The follow-up to Jeurys Familia’s initial bad stretch of the 2021 season

On the morning of July 22, the question was asked here: How will Jeurys Familia rebound from his lousy stretch? What followed was an even-handed look at the question, showing how Familia had done in both his good seasons and bad ones, as he had a lousy stretch in each of those. Also, the July 22 piece provided a reason for both optimism and pessimism, allowing the reader to determine which one would be more predictive of his future output.

Well, we’ve had eight appearances by Familia since that piece and the news is not great. The original poor stretch for Familia was an 8.64 ERA with a .909 OPS allowed. He followed that up with five scoreless appearances but then proceeded to go on another rotten stretch. In Familia’s last five games, a span of 4.1 IP, he has a 10.38 ERA and a 1.113 OPS allowed. At this point, absolutely no one should want to see Familia enter a close game.

How did we go from the early season success to the rotten results here lately?

In his first 12 games of the year, Familia had a 0.84 ERA and a .665 OPS allowed. Those are great numbers but his WHIP was showing a different tale. In those first 10.2 IP, when things appeared rosy, Familia had a 1.594 WHIP – which is not the stuff of which good seasons are made. The narrative developed that the only hits he was giving up were bloops and bleeders. And at the time, that was 100% true.

The problem was that the bloops and bleeders were getting all of the attention. No one talked very much about the balls that were squared up but hit directly at fielders or ones where the outfielders could run and make the catch. The cheap hits weren’t going to last all season. But neither were the bullets hit that consistently found a glove.

In his last 27 games since that strong opening to the 2021 season, Familia has a 5.40 ERA and a .795 OPS allowed in 26.2 IP. And while his number of baserunners allowed has actually gone down, no one should feel good about a 1.463 WHIP.

No one talks about the bloops and bleeders anymore.

It’s hard to focus on weak contact – if they’re even still a thing – when the rockets are falling in for hits. Let’s look at Thursday’s game against the Marlins. Familia started off the inning with a weak groundout. It appeared he had the next batter out but what could/should have been strike three was instead called ball four. Here’s the strike zone plot for that critical PA. Look at pitch #6, which was called a ball.

If we had a computerized strike zone, all of the pitchers would get their strikes called correctly. Now, this wasn’t the only blown call of the night and the Mets were also the recipients of good fortune on calls by the home plate ump. But this was a critical situation and turned two outs and nobody on into one out, a runner on base and a flustered pitcher.

And here’s what the next three hitters did:

A single with an exit velocity of 102.6
A single with an exit velocity of 102
A double with an exit velocity of 107.3

Rich Hill started Thursday’s game and allowed one ball with an exit velocity over 100 to the 19 batters he faced in the game. Familia allowed three in a row to the five batters he faced. A veteran pitcher has to be able to shake it off when a call doesn’t go his way. The ump may have blown the call. But Familia was the one who proceeded to allow three straight hits with an exit velo over 100.

Luis Rojas has a really difficult job managing his bullpen when his starters have gone 14 games in a row without completing six innings. And it was made tougher with Edwin Diaz unavailable the past couple of games. So, he gets a little slack for constantly having to get double digit number of outs from his pen.

Having said that, he has to take blame for placing Familia in such a high-leverage spot. A 1-1 game in the bottom of the eighth is not exactly the time to use Familia. Miguel Castro enters the game in the sixth inning and has a pLI of 0.98 while Familia had 2.04 pLI. Now, no one should be doing cartwheels about using Castro in the eighth inning of a tie game. But he was clearly a better choice than Familia.

Since the conclusion of his rough patch on July 7, Castro has 12.1 IP with a 1.46 ERA, .541 OPS allowed and a 1.297 WHIP. That’s more innings with a better WHIP, OPS and ERA than Familia. Why use Familia in the more important spot of the game?

No reliever is perfect and if a player is on your roster, you have to be prepared to use him. But you want to put him in the best position for him to succeed. You had to know going into a game started by Hill that you’re going to have to use your pen no later than the sixth inning. Diaz is out, you’re holding Trevor May for the ninth inning and you don’t want to use Seth Lugo. So how do you prepare to use your relievers in a tight game?

Planning to use Familia in the eighth inning of a tie game is a poor decision that should be fair game to criticize.

One last note on Familia – He’s given up runs in nine of his 39 games this year, or 23% of the time. That’s not good but it’s not awful, either. But what’s problematic is that five of those nine times he’s allowed runs, it’s been a crooked number. Generally, he’s not giving up a triple and a sac fly. Rather, he’s allowing multiple hits to allow multiple runs to score. While he’s surrendered five gopher balls this year, four of them have been solo shots.

It would probably be prudent to have the guy who would mop up for bad Familia – yesterday that was Yennsy Diaz – start stretching and getting ready as soon as Familia enters the game. When he allows a hit, mop up reliever goes from stretching to throwing. If they had done that, Diaz could have been called on a batter earlier, before Familia allowed the two-run double. Now, the results might have been exactly the same. But once Familia has allowed two rockets, maybe the plan should be not to allow him to remain in the game to allow a third.