After Eight

Eight games in.  Eight relievers used.

Prior to Wednesday night's game the Jays were sitting at an incredibly disappointing 3-5.  With many experts picking the Jays as division winners, it’s not the start anyone really had in mind.  The great thing about an MLB season however, is that there are still…  wait for it... 154 games left.  Fans who are already slamming on the panic button need to stop, take a breath, and enjoy that we are back watching meaningful baseball.  Having said that, there are a couple areas that have been the focus of the Jays not-so-ideal start.

Despite losing 5 of 8, the Jays had the lead in every game this season.  Whenever that’s the case the pen is going to be under significant scrutiny.  So after 10 games, what do the numbers say?

h/t www.fangraphs.com

Right off the bat, we’re dealt a shocker with Gavin Floyd.  Floyd has continued to build off of an impressive spring to put up the highest WAR among relievers through eight games.  Pitching in more innings than any other reliever other than Osuna to date, he has maintained an excellent 13.5 K/9.  Even a great xFIP of 1.21 pulls in the direction of Floyd being more unlucky than lucky, and a realistic BABIP of 0.286 doesn’t seem to skew the stat line.  The only earned runs he has allowed were given up by Arnold Leon after being pulled in the 8th against Tampa Bay.  After JA Happ allowed a leadoff walk to Kiermeier in the bottom of the seventh Floyd was brought in.  Floyd was excellent, getting the next three outs (striking out Dickerson and Morrison in the process), and preventing the inherited base runner from scoring.  The 8th didn’t start as well however for Floyd when he gave up two singles to Longoria and Jennings.  Despite the singles, Floyd still seemed in relative control. Longoria and Jennings hits were both soft contact and were helped along mightily by the BABIP monster.  Floyd had also struck out Pearce in the middle of the two.  Only up by one run at the time and with very little room for error with a runner on third however, the choice to lift him is a far from controversial one.  Who he was replaced with though is where I believe that poor bullpen management had an affect on Floyd's stat line. This situation was about as high leverage as you’re going to get.  The LI going in was 5.50. The highest leverage of the game by over 2 points.  The resulting homer resulted in a MASSIVE wPA of .465!  Osuna should have been in for this situation.  Period.  Not a pitcher with only 26 MLB innings to his name, and a less than 9 k/9 in his AAA career.  Would Osuna have given those runs up?  Maybe.  But I’m giving Osuna, and in turn Floyd the benefit of the doubt here.  Floyd has been excellent, and that’s great to see.

Osuna is up next tying Floyd with the highest WAR through 8 games.  Through 4 innings pitched, he has been just as advertised.  Impressive strikeout numbers, a phenomenal whip of 0.5, very low xfip of 1.44 and again a BABIP of 0.250 that doesn’t appear to skew the numbers too much.  Combine that with a 3 for 3 in save attempts  and all are excellent signs that so far he was 100% the right choice as closer.  There isn’t much to dissect hear, as Osuna is one of the few that is living up to expectations.  Two pitchers in, and the pen has been great.

Sadly. This is where the great performances to start the year come to an end.  The next two relievers slide in at replacement level through two games.  Even though it has been nothing special, Biagini has performed very well as a rule 5 pick.  Well enough that we have now seen him win a spot on the team over Leon, who has been sent down to bring up ambidextrous phenom Pat Venditte.  Biagini is the only pitcher so far this season outside of Osuna and Morales (who has only pitched to 2 batters) to not give up an earned run.  He has only been used in low leverage situations,  seen a little bit of babip help (.200), has a high BB/9, and by xFIP benefited a little from luck (3.55), but still is as expected, or even slightly better.  You’re always going to have to have guys to pitch in mop up duty, and Biagini is proven to be a good bet for those situations, but nothing more so far.

Jesse Chavez is the next man to slot in around replacement level.  A starter at the end of last year, he’s been a guy that the Jays were hopeful could be a “swiss army knife” type of guy .  He could fight for the fifth starter job, and could also go to the pen in a long relief situation, or ramp it up for late inning high leverage at bats as well.  Chavez has put a few too many guys on base early this year with 2.70 walk rate resulting in a 1.80 WHIP.  Fortunately he has more than balanced out the walks by putting up an incredible 16.20 K/9.  Even with the high walk rate that gaudy number has him tied with Osuna for team lead in the K/BB category (6.00).  With those numbers, you’re looking to Chavez if you need a strikeout, which is exactly what happened in the sixth against Boston.  Stroman loaded up the bases in the top, and Chavez was brought in to put a bullet in it.  Unfortunately, after a first pitch called strike, Brock Holt blasted the next pitch for a Grand Slam, getting the Red Sox right back in a game that should have been well out of reach.  Jesse Chavez has been good for sure, but these high leverage situations are when relief pitchers prove their worth.  Chavez isn’t worth worrying about until he shows that can’t be trusted in these situations, and a one inning anomaly this early is far from enough to remove trust.

The next two pitchers to that have pitched this year are Morales and Leon.  At this point it isn’t worth breaking down their performances. Morales has only faced two batters, leaving very little data to break down, and is also resting up on the DL for the immediate future.  In regards to Leon, as mentioned earlier, his poor performance and need for a lefty has led to him being DFA’d to make room for Venditte.  Leon may be back, but he’s going to have to pitch much better at AAA. Venditte or Biagini will both have to struggle mightily to justify a call up, and that’s not even taking into account Loup or Morales returning from the DL, or how Tepera is performing in AAA.

The final two pitchers are the worst performers thus far, and are unfortunately the two who were supposed to be the best.  To start, Storen has been one of the major disappointments to start the year with a bloated ERA (7.71), WHIP (2.14), BB/9 (3.86) and team low 7.71 k/9.  For a pitcher that many had pegged as the closer at some point (myself included) these numbers are putrid.  Storen has seen his velocity decrease on all 4 of his pitches, by as much as 2.4 mph.  His fastball and sinker have been largely ineffective with a .500 opponent avg, and he has also seen reduced swinging strike percentage on his fastball (7.7%) and change up (0 swinging strikes to date).  Working with an incredibly small sample size, as mentioned before there is no reason to be slamming the panic button, but he is one of the guys that needs to be watched going forward.

Just as disappointing so far has been Brett Cecil.  Cecil finished the second half of last year being arguably the best reliever in baseball.  Holding a streak that equaled the all time record of 38 straight scoreless innings, it seemed as though no-one would score off of the lefty ever again.  After his first appearance of the year, he looked just as good as ever pitching a perfect bottom of the 7th while striking out Longoria and Dickerson.  Specs performed just as we have come to expect, but it fell apart from there.  Over his next three appearances he combined for  just 1.2 innings while allowing 5 hits, 3 earned runs, a walk and only 2 strike outs.  Blatantly put, he has been just awful.  Even with the 1 excellent inning his overall stat line includes an appalling 0.357 opponent average, 2.25 whip, 10.13 ERA, 3.38 BB/9 and 5.46 xFIP.  If you’re looking for any kind of positive, you can at least reach for the BABIP monster rearing his head with a very high .444 (a perfect example of this is the little flare that allowed a run to score yesterday vs the Yankees).  Just like Storen, Cecil is seeing a decrease in velocity on all of his pitches, but in his case not as much to be of concern.  His movement has also remained stable, and his zone location has also remained constant.  What sticks out like a sore thumb is the swinging strike percentage on his curveball.  Already the pitch being used the most so far this season (25 pitches) he’s been in the zone just as much as last year (36%) but has seen his swinging strike percentage drop a ridiculous 15.7%.  This drop is most likely attributed to hitters being much more disciplined against him so far, swinging at only 18.8% of curveballs thrown outside of the zone, compared to a phenomenal 50.5% last year.  Again, the sample size is small, so there should be an element of regression to the norm to happen here.  Having said that however, this distinct change in the data also supports the theory that hitters have figured out that they can wait out Cecil’s breaking ball.  If that’s the case Cecil may have to make some adjustments to get back to elite status.

As a whole the bullpen has really been split so far this season.  Two of the eight have been excellent, and performing to a level putting the team in a position to win.  Two have been slightly above average, giving decent contributions.  Two have become irrelevant in the near future, one through injury and one through poor performance, and two have significantly underperformed.  The problem with the pen right now is that the two that are underperforming are the two that the Jays need to rely on in the highest leverage situations.  There’s room for improvement on the “Mediocre Two” for sure, but until the high leverage set up guys can get back in the groove, and reach their proven potential again, this bullpen will be in trouble.