The Home Runs Happened

by Jeff Sullivan on Jul 14, 2011 12:55 PM PDT in Seattle Mariners Stats

Alternate title: Surprise! Dingers!

Some time ago, we observed that the Mariner relievers were succeeding in no small part because they were avoiding home runs. Avoiding home runs to what certainly appeared to be an unsustainable degree. It was good, because those innings were already in the books and you can't retroactively apply home runs later on, but it was worrisome, because it left us wondering what would happen if and when the dingers showed up.

The dingers showed up. Two tables of bullpen data:

April/May

Stat	Mariners	League
BB%	8.6%	10%
K%	16%	19%
HR%	0.9%	2.3%
R/9	3.87	4.38

June/July

Stat	Mariners	League
BB%	7.9%	8.5%
K%	14%	21%
HR%	3.4%	2.5%
R/9	4.23	3.80

Earlier, the Mariners' bullpen home run rate was well above-average, and they maintained a R/9 that was 12% better than the league. More lately, the home run rate has gone in the other direction, and the R/9 has been 11% worse than the league. Not that R/9 is the perfect measure with samples this small, but the point gets across. After allowing five total home runs in April and May, Mariner relievers have allowed nine home runs since the start of June, and they've caused some real trouble as a consequence.

The good news is that, just as the early home run suppression was unsustainable, the recent home run inflation is also unsustainable, especially given that the Mariner bullpen runs the highest groundball rate in the American League. Even if and when the personnel changes, the longballs should be less frequent.

So what we have overall is a bullpen that, in truth, is neither a strength nor a weakness. I don't know how much this matters, given the Mariners' place in the standings, and I don't know how much it's going to change if pitchers break down or other pitchers break in, but given everything that didn't go according to plan with David Aardsma, Shawn Kelley, Josh Lueke and Dan Cortes, it seems like a small miracle that the relief is still all right.

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I don't know when David Aardsma is supposed to return, but I have been assuming that its going to be very soon.

Which is interesting considering how good League has been doing and whether or not Aardsma is going to get his closers job back, yet with the current state of the team, and the trade deadline approaching, will it just be one comes in and the other goes out and it’s the most simple solution we could think of.

follow @casetines

by Kenneth Arthur on Jul 14, 2011 1:17 PM PDT reply actions

Following Aardsma on twitter leads me to believe he's probably still at least a month away

He’s been throwing bullpens and the other day was reporting that he was finally able to throw a few splitters. I’m guessing he’s probably a couple weeks from a rehab stint and we probably wont be seeing him till mid August.

Again, this is based only on his tweets about his bullpen sessions

by BaronVonBullshit on Jul 14, 2011 1:29 PM PDT up reply actions

Whenever I look at the numbers it scares me when I see our bullpen K/9 < 6

Over the past ten years the only teams having bullpens with K/9 < 6 (Bullpen WAR)
2011 Mariners (1.0 WAR over 1/2 a season)
2006 Rays (-1.5)
2006 Twins (0.1)
2005 Rays (-0.6)
2005 Reds (0.3)
2005 Giants (2.5)
2005 Nationals (1.3)
2003 Tigers (-0.9)
2002 Tigers (-0.2)

I’m not trying to say our bullpen has to strikeout guys to be effective. The bullpen can be decent as long as they maintain the high groundball rate and has a decent walk rate. Its just interesting to take a look of how infrequent you have a bullpen that doesn’t strikeout many guys. (A K/9 of 6 is kind of arbitrary. There were many teams that had a K/9 slightly higher than 6).

It also seems from this list that high strikeout relief pitchers may have been viewed as more important in the late 2000’s than early 2000’s. You’ll also notice the Rays and Tigers were terrible but there were teams that had ok bullpens with low strikeouts.

For us, the fact our bullpen hasn’t been able to strike out people seems to just limit the upside our bullpen has. As long as we can avoid too many complete meltdowns and everybody is just slightly better than replacement I’ll be happy with an average bullpen. That said, we probably need to figure out a way (prospect promotion hopefully) to improve the bullpen because I have a tough time trusting many of the guys out there to continue to get MLB hitters out.

by Edgar for Pres on Jul 14, 2011 1:43 PM PDT reply actions