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TT: Hyde's bullpen management is going to sink this team unless he changes


Tony-OH

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So far bullpen performance has been a strength under Hyde and Holt and their training staff. I am inclined to give them a long leash and withhold judgment until we actually see any negative consequences. 

The stress on Bautista and Cano is at least in part a function of playing a disproportionate number of close winnable games. That is dictated more by the situation than Hyde having a "quick hook" on the other guys. The "quick hook" narrative would really need to focus on the middle guys and I'm not really convinced we are out of the norm there.

 

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I agree with a lot of this.  However, the Orioles have also played an inordinate amount of close games.  People used to hate that Buck would leave a starter in a bit longer or go with something other than his best relievers sometimes, but you have to do that over the course of a season.  

That being said, Hyde has his fingers on the pulse of the team.  The team was struggling a bit as of late and it's possible that his thought process last night was that the harm (from a demoralizing standpoint) from losing that game could be far worse than just a single game lost.  I definitely would have preferred an Akin or someone similar as Tony says.

He also too many times will "dry hump" as Buck used to say his relievers.  If you get them up, put them in.    

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Two thoughts on this:

I would rather he pull guys too early instead of too late like Buck would do. 
Second, he also has depth in AAA to pull from as the season goes on when guys get taxed. The only guys who can’t be replaced are Cano and Bautista. 

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Hyde manages any lead like he's protecting a 1 run lead in the World Series. Some might say it's just a natural evolution in strategy and the way the game is played. And sure, bullpen's are becoming increasingly relevant in the modern game and have been trendning that way for many decades. With that said, Hyde's taken it to an absurd extreme. I just wish sometimes he would calm the F down and stop living on notch 10 every waking moment of the season. 

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29 ip is a lot for this time of year.  You can see some wear on Cano already.  My worry is they burn Cano & Bautista and then really find themselves in a funk.   They need to infuse some new talented arms into the bullpen mix if they are going to continue down this path.  

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21 minutes ago, oriolediehard said:

The O's are pitching a bullpen game against Bieber. Keegan Akin starts today.  Looks like a blowout loss today. Hyde today isn't playing for the series win.

 

I think we should just forfeit..make sure no one gets hurt.

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18 minutes ago, oriolediehard said:

The O's are pitching a bullpen game against Bieber. Keegan Akin starts today.  Looks like a blowout loss today. Hyde today isn't playing for the series win.

 

Yeah, this is weird. Grayson goes down, replaced by Akin who has been used almost as a LOOGY this year. (He did go 2 IP on 5/16 and 3 IP on 5/21, but has three 1 inning appearances since then. Bullpen is already kinda taxed and then you do a bullpen game? We do have an off day tomorrow. Irvin is pitching at Norfolk today. Why not just pitch Irvin today? 

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2 hours ago, Spy Fox said:

Tony thanks for this well-researched post. I have been posting that the concern over Hyde's bullpen overuse is overblown, but this lays out a good case. And I agree with you that smarter use of the multi-inning guys is where the solution lies. 

Relatedly, it looks like they're doing a bullpen game today and I hope that's a 1 time thing. With off days Thursday and Monday and bullpen game today, they don't need a 5th starter until May 10. I hope and suspect that a real SP from AAA, Irvin as the most likely candidate, will be entering the rotation at that point. 

I said the same thing basically today on 105.7 that Irvin should be the guy once they need a 5th starter every 5 days. It will be interesting to see how they navigate today.

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2 hours ago, Frobby said:

It would help if our relievers actually kept our lead at 4 runs or more.  I can think of several games this year where we had a sizeable lead and the middle relievers simply didn’t get their job done.   Luckily I can only think of one game (game 2 in Boston) where we actually lost after having a big lead, but I can think of a whole bunch where we either coughed up most of the lead, or even lost a big lead and then had to come back to win.  And in most of those games, there was a middle reliever who I expect Hyde hoped would go 2+ innings, but failed at his job, and we ended up using 4-5 relievers instead of 1-3.   

I get that, but sometimes guys will give up some runs and settle down. Hyde seems to pull them the second they give up a few hits or a run. Sometimes guys settle down. I've seen several times this year where the bulk reliever gives up a run and gets yanked instead of letting him work through it a bit. Then it's game on for everyone. 

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1 hour ago, bpilktree said:

Do we have more guys getting more appearances though because our guys have been healthier then other teams?  Just looking at numbers we have used the least number of relievers.  
 

Yankees 21 pitchers 8 starters and 13 relievers

Red Sox 21 pitchers 7 starters 14 relievers

Rays 28 pitchers    8 starters 20 relievers( they are hard to get exact numbers because of using openers at times)

Blue Jays 16 pitchers 5 starters 11 relievers. (Their 5 starters have not missed a start)

Orioles 17 pitchers 6 starters 11 relievers.  
 

Our starters don’t go as deep as some teams and we haven’t used as many relievers as those teams so the guys we do use have to pitch in more games then others if they are having guys hurt or sending them down for ineffectiveness.  

But remember, the Orioles relievers overall have pitched in the 2nd most amount of games in the MLB. Regardless of who is pitching, Hyde uses a lot of different relievers per game.

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The parameters for this are really difficult to narrow down, but I've always wondered about whether min-maxing bullpen usage has more negative effects on a reliever's fatigue level than we currently know about.  Teams get ~25 off days a year, and if you truly optimized their bullpen usage then in theory they would be able to pitch in 100-115 games while only rarely needing to pitch back-to-back days.  But teams often decline to use their bullpen perfectly optimally, and often give their pitchers much more rest than this, with typical top relievers maxing out at around 90 games.  Do relievers need occasional stretches where they get 2 or 3 days off in a row in order to maintain their effectiveness?  It wouldn't surprise me.

 

I'd like to think that Irvin is going to come back and hopefully slot in for Grayson and eat some innings.  He looks like he's back on track now.

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1 hour ago, Aristotelian said:

So far bullpen performance has been a strength under Hyde and Holt and their training staff. I am inclined to give them a long leash and withhold judgment until we actually see any negative consequences. 

The stress on Bautista and Cano is at least in part a function of playing a disproportionate number of close winnable games. That is dictated more by the situation than Hyde having a "quick hook" on the other guys. The "quick hook" narrative would really need to focus on the middle guys and I'm not really convinced we are out of the norm there.

 

The numbers I gave disagrees with that take. I understand giving them the benefit of the doubt as you do most of the time, but we're already seeing chinks in the bullpen with Baker, Coulombe, and Baumann at one point with over use.

The Orioles relievers have pitched in the 2nd most games in the MLB. That's do to quick hooks and matchup playing that Hyde likes to do as well as his aversion to using a reliever for 2 or especially 3 innings at a time. The numbers don't lie so it's not a made up narrative.

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1 hour ago, baltfan said:

I agree with a lot of this.  However, the Orioles have also played an inordinate amount of close games.  People used to hate that Buck would leave a starter in a bit longer or go with something other than his best relievers sometimes, but you have to do that over the course of a season.  

That being said, Hyde has his fingers on the pulse of the team.  The team was struggling a bit as of late and it's possible that his thought process last night was that the harm (from a demoralizing standpoint) from losing that game could be far worse than just a single game lost.  I definitely would have preferred an Akin or someone similar as Tony says.

He also too many times will "dry hump" as Buck used to say his relievers.  If you get them up, put them in.    

It's funny because Buck was the exact opposite then Hyde when it came to his starters. He definitely would keep them out there too long too often, especially when the numbers told him the starter was terrible the 3rd time through an order or in the 7th inning. 

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