TORONTO – When sonnets are written and stories are told about championship teams, a phrase often used is that the team was “greater than the sum of its parts.” A lot of times that’s true, as to win a title a team almost always needs major contributions from unexpected sources.
When the opposite occurs, it’s tough to win, and that’s what’s been going on with the Blue Jays’ much-maligned bullpen this season. It’s a group that, over the course of this season so far, has been much less than the sum of its parts, which likely has a whole lot to do with the decision to bring Aaron Sanchez back as a reliever, as opposed to reinserting him in the starting rotation.
Going into Monday’s games, the Blue Jays’ bullpen ranks dead middle of the pack in the American League in ERA (tied for seventh at 3.59) and total bases allowed (eighth – 390). They’re better than that in lowest opponents’ OPS (sixth – .673) and opponents’ batting average (fifth – .232) and have the third-best WHIP in the league at 1.17, behind only the high-powered relief corps of the Kansas City Royals and Houston Astros and ahead of the division-leading New York Yankees of Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller.
Those are pretty strong numbers, and should translate to a solid bullpen, and yet the Blue Jays lead the league with 15 blown saves in fewer opportunities than every team in the league save for the Oakland Athletics (who have two fewer blown saves in the same number of opportunities).
By that measure – the only measure that really matters, being able to hold a lead – the Blue Jays have the worst bullpen not just in the AL, but in the major leagues.
So how does a ‘pen post average-to-very-good numbers across the board, but still wind up being the least reliable to the game? The easy answer is that they’re really good when games aren’t close, and that as the games tighten up, their performance drops dramatically. And a look at the data would reveal that to be the truth.
A high-leverage situation, as measured by the phenomenal baseball-reference.com, is defined as a situation in a game in which the “leverage index” is 1.5 or higher, where a situation with average leverage is rated at 1.0. The higher the leverage, the greater the opportunity for a dramatic swing in win probability in a particular plate appearance.
In recent days, it’s become apparent that Blue Jays’ manager John Gibbons is searching for a reliable arm in the bullpen beyond Roberto Osuna, who has been outstanding all season long, and the emerging Bo Schultz, who has allowed just three runs in his last 13 appearances totalling 21.1 innings since getting beat up by the Astros on June 7 for his only blown save of the season (a game the Jays came back to win).
Gibbons is searching because, with the exception of the two-headed beast soon to be known widely as “BOsuna”, the rest of his bullpen has been pretty awful when it has mattered most. And when it has mattered most, by the way, has often been relatively early in games. Of the Blue Jays’ 15 blown saves, nine have come in the sixth or seventh inning.
The Jays’ bullpen beyond BOsuna, which is comprised (at the moment) of Brett Cecil, Steve Delabar, Aaron Loup, Liam Hendriks and Ryan Tepera, has held opponents to a dazzling slash line of .204/.254./359 in medium- and low-leverage situations. Those are outstanding numbers, covering 472 plate appearances.
In high-leverage situations, the numbers blow up to an ugly .357/.431/.509 in 123 plate appearances. Those numbers are awful, and help to illustrate why the Jays’ leaders in blown saves this season are Loup, with four, and Delabar, with three. Cecil and Hendriks have two each. It should be noted that Tepera has only faced four batters in high-leverage situations this season, so it’s not exactly fair to lump him in with the whole group. He did give up the tie-breaking home run in the eighth inning of Saturday’s loss to Tampa Bay, though.
Osuna and Schultz, on the other hand, have combined to hold opponents to a .240/.289/.440 slash line in high-leverage spots, and though that slugging percentage is kind of high, neither of them has given up a home run with a runner on base this season, and Osuna’s slugging percentage against with men on is just .280, while Schultz’s is a paltry .152.
The drastic difference in the results in high-leverage spots is made even worse because the Blue Jays’ bullpen hasn’t been working with much of a margin for error this season. Of the 15 blown saves, 12 have come when the reliever is handed a lead of only one run. None have come when someone is asked to protect a three-run lead, though that could be explained away by the fact that in general, a reliever would be replaced by the time a three-run lead had been whittled down to one or two.
Nine of the Blue Jays’ 15 blown saves have come in the sixth or seventh inning, and only two have come in the ninth or later (one in the 11th). Seven of the blown saves have resulted in the game being tied, while eight have seen the opposition take the lead.
If Sanchez can contribute the way he did out of the bullpen last year, and if Schultz and Osuna can keep this up, the Blue Jays’ bullpen will be a heck of a lot better when Sanchez is recalled later this week than it is right now. Cecil, Loup and Delabar can be pushed back into lower-leverage situations while Hendriks becomes the long man, and Alex Anthopoulos can push even harder than he already is to try to shore up the starting rotation.