This year the Mets used 61 different players during the regular season. The last time they made the playoffs in 2016, they used 46. That’s why you hear so much more about the need for organizational depth than you did five years ago. The big change is on the number of pitchers a club uses. In 2016, the Mets used 22 pitchers. Last year that number was 32.
The 2016 Mets used 10 pitchers who did not start a game. The 2022 squad had 21 hurlers who were used exclusively in relief. That’s great news if you’re a journeyman reliever or organizational soldier who’s been plugging away for years in the farm system. It’s somewhat less than great for those of us who aren’t fans of 21st Century bullpen management.
Before we go any further, there are two things that need to be said. First, something that’s been mentioned here multiple times, is that Buck Showalter did a better job of managing the pen than any club manager in the Mets360 era. He gets those high marks because he understood that it’s not a good idea to consistently use a reliever three times in four days. And while he had some issues early on, Showalter didn’t chase the platoon advantage with crappy lefty relievers as much as his predecessors did. A low bar to clear, but a bar nonetheless.
The second thing that needs to be said is that the Mets’ bullpen in 2022 was pretty good. They finished 10th in the majors in ERA (3.55), ninth in WHIP (1.218) and 11th in OPS (.677). And those numbers are significantly better if you look at the relievers who did the bulk of the work. The top six relievers in IP combined for 340 IP and 106 ER for a 2.81 ERA.
Three of those six relievers are back in 2023, with the biggest loss being Trevor Williams and his 2.47 ERA in 51 IP. The other two who will not be returning had the fifth and sixth-highest ERAs of the top six. And they’re being replaced with David Robertson, who had a 2.40 ERA, a 1.162 WHIP and a .590 OPS in 63.2 IP and Brooks Raley, who had a 2.69 ERA, a 0.969 WHIP and a .542 OPS in 53.2 IP.
Let’s assume that the top five relievers on the 2023 Mets will put up similar rate stats to the top six relievers in 2022. So, how do you get better performance from the rest of the 1,000 relievers you use during the season?
First, let’s take a look at some of the issues the Mets’ pen had last season. Trevor May was counted on to be a primary reliever and he started off bad and then spent a lot of time on the IL. The Mets also carried two lefty relievers on the Opening Day roster and Joely Rodriguez and Chasen Shreve combined for 76.2 IP and 44 ER for a 5.17 ERA. Also, injuries to the starting rotation forced Williams out of the long relief role he excelled in for a couple of stints.
There’s not much you can do about injuries. But you can very easily stop being a slave to the idea that you simply must carry a lefty reliever, regardless of what type of numbers he puts up. Shreve was really good his first 10 outings of the year. His final 15 appearances were a different story, as he had a 10.43 ERA, a 1.977 WHIP and a 1.028 OPS in 14.2 IP before the team finally cut bait with him.
It’s never an easy thing to determine when a reliever is going through a standard rough patch compared to when he’s simply not the answer. Having said that, there’s little doubt in my mind if Shreve was just your basic righty reliever, he would have been gone after his outing on 6/11, where he gave up 3 ER, giving him 10 ER in his last 11.1 IP. Instead, he was allowed to appear in four more games, where he gave up 7 ER in 3.1 IP.
And while Rodriguez lasted the entire season, he hardly distinguished himself and absolutely no one is sorry that he won’t be returning.
When the Mets acquired Rodriguez last year, the overwhelming majority of fans responded with a groan. There wasn’t a lot in his track record about which to be excited. It’s different with Raley, who had good peripherals in 2021 and excellent results in 2022. The Mets should be starting with a better primary LH reliever option. And with Joey Lucchesi and David Peterson, there’s likely a much better secondary option, too. Also, Tayler Saucedo is an intriguing upside gamble that they can stash in the minors. The 2023 lefty relievers should be significantly better than the 2022 ones.
So, if the primary relievers are good, the pitching staff as a whole doesn’t get hit with too many injuries and the LH relievers are better than a season ago – is there anything else that can be done to improve the pen’s performance?
Ideally, your pitching staff includes relievers who can pitch multiple innings at a time. Williams last year had 13 relief appearances where he went at least 2 IP. Elieser Hernandez, Lucchesi, Tylor Megill and Peterson should all be capable of giving multiple innings when pitching in relief. If Showalter brings on, say, Peterson in the sixth inning and he pitches well, there’s no reason he shouldn’t be back in the seventh.
Also, it should be a team goal to give relievers a clean inning whenever possible. Last year, the Mets were burned chasing the Perverse Platoon Ploy (PPP), where they kept a reliever in when they didn’t have to, in order to get the platoon advantage in the following inning. If a lefty came on and got the final out in one inning but a lefty was due up first in the following inning, the Mets would bring the LOOGY back. And they did this same thing with righty relievers, too.
But too often the result was that the following inning, despite having the platoon advantage, the reliever put the man on base. So, when the subsequent reliever entered the game, he had to immediately pitch out of the stretch. And the results weren’t good.
Now, it’s impossible to always give relievers clean innings. Sometimes the starting pitcher loses it and sometimes you have a matchup that’s truly not favorable. And there’s nothing wrong with bringing a reliever on in mid-inning when that happens. The idea is not to create those unnecessarily, whether thru the PPP or by any other method. Pulling numbers out of thin air – if the Mets had 300 mid-inning pitching changes in 2022, they could look to eliminate 100 or more of those in 2023.
Finally, the Mets had multiple times last year where a reliever stepped up and pitched well, only to be sent to the minors the very next day to get a fresh arm. Much like with the mid-inning pitching change, sometimes this can’t be avoided. But it should be a goal to reward guys who pitch well with a continued shot in the majors. If every reliever isn’t running on fumes all of the time, maybe this can happen more often.
Bottom line is that you always have to be flexible. You can have all of the rules and goals you wish but it’s only a matter of time before something happens to royally screw things up. You go 16 days without an off day or your starter leaves the game early in back-to-back tilts or you play five straight games where you win by a single run. All of these situations and more leave you scrambling with your bullpen management.
But when things are relatively calm and normal, don’t make things harder than they have to be for your pen. Look for reasons to keep starters in for an extra inning. Look for situations for relievers to go more than one inning. Give relievers a clean inning whenever possible. Don’t view every lefty batter as Bryce Harper, one who needs to face a lefty pitcher. There are a lot of lefties who are quite ordinary and can be retired by righty pitchers.
If the lefty relievers are some combination of Raley, Lucchesi and Peterson – none of those guys need to be removed immediately if a good RHB comes to the plate. Raley has faced righties 263 times over the past two seasons and has limited them to a .677 OPS with a .292 BABIP. Lucchesi and Peterson are used to facing the top RHB in their roles as starters.
Not having to micro-manage the lefty relievers should make everyone’s job in the pen easier and that includes the manager, too.
If the team has normal injury rates and uses sensible bullpen management whenever possible, they should be able to avoid having to use 21 relievers who don’t start a game. If the club uses Diaz, Ottavino, Robertson, Raley, Smith, Brigham, Curtiss, Green, Ridings, Saucedo, Hunter, Montes de Oca and Nogosek – that’s 13 relievers, which would be a nice improvement from 2022.
That’s a lot of pitching depth. And when you include Hernandez, Lucchesi, Megill and Peterson as guys capable of both relieving and starting, the Mets head to the season with nine potential starters. Hopefully those nine pitchers give the Mets 150 or more starts. That depth gives the Mets 22 pitchers. Throw in three more for insurance and the club has a chance to use 25 pitchers instead of 32.
Better depth in the 40-man roster to start the season should lead to fewer pitchers (and position players) being used. Kudos to Billy Eppler for working to improve the depth. For a comparison, the 40-man roster in November of 2021 had the following players:
Yennsy Diaz
Robert Gsellman
Adam Oller
Thomas Szapucki
Jordan Yamamoto
Patrick Mazeika
Travis Blankenhorn
Robinson Cano
Dominic Smith
Mark Payton
Many people complain about Darin Ruf being on the 40-man today but how many of the above guys would you rather have in 2023, instead of Ruf? Khalil Lee was on both this November 2021 list and the current one. Who else from the current 40-man are you upset is being rostered? If you count Lee in both cases, you have 11 guys from the November 2021 list and two today. You can add Sean Reid-Foley to the 2021 list, too. I was done with him at that time but others still held out hope.
Undoubtedly, some of the guys on the current 40-man roster will not look good a year from now. But right now, the new guys on the 40-man both serve a purpose and look ready to contribute if/when given a chance, which is more than you can say for Diaz, Mazeika and Payton from the above list.
The depth has improved. Khalil Lee was even worse than we thought last year. At Syracuse, he hit .211 and struck out 139 times in 100 games. No thanks.
I thought the Mets may have gone after Luetge, but Atlanta picked him up for two minor leaguers.
Lee looked ok in 2021 because of a .402 BABIP. Minor league BABIPs are not directly comparable to MLB ones. But you need to get suspicious when they get to .360 or so and a .402 mark like Lee had should have been setting off major alarms.
You noted the lousy .211 AVG in his repeat season in Triple-A, which is not good. And that 33.3 K% is a giant worry, too.
I wonder if the Marlins had the choice between Lee and Mangum and took Mangum. FWIW, Mangum had a .383 BABIP in Triple-A last year. But his 15.5 K% was less than half of Lee’s.
Nice analysis. The pitching staff is much stronger from top to bottom starting with the expectation that we will get more than a handful of starts from Verlander versus what we came to expect from deGrom. That we pushed a 15 game winner with a less than 4 era in Corrasco down to the number 5 spot in the rotation is amazing. Our top three should be giving us 6 plus innings each time out that also shortens the reliance on the pen. And then replacing prospects in the pen with proven entities goes a long way to feeling stronger about a call to the pen. Now it’s up to Buck again to manage the pitching staff. With the elimination of the absurd shift and the widening of the bases, I see increased offense and stolen bases, the latter being a key to us as despite some fast runners we don’t put pressure on other teams by taking off for second base. So much for shortening game times, something I have never cared about. Now let’s keep our boys healthy and on the field.