The Real Problem With The Detroit Bullpen

For the fourth consecutive season, the Detroit Tigers are AL Central champions, but this time around, it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing toward another title. Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera have had down years, at least compared to their previous greatness. Injuries suffered by Jose Iglesias, Anibal Sanchez and Alex Avila, along with the trade of Austin Jackson, have tested the team’s depth. The defense hasn’t been a strength, particularly at third base (Nick Castellanos) and right field (Torii Hunter). And shortstop has been a trouble spot all season.

Despite all that, they managed to hold off the Royals by a single game, thanks in large part to the continued excellence from Max Scherzer, surprisingly great years from Rick Porcello, J.D. Martinez and Victor Martinez, and the acquisition of David Price. But as the Tigers prepare to travel to Baltimore to meet the Orioles in the ALDS on Thursday, one big question hangs over them: When will first-year manager Brad Ausmus‘ seemingly questionable bullpen decisions cost Detroit a playoff game?

That’s an issue that has taken on a life of its own over the past few weeks, as Ausmus has stuck with his season-long plan of Joba Chamberlain in the eighth inning and Joe Nathan in the ninth, despite the consistent struggles of the 39-year-old Nathan and the presence of July trade acquisition Joakim Soria, who was a star closer in Kansas City before undergoing Tommy John surgery. Soria was in the midst of a rebound season with the Rangers when he was traded, and he has appeared in 13 games for the Tigers. Only one of those appearances was a save situation, and even that was just because Nathan was unavailable, having thrown 42 pitches in the previous two days.

Ausmus’ strategies are easy to question. But what never seems to come up is this: The Tigers’ bullpen has generally been awful no matter what Ausmus has done. Maybe the issue is less with the managers’ deployment of the relievers and more with the simple performance of the players in uniform?

First let’s look at how we got here. The 2013 Tigers bullpen was consistently a problem, putting up a 4.01 ERA, among the worst in baseball, and that was with positive contributions from Drew Smyly and Joaquin Benoit, who went to the Tigers’ rotation and the Padres’ bullpen, respectively, for the 2014 season. In the postseason, Tigers relievers allowed 13 runs in 11 games, as many as the Cardinals gave up in 16 games.

GM Dave Dombrowski attempted to fix that by bringing in Nathan and Chamberlain via free agency, as well as adding Ian Krol in the much-maligned Doug Fister trade. Along with holdovers Phil Coke, Bruce Rondon, Evan Reed and Al Alburquerque, it seemed like they might be in better shape.

But it didn’t work out that way. Rondon reinjured his arm in the spring and never threw a regular-season pitch. Krol was disappointing, was sent to the minors, and didn’t even receive a token September recall. Reed wasn’t much better, then was hit with some off-field matters and spent most of his summer in Triple-A. Nathan’s problems with lessened velocity — a fastball that was once regularly around 95 mph now struggles to touch 92 — led to home run and walk issues as he continually tried to reinvent himself to adjust for his aging arm. Despite surprisingly good first halves from Alburquerque and Chamberlain, the first-half Tigers bullpen was still a disappointment.

Even with in-season efforts to fix the issue — trading for Soria, recalling rookie Blaine Hardy and rescuing Jim Johnson from the discard pile — it really hasn’t improved, as the table below shows.

Chamberlain’s magical first half (2.47 FIP) has collapsed in the second half (4.20 FIP), as he’s watched his strikeout percentage fall by nearly 10 percent, while his walk rate has increased by almost three percent. The latter point has been an issue across the entire Tigers bullpen, which turned a top-10 walk rate in the first half into the worst mark in baseball in the second half. That combined with a declining strikeout rate has led to that jump in FIP. (The bullpen’s homers allowed have remained constant.) Though the overall run prevention hasn’t changed much, they’ve had to work harder to get there, and it hasn’t been good in either half.

Stats such as ERA and strikeout percentage are context-independent, which is beneficial for player evaluation, because you want to understand what they did without the noise of situations that their teammates may have created. Of course, within the flow of a game, context is everything, and that’s what SD (Shutdowns) and MD (Meltdowns) are intended to convey. Intended to be an improvement for the irreparably flawed saves and blown saves statistics — shutdowns and meltdowns can be attained by any reliever, not just the closer — it’s a context-dependent stat that tracks whether a reliever helped (or hurt) his team by at least 6 percent with regard to Win Probability Added.

Looking at the bullpen through that metric, we can see that they’ve lagged behind in shutdowns, which mean the relievers haven’t often contributed greatly in big spots. More shocking, however, are the number of meltdowns, which have happened more in the second half, despite it being a “half” in name only (the Tigers had already played 91 games by the All-Star break). Nathan hasn’t been good, but Chamberlain, Coke and Alburquerque have all had more meltdowns in the second half.

The takeaway here is this just hasn’t been a good collection of relievers. They weren’t that great last season with Jim Leyland at the helm, and they haven’t been great with Ausmus, either.

None of this absolves Ausmus, who has certainly relied too heavily on the fading Chamberlain and struggling Nathan in recent weeks, but perhaps it’s easier than you would have thought to understand why he has. Soria hasn’t exactly been dominant since arriving, injuring his oblique and allowing two homers in 11 2/3 innings after not having given up one all year with Texas. His strikeout rate also has dropped precipitously. That’s not enough of a sample size to ignore how great he’d been with the Rangers. Then again, we also know that sometimes the most important situations in a game don’t come in the ninth inning, and if you do prefer Soria to Nathan, there’s an argument for using him in bigger spots.

Ausmus seems unlikely to suddenly swap his closers in the playoffs, so if Detroit has hope for improvement, perhaps it’s from an unexpected new face. Sanchez, one of the most dominant starters in the American League over the past two years, is expected to work in relief after missing most of the last two months with a pectoral strain. That will allow the Tigers to drop one of their lesser relievers — Johnson, perhaps — and add badly needed talent.

The question, then, becomes how will Sanchez be used? No one is expecting him to suddenly be the closer, but it would also seem to be a waste if he’s saved for long relief, watching idly by while a lesser pitcher kicks away a game in the late innings. Perhaps that will be the truest test of Ausmus’ bullpen strategy. He has hardly proved he’s able to pull the right strings; then again, there often haven’t been any good options for him to go with.