Your 2017 Giants: Relief in the Bullpen

Hopefully quick blog post, especially since some liked this format before.  I read about how the Giants were taking a chance with our bullpen, as among the relievers expected to make the team (Kontos, Law, Okert, Osich, Smith, Strickland; not sure why Guerrin was left off, was that a hint?), there were a lot of blown saves among them, 14 in total.


ogc thoughts

But to me, that's not the right way to be evaluating a bullpen.  For one, we have no context how other bulllpens have done.  For another, more importantly, these relievers don't normally get to save a game, but often get blown saves in the process of trying to hand off the lead to the next reliever.  It would be better to include their Holds into the equation.

Whether including Guerrin or not, this group of relievers had a 84% HLD/SAVE percentage when you add up the relievers holds, saves, and blown saves together (there are a few more save situations that these guys got into, but for some reason did not get a hold, save, or blown save, and I would guess they are situations where they did not do enough to get a hold; unfortunately, while Baseball Reference keeps track of this, they don't provide an easy way to compare teams, while Fangraphs does provide an easy way, but don't track total save situations, at least in their table).  And that is not good compared to other teams overall percentage, they just missed being the in the bottom third overall, per the data in Fangraphs.

When you include Melancon's performance for 2016, that ups the percentage to 87%, which put them just missing the top third, so that is a large jump in improvement.  Casilla with this group would have dropped the team further, down to 83%, which means that he did worse than this group as a whole.  Of course, there will be others probably in the bullpen, which could push the number down towards the middle of the pack again.

The problem with the above is, of course, their performance in 2016 is not necessarily their performance in 2017.  Okert, for one, was not used much, and Smith wasn't here the full season either, and neither was Osich, who missed a part of the season first with his DL, then I think he was in the minors for some extended rehab time (I think they were stashing him, as he had 9 games down there; he was also having some issues, so they may have kept him there longer to work on something) as well.  And Smith had a stellar 92% percentage rate for us (he wasn't as good with the Brewers, so perhaps Bochy figured out how to use him in order to be more effective).  I could extrapolate, but that won't be fair to Okert, who was only 2 out of 3, and 11 of 12 for Smith is probably too high.  And who knows with Osich, but he was really good in 2015, injury definitely had an effect on his poor 2016 numbers.

Another way to look at it is to examine their overall ERA.  In 2016, the six had an ERA of 2.99 together, with Guerrin, it was 3.21.  That's pretty good, and that's why I've been happy about the bullpen situation this off-season.  But looking at the overall Save/Hold situation, I can see some concern over our current situation, but that's the problem I've noticed about complaints about the Giants:  if they chose to go with young players, the complaints are that they are not experienced/accomplished enough; if they chose to go with veterans, the complaints are that Bochy don't give young players a chance and/or that they are spending too much for a fungible commodity.

I think that the young guys will get better with experience.   I think Bochy has been an acknowledged master of managing the bullpen, and the reason roles were not as defined in 2016 was because of a combination of two factors:  old guys having problems, while young guys are inexperienced, so Bochy needed time to figure out how to use them.  And they are connected, because the old guys having problems (Lopez ineffective, Romo on the DL, Casilla up and down in effectiveness) means that Bochy had to use the young guys in different situations, and could not always afford to give them set roles, as it depended on the mix of older players who may or may not be used by Bochy in their usual roles.

The complaints should go down now that we have Melancon, and the setup roles seem to be set with Smith, Strickland, Guerrin, and perhaps Kontos as well, we'll see.  But flux in their performance could affect Bochy's usage pattern again.  Plus, he really seems to like Law a lot, so he could win a set-up role from the get go, but if not, he could push upward into the set-up situations.  And as much as I love Osich, Okert has been more accomplished in the minors, and he could also end up with significant appearances.  In any case, I think having a steady arm like Melancon in the closer position helps settles down most of the issues/complaints.

So what do you think is the best way to evaluate how our bullpen looks like?   And how do you feel about the bullpen?