If you asked most Mets fans coming into the season what their biggest worry about the team was, the most likely answer you would have received was the bullpen. And three games into 2021, the bullpen has done nothing to allay those fears. In 9 IP, relievers have allowed 6 ER and have a 1.778 WHIP. To be fair, two of the club’s top relievers have yet to pitch this season. Still, you can’t have your other relievers combine for numbers this rotten.

This prompts the question: Just how bad can your bullpen be and still be a playoff contender? The 2019 Mets won 86 games despite only two relievers that pitched at least 30 innings and who weren’t lousy. Let’s look at the clubs that won at least 90 games in 2019 and see how their bullpen shaped up. Let’s list the teams in ascending order of wins and indicate how many relievers they had who pitched at least 30 innings and who had an ERA+ of 100 or more:

91 – Cardinals – 6
93 – Nationals – 2
93 – Indians – 8
96 – Rays – 7
97 – A’s – 4
97 – Braves – 6
101 – Twins – 6
103 – Yankees – 7
106 – Dodgers – 4
107 – Astros – 5

Our 10 teams to reach 90 games averaged 5.5 average or better relievers in the pen. The big exception, of course, is the Nationals, who went on to win the World Series despite their thin bullpen. But even that’s misleading, as the Nationals’ bullpen in the second half of the season was bolstered with the acquisition of Daniel Hudson, who had a 1.44 ERA in 25 IP, which wasn’t enough innings to qualify for this list. And in the playoffs, three different starters saw action out of the bullpen.

Outside of the Nationals, every one of the other nine teams had at least four relievers who pitched at least 30 innings with a 100 ERA+ or better and six of those clubs had at least six of those bullpen assets.

The 2021 Mets expect Edwin Diaz, Seth Lugo and Trevor May to give them three good relievers. The question is if anyone else on the club can step up and give them an average or better performance in a meaningful number of innings. Clearly, they have high hopes for Miguel Castro and honestly it wouldn’t be a huge shock if he turned in a triple-digit ERA+, even if it was just by the skin of his teeth. Is that enough?

If Diaz pitches as well as he did last year, while Lugo and May repeat their 2019 performances, it probably is, as long as the starters pitch to their baseball cards and the hitters do a better job than they did yesterday with RISP. It will be up to the manager to ensure that at least two of his four good relievers are available each day. And that wasn’t the case in the third game of the season, with Castro and May likely unavailable due to heavy use in the first two games and Lugo on the IL.

Wednesday’s loss was on the offense and its inability to come up with a clutch hit. But, if it had produced a couple of those key hits, then we would have been looking at the bullpen, which allowed two inherited runners from the starter to score and also gave up two additional runs. Certainly, we shouldn’t let the starter off the hook here. But this was a game where they were going to have to score runs to win.

Each facet of the game – hitting, pitching, defense, managerial moves – will win and lose games during the season. The question is: How many will it be “acceptable” for the bullpen to lose? And perhaps the biggest question is how much overlap there will be with managerial moves in those bullpen losses?

9 comments on “How many average or better relievers does a 90-win team have?

  • Metsense

    Good thoughts to ponder. Four or less is iffy (30%), five is a maybe (40%)and six plus (60%) would be a solid bet. Diaz, Lugo, May and Castro make four or “iffy”. Loup or Familia makes it a “maybe” but the odds are not good for a combination of six relievers. Betances doesn’t look good . Barnes and Gsellman are below average. The way Rojas manages the bullpen, he needs 6+ relievers or change his style. Maybe he should push the starters more to eliminate innings for the relievers .

  • Name

    It’s probably worth showing the full list because there might not any be any correlation between # of “good” relievers and wins.
    I just looked at the 2019 105 loss Marlins team – they had 6 relievers of 30 IP, 100 ERA+. The 93 loss pirates had 5 + 1 reliever who missed the IP cutoff by 1 out.

    • Brian Joura

      It doesn’t have to be X amount of average relievers = success.

      It could be that you cannot have success without X amount of average relievers

      • Name

        Wouldn’t the Nationals having just 2 seem to exclude that possibility as well?

        • Brian Joura

          I guess it depends if you require 100% accuracy for proof of concept.

          If we go back another year, there were 11 teams that won 90 games and 10 of those had at least four relievers to meet the standard. Only the Indians didn’t. And much like with the Nationals in 2019, the Indians made a move to address the pen, adding Brad Hand and his 192 ERA+ in 27.2 IP, which wasn’t enough to qualify.

          So, 19 of the 21 teams to win at least 90 games in 2018-19 had four or more reliable relievers in their pen for a significant number of innings and the majority of those had six. And the two teams that didn’t went out and acquired a guy who gave an impact performance near the trade deadline.

          Perhaps the Mets would have been better off trading for Nick Anderson and his 209 ERA+ in 23 games down the stretch in 2019 than trading for Marcus Stroman.

  • studes

    If I’m interpreting your data correctly, I found 150 relievers in 2019 who met your criteria, or five per team, compared to 5.5 for your listed teams.

    • Brian Joura

      Thanks for doing the additional numbers. Doesn’t change what I wrote to Name.

  • MattyMets

    It’s gonna be hard to blame Rojas when 3 spots are taken up by potentially dead weight.

    • Brian Joura

      I’m sensitive to the fact that Rojas was forced to have Familia, Betances and Gsellman(?) on the roster. Betances is already gone, so that’s something.

      From a theoretical POV, is it easier to manage an 8-man pen if everyone is average or better and you have to be concerned with everyone’s workload or is it easier to have 5 guys you need to manage and 3 guys you use whenever it’s a blowout because you don’t really care about overworking or underworking them?

      I think you can make a case for either one.

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