Worst bullpen in O’s history?

[LookitsPuck]

16 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

Clearly health is playing a role. They knew before year about Felix though. 

 

Kimbrel is in a big time slump. The Coloumbe injury even in Orioles land may have been underrated. 
 

Every year in baseball the pen takes on a bigger role. 

I think for me is less about Felix, as you mentioned they knew that coming into this year. It's more about Coulombe, Webb as I think most bullpens lose at least an arm or 2 every year for some period of time. There wasn't any real depth.

Elias was overly relying on Tate (out all of 2023), Akin (bad/hurt 2023), Baumann (inconsistent, poor peripherals 2023) and Wells (hurt off/on and operated as a starter/reliever in 2023).

[OriolesMagic83]

Looking at some O's rosters from previous years.  Totally unrelated, but Ty Wigginton played 9 games at SS for the O's in 2009 at age 31.  The horror.  If I saw it, my brain blanked out to save me from the memory.  Good old Ty w/ the -11.2 career dWAR.

[EddeeEddee]

It might be the worst bullpen on a contending O's team.  But nowhere near the worst O's bullpen.

Elias knew he would not have Bautista or Hall, but he relied too much on Kimbrel being effective and probably felt he would have Suarez and/or Wells available out of the bullpen.  He can't be blamed for Coulombe and Webb going down, but every team has to deal with injuries, especially to pitchers.  And the team has no minor league pitching pipeline for relievers from which to draw yet.

I think the best case scenario is Coulombe and/or Webb come back effective and/or some of Suarez, Kremer, McDermott or even Grayson or Povich gets used out of the bullpen in the playoffs -- and possibly prior to the playoffs.  For now it's impossible to say now who comes back healthy and when.

 

[Frobby]

I just want to throw this out there regarding Coulombe and Webb.  For a decade, I tracked how many games each team in the AL East lost to injury, broken down by position players/starters/relievers.   For the bullpen, the average was something like 220 days per team per year.  So to lose maybe 110 days of Coulombe and 30 of Webb isn’t that much.  Obviously, not all relievers are equal; losing Coulombe is not the same as losing some mediocre middle reliever.   But overall, our bullpen losses during the year aren’t extraordinary or unusual, either quantitatively or qualitatively.  They’re within a normal range.  

[Three Run Homer]

This is nowhere near the worst bullpen in O's history, but I don't think the O's have ever had a contending team being sabotaged by its bullpen like this year.

Clearly the team did not invest enough in building a talented bullpen going into 2024.  Was it because the Angelos regime were skinflints, or because Elias is more focused on executing the perfect dumpster dive than he is in building a winning team?  We will find out this offseason.  

[Spy Fox]

I'm assembling a team...

[Can_of_corn]

48 minutes ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

Looking at some O's rosters from previous years.  Totally unrelated, but Ty Wigginton played 9 games at SS for the O's in 2009 at age 31.  The horror.  If I saw it, my brain blanked out to save me from the memory.  Good old Ty w/ the -11.2 career dWAR.

That's All-Star Ty Wigginton!

[Gofannon]

I have spent a quarter century scraping the memory of the 1999 pen out of my brain, where at one point we had Mike Fetters/Heathcliff Slocumb/Ricky Bones/Mike Timlin as closer.  This thread has ripped that wound wide open.

Welp, back to therapy.

[Wavetrapper]

11 minutes ago, Gofannon said:

I have spent a quarter century scraping the memory of the 1999 pen out of my brain, where at one point we had Mike Fetters/Heathcliff Slocumb/Ricky Bones/Mike Timlin as closer.  This thread has ripped that wound wide open.

Welp, back to therapy.

My apologies!

[O's84]

2 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

Then you didn’t see Mike DeJean and Steve Kline in action. 

Ah dumb and dumber.  They were so bad I just turned the TV off when they came in.  And any parent would do the same, else Social Services come a knocking.

[Grt 2BA FL Gator]

2 hours ago, Spy Fox said:

I'm assembling a team...

 

Kevin Gregg! Dannys Baez! Mike Gonzalez! 

[Baseball fandom]

4 hours ago, Frobby said:

Not even close.  

And that's an inducement of how bad the Orioles have been over the past 40 years.  Most times anyways good teams have good bullpens 

[Baseball fandom]

54 minutes ago, O's84 said:

Ah dumb and dumber.  They were so bad I just turned the TV off when they came in.  And any parent would do the same, else Social Services come a knocking.

Quite honestly it's getting to be this way with these guys now TBH

[Uli2001]

5 hours ago, LookitsPuck said:

It's not even close. 

This bullpen isn't good, but it has a 4.18 ERA. Here are some bullpens with ERAs over 4.50. 

• 2021: 5.70 ERA
• 2019: 5.79 ERA
• 2018: 4.76 ERA
• 2009: 4.83 ERA
• 2007: 5.75 ERA
• 2006: 5.27 ERA
• 2000: 5.58 ERA
• 1999: 4.99 ERA

All discussions here present stats since the beginning of the season. The Orioles were a totally different teams in April, May, and the first half of June. Let's see the stats for the past two months of baseball. It will tell a different story.

[24fps]

5 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I'll nominate 2007.

 

In 2007, I lived in LA and had a 1 hour, 20 minute commute each way.  On September 12 my commute home was over 2 hours which allowed me to drink in the full wonderfullness of the O's 18-6 loss to the Angeles.  Not a single pitcher from DCab through Baez had any business being on the field against even a good high school team.  The saving grace was that Andy MacPhail was looking on having just been hired and many of us thought that surely better times were ahead.  Nope, not to be.  MacPhail never won even 70 games over the next four years.

This years bullpen, while disappointing, doesn't get close to the legacy of that team.