The Orioles Bullpen, They can fix it

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

9 hours ago, jrobb21613 said:

Is Rodriguez to the pen in the playoffs out of the question? As of right now he’s thrown about 150 innings. If I remember correctly did t Tampa do something similar with David Price?

I want Grayson starting in the playoffs behind Bradish he's been the Orioles second best starter in the second half.

If they really are concerned with Grayson's arm the playoff rotation could be Bradish, Means, Kremer and Gibson as the fourth starter if needed. But if Grayson's arm is feeling good keep him in the rotation.

[Three Run Homer]

15 minutes ago, Uli2001 said:

My theory is that Elias was not planning for the Orioles to be a contender this season, and did not build a bullpen accordingly.

Another theory is that Elias is very confident in his ability to build a bullpen out of table scraps.  Cionel Perez was a waiver claim; Danny Coulombe was a waiver claim; Yennier Cano was a throw-in.   Faced with the choice at the deadline of having to give up prospects for a proven reliever having a good season, versus scrounging for table scraps, he went for the latter, making a minor trade for Fuji and claiming Webb and Lopez off waivers.  Unfortunately it hasn't worked out this time.  

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

5 minutes ago, Three Run Homer said:

Another theory is that Elias is very confident in his ability to build a bullpen out of table scraps.  Cionel Perez was a waiver claim; Danny Coulombe was a waiver claim; Yennier Cano was a throw-in.   Faced with the choice at the deadline of having to give up prospects for a proven reliever having a good season, versus scrounging for table scraps, he went for the latter, making a minor trade for Fuji and claiming Webb and Lopez off waivers.  Unfortunately it hasn't worked out this time.  

It's one thing going into the season to build out a bullpen of spare parts and finding undervalued talent that can be a weapon pitching in relief. But when making transactions at the trade deadline or a waiver claim in the second half to me that isn't the time to be auditioning players for vital bullpen roles.

I would have much preferred trading for an established bullpen arm at the trade deadline over gambling on players like Fuji and Webb. Webb has been pretty good, but Fuji has been Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde when it comes to his relief appearances.

Edited September 22, 2023 by OsFanSinceThe80s

[Aristotelian]

32 minutes ago, Three Run Homer said:

Another theory is that Elias is very confident in his ability to build a bullpen out of table scraps.  Cionel Perez was a waiver claim; Danny Coulombe was a waiver claim; Yennier Cano was a throw-in.   Faced with the choice at the deadline of having to give up prospects for a proven reliever having a good season, versus scrounging for table scraps, he went for the latter, making a minor trade for Fuji and claiming Webb and Lopez off waivers.  Unfortunately it hasn't worked out this time.  

Webb has been a pretty solid win for us. Walks are an issue but overall ERA and WHIP is good. I'd consider him on balance a success with this strategy. 

That being said I do not understand why Elias didn't opt to trade for a more established reliever. I kind of wish Bautista had gotten his UCL tear earlier so we would have had a more urgent need. Elias's overall success with the strategy shouldn't have stopped us from supplementing with at least one more proven quality guy. Then again we could have overpaid for Robertson or Sewald and we'd probably be disappointed.

[Uli2001]

What is mind-boggling is that if this team had a strong bullpen, they might have won 110 games.

[Can_of_corn]

9 minutes ago, Uli2001 said:

What is mind-boggling is that if this team had a strong bullpen, they might have won 110 games.

It's really hard to win 110 games.

It's happened seven times total.

My guess is that some of those "lucky" wins would be normal wins.

[e16bball]

1 hour ago, Uli2001 said:

My theory is that Elias was not planning for the Orioles to be a contender this season, and did not build a bullpen accordingly.

I don’t think I agree with this. 

Coming into the season, it was a bullpen spearheaded by Felix Bautista (2.19 ERA in 2022). Behind him, you had Dillon Tate (3.05), Mychal Givens (3.38), Brian Baker (3.49), and Austin Voth (3.04 with Baltimore) lined up as the initial righties. Then you had Cionel Perez (1.40) and Keegan Akin (3.20) locked in as the southpaws, with Danny Coulombe (1.46 in SSS) added on the eve of the season to round out the group. Plus there were guys like Baumann, Krehbiel, Cano, Hall, etc. waiting in AAA as reserves if needed.

Without the benefit of hindsight, that’s a pretty good-looking bullpen coming into 2023. Every one of them was a well-above-average MLB pitcher in 2022 (when 3.86 was the average reliever ERA), and Bautista/Perez/Tate were all excellent for us last year. I feel like that represents a legitimate effort to build a quality bullpen.
 

I think their biggest mistake was putting too much faith in what these guys had done for us before. Relief pitching is such a volatile commodity, and it hurt that Baker/Akin/Voth all regressed terribly — though some of that probably should have been predictable. It was also devastating that we got less than zero out of Givens/Tate, who should’ve been stalwarts of this year’s pen. Not many teams could lose two of their projected top four relievers for the entire season and not start showing some cracks around the edges. Especially when they would then lose their superstar closer for a couple months as well.

For me, the biggest mistake was always the inability to land a quality reliever at the deadline. At that point, all the info was in about the absolute collapse of projected core guys in Tate + Givens + Baker + Akin. The need was glaring, and they just whiffed on it. I think that is a much bigger failure than their effort to build the pen in the offseason.

Edited September 22, 2023 by e16bball

[tntoriole]

Imagine what this team would look like now with a rental of Josh Hader … our equivalent of Andrew Miller deal.  Yes prospects would have left in return and it would have stung. 

[Aglets]

Tyler Wells was called back up today.

We are all good to go now guys.  No need to worry!

[EddeeEddee]

13 hours ago, Malike said:

This might be deceptive. How many relief pitchers has Tampa used this year? How many relief pitchers have the O's used? I don't have the information nor the desire to dig at 1 a.m. but just because they pitched more innings, doesn't mean they've been used more if they've used more pitchers than we have.

Edit:

We've used 26 relievers, including guys like Givens, Garrett, Bazardo, McCann, McKenna and Josh Lester. 

Tampa has used 33 this season.

That's a great point.  So their relievers have pitched about 14% more innings than Oriole relievers but TB has used more than 25% more pitchers in relief than the O's have.  So compared to TB the O's relievers have spent more time on the mound.  When I have a little more time I'll try to dig into this a little more.

[Malike]

1 minute ago, EddeeEddee said:

That's a great point.  So their relievers have pitched about 14% more innings than Oriole relievers but TB has used more than 25% more pitchers in relief than the O's have.  So compared to TB the O's relievers have spent more time on the mound.  When I have a little more time I'll try to dig into this a little more.

I didn't have the energy for much more than a cursory glance early this morning. 

[Malike]

I just hope the starters go out in this series and throw strikes and make them put the ball in play. This team strikes out ~4 times a game, nibbling isn't going to help the pen. I think their entire outfield has hit 18 HRs this season combined, make them hit the ball and hope the defense steps up.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

33 minutes ago, Malike said:

I just hope the starters go out in this series and throw strikes and make them put the ball in play. This team strikes out ~4 times a game, nibbling isn't going to help the pen. I think their entire outfield has hit 18 HRs this season combined, make them hit the ball and hope the defense steps up.

Kremer and Means are both capable of putting in quality starts the next two days against this lineup. Kremer going seven innings tonight would be a big help and he's done it four times this season.

[Malike]

1 minute ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

Kremer and Means are both capable of putting in quality starts the next two days against this lineup. Kremer going seven innings tonight would be a big help and he's done it four times this season.

He's got one of the lowest chase rates in the league against a team that doesn't chase at all. I hope he throws the ball over the plate.

[Uli2001]

2 hours ago, Malike said:

I just hope the starters go out in this series and throw strikes and make them put the ball in play. This team strikes out ~4 times a game, nibbling isn't going to help the pen. I think their entire outfield has hit 18 HRs this season combined, make them hit the ball and hope the defense steps up.

That's good information. But this leads to the other elephant in the room, the decline in defense recently. Pitching and defense go hand-in-hand. No pitching staff can look good without strong defense. Conversely, great defense can make an ordinary pitching staff look good.

It looks like Cleveland is one of the worst teams in the league to play bad defense against. They don't strike out, so you need to play good defense, or it's death by a thousand cuts, like yesterday.