Old Time Family Baseball

If you’re a lefthanded reliever with fringy stuff or just a fan of managers managin’, then you’re probably a support current bullpen constructions. As relievers pitch shorter and shorter outings, allowing them to throw harder over briefer periods of time, the expectation is that their performance should also improve. That’s not the case as Dave Cameron points out:

“In fact, if you look at the sum of the components (in the table above, that’s ERA- and FIP-), there’s just no evidence that bullpens are preventing runs at a better rate now than they were before the current roster construction norms came along. Any improvements in quality of performance by the elite relievers have been offset by the fact that more innings are now being given to inferior arms, so the trade-off has essentially resulted in a change of no real benefit.

We’re told that defined roles are supposed to make a reliever’s job easier by giving him a usage pattern he can adapt to. This makes sense from an intuitive standpoint, but the results don’t really show much of an effect. Teams have essentially taken two roster spots away from position players and handed them to the bullpen without seeing a tangible improvement in performance from their relievers overall.”

Cameron’s belief was that we would soon see a return to previous usage patterns with relievers pitching longer and bullpens taking up fewer roster spots. However, Cameron then linked to William Juliano’s post who makes the good point that less bad relievers would just open up roster spots for more below average bench players. There’s no escaping the roster flotsam.

Sadly, rather than managers making better use of their bullpen, as Juliano argues, or letting relievers pitch longer as was Cameron’s point, what will probably happen is that the roster size will eventually add a spot. And perhaps another one. And hell, why not add five more while we’re at it. Opening up the big league roster to a 26th person has already been bandied about and I personally can’t wait for 2050 when I’ll wander around my future son’s house, complaining that in my day, a starter needed to go six innings for a quality start.