What’s Wrong With Our Bullpen?

Last season, the Indians bullpen was a source of strength and one of the best relief corps in all of baseball. This year the bullpen has been far from the shutdown crew that Indians fans expected. Last season the bullpen sported the league’s 7th best ERA at 3.12, while throwing the 5th most innings in the league with 513. Thus far this year the bullpen’s ERA is 3.45, which is the 14th best in all of baseball, not great by any means, but not nearly as bad as I had expected. Yet when I watch the bullpen pitch this year they seem to me to be performing much worse than the numbers say and certainly not as well as last season, and wouldn’t you know it I was right.

Bullpen pitchers are often faced with the unenviable task of having to clean up after a starting pitcher who has reached the end of the rope and has been pulled from the game just before the wheels came off. Since they typically pitch at the ends of games, when the losing team is coming down to their last shot, there is a lot of pressure surrounding their performances. Intuitively, a reliever who performs well in pressure filled, high-leverage situations is a real asset and can be extremely valuable. The Indians were fortunate enough to have a bullpen filled with relievers that performed well in high-leverage situations last season.

Win Probability Added (WPA) measures the change in a team’s odds of winning from one plate appearance to the next and credits or debits the player based on how much their action increased or decreased their team’s odds of winning. WPA is a context dependent statistic, it takes into account that a home run in the bottom of the 9th in a tied ball game is much more valuable than a home run in the 6th inning by a team down 10 runs. Similarly, it measures a relievers performance on a one run game against his performance in a blowout; the reliever who shuts down the opposition in a tight game earns a higher WPA than the man who comes into a blowout to eat up innings. This is a long way of getting to one point in particular, the Indians’ bullpen is struggling and it’s coming in the situations that matter most.

Last season, the Indians’ relievers had a 5.42 WPA rating, which was the 7th best in all of baseball. When a reliever came in to the game last season, the Indians’ chances of winning increased, that cannot be said about the relief corps this season. As of May 19, the Indians’ relievers are sports a -3.06 WPA, 29th in all of baseball. But who is the biggest culprit in the bullpen?

Unfortunately the Indians’ four most frequently used relievers have all decreased the Indians chances of winning this season, after contributing to the chances last season. Cody Allen and Scott Atchison were the biggest contributors last season and have seen the biggest swing downward of all the four. But WPA measures a player’s performance during any scenario in which he is thrust into. If we look at how well these four are performing during high-leverage situations we see that there is a similar trend.

A player’s “Clutch” rating is a measure of how well a player performs during high-leverage situations, this is similar to a WPA rating that takes into account only those white knuckle moments where a game can be decided in one pitch. To give these figures some context, a 0.0 rating is considered league average, so Cody Allen’s -0.o9 signifies that he performed approximately average in high-leverage situations. Most players fall between 1 and -1, 0.5 is considered above average while -0.5 is considered below average. You may be surprised to see that Bryan Shaw was a below average pitcher in high-leverage situations last season, though after watching him struggle this season you may not be surprised at all.

As you can see from the figures this season, all of the Indians’ best four relievers have performed below average when placed into high-leverage situations. The 2015 Indians are a far cry from the offensive juggernaut that the teams of the 90’s were and the game is much more pitching-oriented now so it is crucial that the bullpen can consistently shutdown late inning threats in tight ballgames, there figures to be a lot of games like this past Monday’s 2-1 loss to the White Sox that will be decided by the bullpen late in the game. If the Indians are hoping to reverse this trend of poor performance when it matters most, it may have to be done through a trade. Aside from Kyle Crockett and Shawn Armstrong, there aren’t a lot of bullpen arms in the Indians’ farm system that are ready for the big leagues, and neither Crockett nor Armstrong are ready to contribute in a significant way this season. This team cannot afford to waste many more great outings from a starting pitcher, if things don’t change soon the Indians may not be able to dig themselves out of the early hole they’ve found themselves in.