

Save opportunities for the O’s since 2012: 73, 84, 72, 58, 68, 53, 46.    I’m actually surprised we had as many as 46 save opportunities last year.   Almost one for every win, though it doesn’t really work that way.    Put it this way, we had 7 fewer save opportunities in 2018 than 2017, but 28 fewer wins.    That’s not because the bullpen was that terrible — they blew 18 saves both years.    It’s mostly because we had very few games where we led by 4+ runs in the late innings and hence there was no save even though we won.   In 2017 we had 27 games that we won by 4+ runs; in 2018 there were only 16 such wins.   

Blown saves is a silly stat. If you come in the 7th and you have a 1 run lead and you let in a run you are given a blown save even though there was zero chance you would get a save in the game.  And a team could multiple blown saves in one game. 

Anyway if you have a winning team where starters can go deep into games having your 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th guys could work out well. We did that in 2014. If your starters are out by the 3rd and you are 40 games under .500 having guys for specific innings doesn't make sense.