Relievers, Not Starters Need To Be Team Focus... Just Ask The Yanks

Joe Girardi makes call to the bullpen

It is truly amazing how teams will seemingly force their young home grown talent into the role of a starting pitcher in the hopes of molding the next Clayton Kershaw, Felix Hernandez or Max Scherzer. In a time in baseball that has seen Tommy John surgery become the equivalent of a child going to mommy for a booboo and where a quality start only means the pitcher goes six innings of three runs or less, who wants to invest all their time and money into starting pitching, especially when you have more opportunity at a cheaper price to find and keep the next David Robertson, Craig Kimbrel or Trevor Rosenthal?  

The theory seemed to be that it was always much harder to buy good pitching than good hitting. However, baseball is now in a bit of an unfamiliar place as that theory has sort of flipped as teams are just not scoring as many runs on a consistent basis as they had in recent years.

Nobody really knows why there has been such a major shift and going switching from a hitter’s era to a pitcher’s era in a blink of an eye. Maybe it is just the current talent pool of this generation, maybe it is the flame throwers and speciality pitchers coming out of the pen that the game hadn’t seen before the last five or ten years, maybe it is all the shifts taking away hits and RBI’s, maybe it is all these advanced scouting metrics where fielders are placed so perfectly that they seemingly don’t even move half of the time in order to make plays anymore, maybe it is that steroids are less prevalent in the game (although I don’t believe that to be true) or maybe you can chalk it up to being a current fluke in the game today that will eventually fix itself, but one way or another, we are living in a new era of baseball and that is an era dominated by pitching.

I know I seem to contradict myself saying there is much greater bullpen depth yet teams need to focus on relievers. By all means, if you have a budding superstar on your hands who has the poise, the stuff and the ability to be a starter, then go for it. But don’t take a guy that is tailor made for the pen and try to make him a starter. The most obvious name that comes to mind in recent memory is undoubtedly Joba Chamberlain.

Joba Chamberlain

Everyone knows his story so I won’t bore you by going back over it. But he should have been one of the most dominant relievers of the past five or so years and could have been the successor to the greatest closer in history, Mariano Rivera. Instead, well, Joba has had an ok career, but not that one of a should be mega star.  

Joba wasn’t the first and surly wasn’t the last to be mishandled in his career but may be the most infamous for losing his potential at legendary status. With that said, players are also often discarded on the other side of the coin if they can’t make it as a starter. One of the most notable in my mind is Tyler Clippard who ironically enough is another former Yankee.

Clippard’s story is not quite as well known and maybe that is because he went from being the afterthought to the star where Joba sort of went in the other direction. Clippard was a pretty good Yankees prospect. Throughout his minor league career he played in 164 games, starting 131 of those games. In 2007 he made six appearances, all as a starting pitcher, for the Yanks. He was rather unimpressive with a 3-1 record and 6.33 ERA and averaging less than five innings per start. He was traded in December of that year to the Nationals for Jonathan Albaladejo.

Albaladejo tossed 59.1 innings in 49 relief appearances accumulating a 4.70 ERA over the course of three years out of the pen for the Yanks. He missed all of 2011, pitched three innings in 2012 with the D-Backs and hasn’t pitched in the big leagues since.

Tyler Clippard

Clippard on the other hand was turned into a reliever by the Nats who must have seen a kid with good stuff and a funks delivery. Instead of discarding him like the Yanks or saying he will make a fine number five starter or forever be a “quadruple A player” who can come up and make spot starts, they converted him into a reliever. The now 29 year old has pitched in seven seasons with the Nationals making just two starts, both of those coming in 2008. In his career with Washington, he has pitched in 400 games (398 relief appearance) pitching to an ERA of just 2.65 and making the All-Star team in 2011 and this year. Not that he is close to the aforementioned Mariano Rivera, but do you know who else was a “failed starter?” Yes, you got it, it was the legendary Mo himself.   

I’m not going to hate too much on the Yanks here as baseball is by far the hardest sport to scout and find the next big superstar. However, the Nats did what the Yanks should have done and that was take a kid with the stuff and character of a reliever and turn him into one instead of basically saying he is a starter or bust.
     

Look, I can’t prove that the Yanks trying to force those extra innings caused Joba to need Tommy John Surgery and cause setbacks in his career and I can’t prove that by Clippard not taxing his arm with extra innings he’d pitch as a starter has kept him from needing the surgery or that he wouldn’t have blossomed into a fine starter but it just seems that these guys were both destined for the pen, not starting. And as far as Tommy John Surgery, it just seems that these athletes today are so big and muscular that their bodies, and arms in particularly, are not able to take the consistent force and tork that their massive frames are helping provide them with when throwing the ball.

While that doesn’t go for everyone, one way to potentially lessen the chance of your starters taxing their arm and preventing Tommy John Surgery could be pitching less innings. The way you do that is by having more quality arms out of the pen. Besides, even if the extra innings aren’t contributing to the injuries we see, the pen is where you get your wins and losses and by the end of the year probably pitches nearly as many innings as your starters do. Think about it, if a starter gives you six strong, you are happy but that still leaves a third of the game for relievers. And who pitches when they starter gets KO’d early or if there are extra innings? Yes, relievers. So, instead of investing so much money into your starters, plug that money into having a seemingly endless supply of solid relievers that can come out of your pen every night.

Not that you want it to happen, but God forbid one of your guys goes down with an injury, you have someone to step right on in without the chaos of needing to find another starter to take on five or so innings. Instead you are looking for a guy to give you one or two innings. And because they are less expensive (typically), you can afford to pay seven solid relievers for the price of one superstar pitcher.

CC Sabathia

Despite all the Yankees issues this season, they have done one thing very well and that was building a good young bullpen with great arms. The Yanks continue to have a chance to win even despite losing CC Sabathia and Ivan Nova, their supposed ace and number three or four starter. The two pitchers combined for 12 games before having season ending surgeries and their newest big free agent signing, Japanese phenom, Masahiro Tanaka has missed about half the season as he may or may not need Tommy John Surgery. Together those three pitchers are paid a little over $48 million this year and have combined for just 196 inning pitched to date. In their limited action, Sabathia and Nova were also drains on their team and their bullpen with Sabathia pitching to a 5.28 ERA and averaging 5 3/4 innings per start while Nova had an 8.27 ERA averaging about 5 innings per start. However, because they were able to make a couple decent trades getting Brandon McCarthy and Chris Capuano and have some kids come up such as Shane Greene, who can get five or six solid innings, the relievers give the Yanks a chance every single day.

The Bombers front line has first time all-star Dellin Betances in the eighth and 2011 all-star and great late inning reliever, David Robertson as their closer. Their second tier guys are Adam Warren and Shawn Kelley who have each had a chance to save some games as well but see more time in the sixth and seventh. However, with four pitchers able to pitch the sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth inning, manager Joe Girardi can keep guys fresh and when one of these guys gets a little worn or injured, as long as it doesn’t happen all at once, the team has players who can step up for that one guy. The Yankees recently added Esmil Rogers and has shown flashes of being unhittable and with a little more work, very well could be thrown into that “second tier” with Warren and Kelley very soon.

David Robertson

Oh yeah, and what are the combined salaries of Warren, Kelley, Betances and Robertson? Well, (according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts) their closer, Robertson, earns $5.215 million although he is due to hit free agency after this season, Kelley earns $1.765 million and Warren and Betances are each a little over $500,000. About eight million for one of the best bullpens in baseball… Not too bad.   

So, all teams, whether small, mid or big market teams, building an “unhittable” bullpen from top to bottom is the cheapest and most effective way to better your team in the long haul of 162 games. And who knows, maybe it saves some Tommy John Surgeries. Even if that is not the case it will save the starters from being forced to throw that extra inning or two in order to “save the pen” and stops that fatigued pitcher from tossing those few extra pitches, including that cookie you see so often from tiring pitchers that costs your team a game. 

It is simple, build a strong pen that runs seven strong and the team will flourish. A great bullpen makes a poor team into a decent team, a decent team into a contender and a contender into a World Series favorite. Just ask the Yanks.