There's No "Bull" in this Pen
by Allen Eastman - 04/30/2007
On Sunday, I had a chance to watch one of the best (and longest) MLB games in a couple of years.
It was a 17-inning marathon that lasted four hours and 55 minutes and saw the Dodgers beat the Padres, 5-4. I saw an extraordinary performance from the LA bullpen (Beimel, Broxton, Tsao, Saenz, Saito and Billingsley), which combined for 10 and 2/3rd innings, allowing just one hit while striking out nine.
It got me thinking about my approach to betting and handicapping. I've always considered a team's bullpen more than I do a particular starter. Gone are the days of complete games when a Gibson, Koufax or Drysdale would go the distance. Now major league teams are lucky if they see one complete game a year from the entire staff. It's become a game of "specialists". Since I've already mentioned the Dodgers lets take a look at their "specialists". In manager Grady Little's perfect world he would get six or seven innings from his starter and turn the game over to the "pen". If a starter goes six innings for the Dodgers, you can expect to see Joe Beimel in the seventh, Jonathon Broxton in the eighth and Takashi Sasito in the ninth to close the deal.
Each team has their various "specialists' so I dug deeper to find out which teams besides the Dodgers can make a difference between a nice payday and a very bad beat.
So file this away and follow it each day in the box scores. The top five bullpens in baseball are:
New York Mets
Boston Red Sox
San Diego Padres
LA Dodgers
St. Louis Cardinals
The bullpens for all of the above teams started the week with earned run averages of UNDER 3.00 with the Mets leading the way at 2.12. Given that information it's no surprise that the Red Sox, Dodgers and Mets are among the top 10 "earners" in baseball this year. Thanks to the "specialists" and the elite closers for these teams: Billy Wagner, Jonathon Papelbon, Trevor Hoffman and Takashi Saito, it is no surprise that their respective clubs keep cashing in. These bullpens wont come through everyday. But I would certainly consider them before laying down -175 or -200 for a big name starter backed by a weak pen.