I saw this and almost fuckin died.
7.27 ERA in high leverage situations?
5.5 walks per 9 innings in high leverage situations?
1.51 WHIP in high leverage situations?
Reading that back makes me wonder why I felt so bold to say this year’s bullpen would be a huge improvement.
Could it get any worse?
Yes. Just ask us
The Baseball Gods
Let’s hope not.
Let’s hope it improves this season and becomes a strength for a club in desperate need of any advantage.
With that, here’s my one sentence scouting report on the entire bullpen
- Ryan Pressly – soft tossing closer with the kitchen sink arsenal similar to the legendary Huston Street and almost identical in career stats: games, innings, hits, walks, strikeouts, earned runs, home runs.
- Porter Hodge – large, young mormon with unhittable cheddar and serious questions about his control and command.
- Ryan Brasier – overwhelmingly mediocre soft tossing journeyman late-inning righty that shares an uncanny resemblance to longtime Adam Sandler collaborator and star of Grandma’s Boy, Allen Covert
- Nate Pearson – Big stupid righty from Florida with no control and 100mph fastball with a wipeout slider
- Caleb Thielbar – forgettable lefty poo slinger that nobody else wanted and will get opportunities because he’s the only lefty
- Julian Merryweather – same thing as Nate Pearson except he’s from California and spent a 6 full seasons in the minors before making his MLB debut
- Brad Keller – Big stupid righty from Georgia that’s recently converted from being a starting pitcher and might be pretty decent at some point but we’re not counting on it right now
- Colin Rea – overpaid free agent righty with average stuff that couldn’t beat out Ben Brown for a starting spot so now he goes to the bullpen until someone gets injured later in the season
Nice theme here is the oversized powerful righties that throw very hard. Mostly because we have so little of that in the starting rotation – none of which is trustworthy.
Another thing is that Porter Hodge is the only truly-young and inexperienced arm in the bullpen. And even then he’s got 43 innings under his belt with like a .160 batting average against. So really not a huge disadvantage with youth and inexperience like last season. We’re not running guys out to prove themselves as much as we’re asking a group of established professionals to do their job. While that may seem obvious, turn it back last year and ask the same question and you’ll understand quickly that it’s a lot of young guys figuring their shit out in real time.
So as we near opening day, I think we’re in a much better spot with the bullpen than last season. Although I concede that it would actually be harder if Jed managed to make it any worse.
Easy on the Caleb Thielbar slander. Dude had an awesome run with the Twins (minus last year). After he was out of the league for 5 years!! Insane to be that good after out of it that long.