Mets get first-hand experience against all-righty bullpen

Generally speaking, Interleague games are not my favorites. My preference is for a balanced schedule and you simply cannot have that with Interleague games. Be that as it may, the last two games against the Angels have been fun, even if they have both been four-hour affairs that required extra innings. There’s the joy of seeing Mike Trout, the chance to once again see Albert Pujols and even old friends Collin Cowgill and Joe Smith are around.

But the best thing about the Angels is their willingness to do a bullpen with zero lefty relievers.

Amazingly, there’s nothing in the rule book preventing this, although one could be forgiven for thinking this since every team in recent years has acted like it was written in stone. Despite the fact there are 30 teams in MLB, there is a lot of – you could easily argue too much – similarity in how all teams operate. There is great pressure to do what every other team is doing, despite what the results for individual teams may be.

If a strategy does not work for your team, you shrug it off, saying, “Well, every team does it so we have to do the same!” It’s a CYA approach, designed to save a manager’s hide, rather than doing what it takes to maximize the talent on hand and optimize wins for the team.

The Mets are a fairly lefty-heavy team and with the first two games going into extra innings, we have had a chance to see a lot of the Angels’ relievers. Here’s how have the Mets’ LHB have done against the all-righty Angels’ pen:

	AB	H	BB	HBP	SAC
Ike Davis	2		2
Lucas Duda	4		1
Curtis Granderson	5	1
Daniel Murphy	6	1
Omar Quintanilla	4	3
Eric Young Jr.	3			1	1
Total	24	5	3	1	1

The lefty batters for the Mets have amassed a .208/.321/.208 for a .529 OPS in 29 PA against the Angels’ righty relievers. And it’s not like the Angels have a great bullpen – no one on the squad is a threat to make the All-Star team and the bullpen has a 4.72 ERA as a group. But their problem has not been their performance versus lefties. The Angels have used eight relievers this year and LHB have gone 17-82 for a .207 AVG against.

The best thing about the no-lefty bullpen is it eliminates the need to carry guys who cannot pitch a full inning on a regular basis. Imagine no games like Friday, where the Mets used three pitchers to get through one inning, as Terry Collins brought in Scott Rice to face a lefty. Rice gave up a walk and was removed so he wouldn’t have to get lit up by the righty batter that followed.

The Mets insist on carrying two lefty relievers so they can play the matchup game, getting their lefty relievers to face lefty batters, expecting them to carry a big advantage in these situations. Lefty batters are 4-13 against the Mets’ two lefty relievers this year, a .308 AVG.

All of the numbers above are small samples and should not be viewed as definitive proof. But we have over three years worth of data on Collins and how he chooses to run the bullpen and the results have not been pretty.

The numbers that Tim Byrdak and Rice have put up against lefties in their career with the Mets have generally been quite good. But the simple fact is that there are not enough lefty batters to face to make their strong performances versus LHB make up for their performances against RHB. And we also have to take into account how micromanaging the LOOGYs impacts the rest of the pen.

When you need to burn three pitches to finish an inning because your LOOGY cannot be trusted to face any RHB in a spot with a runner on base, you end up making your short relievers have to go multiple innings. Friday’s game was lost when Jeurys Familia was on his third inning of relief. And while that’s the most recent case, it’s hardly an isolated incident.

For over three years now, we’ve seen the Mets let the tail wag the dog when it comes to their bullpen management. Their whole approach has been to maximize the effectiveness of their lefty relievers – the guys who pitch the least amount of innings. As long as Rice can consistently have one and two-batter appearances with the platoon advantage and nothing more, the rest of the bullpen will have to go longer stretches to make up for the workload shortfall.

Rice has been in five games, faced nine batters and has a 10.80 ERA and a 2.400 WHIP. Meanwhile, the five righties in the bullpen have all faced between 22 and 29 batters. Carlos Torres can’t be used today because he’s pitched in three straight games, Gonzalez Germen has appeared in three of the last four games and while Collins would like to give him today off, he’ll be in there in a big spot before Rice if the batter is a righty because a tired Germen is still a better option.

Extra inning games are tough on any bullpen. But the way the Mets choose to operate their pen – from both construction and utilization points of view – it’s tougher on them than other teams. As a converted starter in his first year as a reliever, John Lannan won’t pitch today after going two innings Saturday. Torres is also out. The strong preference is for Germen not to pitch.

That leaves the Mets with four relievers. One of those got pounded last night and another was unavailable yesterday because of over use. It would be nice if the remaining two relievers could cover 3-4 innings in today’s game but with Rice virtually useless versus RHB, that simply won’t happen.

And that’s a problem that Mike Scioscia simply does not have with his all-righty bullpen.