For MLB teams chasing October glory, building a bullpen is a vital — and confounding — exercise

 

[November 07, 2024]  By DAVID BRANDT

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — For a World Series that was supposed to feature an epic battle between sluggers Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, guys like Mark Leiter Jr., Luke Weaver, Alex Vesia and Anthony Banda sure got a lot of face time.

This year's Fall Classic provided further proof that a great bullpen is essential in baseball, particularly in the postseason. It also has led to concerns from people ranging from superagent Scott Boras to players' association head Tony Clark that the sport is abusing arms.

Regardless, building a quality bullpen remains a challenge.

“You need so many arms over the course of the season, and in the postseason, it’s even more magnified,” Los Angeles Angels general manager Perry Minasian said. “Quality arms, quality strikes. But quantity is a big deal, too. Where do you get it?”

The bullpen is usually an afterthought for casual baseball fans, particularly middle relievers, who don't get the spotlight of the ninth inning. They toil in relative anonymity while getting tough outs in tough situations and are much like NFL offensive linemen — noticed only when something goes terribly wrong.

The Dodgers used Vesia, Banda and Michael Kopech in four out of the five games of the World Series while Blake Treinen and Brusdar Graterol appeared in three games. They combined to throw 15 1/3 innings — often in high-leverage situations — and gave up five runs.

That's a 2.93 ERA.

For a bunch of guys only serious seamheads know, that's not too shabby.

“I have a lot of good players, and they understand that it’s about getting 27 outs a night,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “It could be anyone at any given moment.”

Building a big league bullpen is intriguing because cost isn't really the prohibitive factor, making it arguably the most egalitarian position in a sport that doesn't have a salary cap. Banda ($740,000), Vesia ($1 million), Treinen ($1 million), Kopech ($3 million) and Graterol ($2.7 million) made pocket change compared with their teammate Ohtani, who signed a record $700 million, 10-year deal last offseason.

Instead, it comes down to scouting, development and sometimes dumb luck. It's sometimes more art than science.

“I wish we knew,” said Erik Neander, Tampa Bay's president of baseball operations. “We would have won more games last year.”

Boras is among those who aren’t pleased with the way relievers are being used. Clay Holmes pitched for the Yankees in all five games of the World Series and there’s little doubt that pitchers — particularly relievers — are being pushed to exhaustion in October.

“We have got to stop burning up our beautiful young arms by pitching them in a way, in a manner, that we would never do during the (regular) season,” Boras said Wednesday.

Over the past 10 years, the average fastball velocity has risen from 93.3 mph to 95.5 during the 2024 regular season. Injury rates also have skyrocketed, with 484 pitchers going on the injured list this year, nearly double the 2014 total.

Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Blake Treinen celebrates the end of the eighth inning in Game 5 of the baseball World Series against the New York Yankees, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Regardless of how GMs feel about bullpen usage, the injury explosion is one more reason that finding consistent relievers is a difficult task.

Using valuable young arms in the bullpen is risky, but pursuing veteran relievers in free agency is also a crapshoot. Take the case of Treinen, a 36-year-old who has had a career that typifies the ups and downs of being a reliever.

He was an All-Star in 2018 with the Oakland Athletics, with a microscopic 0.78 ERA and 100 strikeouts over 80 1/3 innings. The next year, he fell off drastically with a 4.91 ERA.

The Dodgers thought he could bounce back in 2020 and they were right — he had a solid season and helped lead LA to a World Series title. It went so well that the Dodgers signed him to a two-year deal after the season. He was great again in 2021 but suffered a serious shoulder injury and missed almost the entire 2022 season.

He signed an extension but missed the 2023 season with the same shoulder injury and didn't return until 2024, when he bounced back again with a 1.93 ERA and another championship.

Now Treinen is back on the market.

“You can look at it multiple ways,” said Minasian, who was speaking generally and not about Treinen. “You might say: 'Wow, he's taken the ball a ton. He's been used drastically over the last three, four years, so I'm not sure what it's going to look like going forward,' or it could be: ‘Hey, he’s held up. He pitches. He's been consistent and takes the ball.'”

The Houston Astros are a team that's had a great bullpen over the last several years with pitchers like Hector Neris and Ryan Pressly. General manager Dana Brown said there's always volatility in the bullpen, but that's not all due to injuries.

“It's just the game today,” Brown said. “You have all this information, and sometimes the hitters, they study you. The film — they look at it. They find your weak spots and try to exploit you.”

Brown said one quality he likes in relievers is a sense of humility, understanding that they might have to change their strategy on the mound as their body deals with a long career.

“The guys who don't have a teachable spirit, or the aptitude, they sometimes get lost in the sauce,” Brown said.

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AP Baseball Writer Ronald Blum contributed to this report.

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