Nationals Baseball: Best Nats Pen ever?

Thursday, March 05, 2020

Best Nats Pen ever?

The Nats have a history of putting together flawed bullpen. Sometimes they feel like they lack that shutdown arm, other times it's an important piece that's been overlooked, sometimes it's a 4-7 that seems more suited for a non-contender. But this year the Nats appear to have a solid bullpen to start the season. Nationals World Series hero Sean Doolittle in the closer spot has been backed by Nationals World Series hero Will Harris in the set-up role, and Nationals World Series Hero Daniel Hudson will cover other important at bats and innings. These are three relievers who were solid contributors last year and Doolittle and Harris were among the best in the game in recent years.

But is that good enough?  One way to try to figure that out is comparing it with other Nats pens of the past and seeing how those pens were structured and ended up

I took a look at the Opening Day bullpens** for the Nats from 2013 on* and here are the pens in a nutshell

2013 : Strengthening a strength: This is a pen that came about when a tired Storen ran into fate and the Nats faltered in the 2012 NLDS. Boras convinced the Lerners that they needed Soriano. This gave the Nats in theory a fantastic 1-3  and what looked like a solid pen overall with 2012 plus pitchers Stammen, Mattheus and Duke and a live arm in HROD

Result : Middling. The big thing was Storen having a mental breakdown at being replaced effectively screwing with the back-end of the pen. Mattheus had been effective but lucky, and stopped being lucky. Duke had a fluky bad start and was dropped and H-Rod didn't develop.


2014 : SaS Redux: With everyone still under contract the Nats did it again with Detwiler replacing Duke and unknown Barret replacing HROD.  Blevins came in to be a lefty specialist. There was a little more concern this season mainly because trying again with Storen seemed like more of a gamble. But it was again pretty solid top to bottom.

Result : They were great. Storen screwed his head back on and performed. Soriano faded at the end but was good far longer than not. Only Blevins disappointed.


2015 : Experience? We don't need no stinking experience:  Soriano walked, Detwiler was cast away, and the Nats traded Clippard for a needed part and Blevins for spite leaving them way short on innings. They brought in a veteran arm in Matt Thorton to help and hoped a transitioned Roark would shore it up along with newcomers Treinen, Janssen, and Xavier Cedeno.

Results : Bad at first but eventually. Janssen was terrible, Storen wasn't lights-out, Barrett broke, Xavier Cedeno failed, and Roark never gelled. But the Nats found a piece, Felipe Rivero, who did well and eventually added Papelbon who stabilized the bullpen, though not the clubhouse, at years end.


2016 :  We choose you Papelbon : The Nats were stuck with two relievers they didn't want in Papelbon and Storen and got rid of the latter. Only Treinen and Rivero survived as the overhaul included a bunch of solid but unspectacular names Matt Belisle, Yusmiero Petit, Oliver Perez and the best of the lot Shawn Kelley.

Results : Great! Even with Papelbon crapping out, Rivero being off, and Perez and Petit not contributing much Dusty worked the pen like a master, leaning on the guys that did work (Treinen and Kelley) and some young arms like Sammy Solis. Trading Rivero for Melancon in the end worked great honestly. Impressive job without impressive talent.


2017 :  Make chicken salad again Dusty : The Nats did add Joe Blanton late in the spring but otherwise were leaning on Kelley to lead a group with little experience (Treinen, Solis, Glover and Enny Romero, who replacied Belisle and Petit) or who did poorly the year before Ollie Perez. It was a bad set-up

Results : Pretty bad. Basically Rizzo would go 0-fer in the bullpen and they'd have to cobble together something workable from trades (Doolittle/Madson, Kintzler), free agents (Albers), and some young guys (Grace).


2018 : Don't peek behind the curtain : The Nats would keep Doolittle Madson and Kintzler giving them inarguably the best Top 3 going into a season since 2012... and that was it.  Treinen was gone, part of the deal for Doo & Mad. Kelley would still be around but was broken and bad in 2017. The rest repeated the issues of 2017 with Solis, Grace, and Romero leading the no experience brigade with newcomer Gott, as Perez left. It was extremely top heavy

Results : Average. Some thing worked, some didn't with Madson's failure being most important setting off a chain reaction of digging into that soft underbelly. The Nats would find Justin Miller and Wander Suero to eat innings and help not completely waste Doolittle's great year. But eventually would cut bait with effective arms in Kintzler and Kelley in an angry mid-season panic leaving a mess behind.


2019 : One and done : The Nats set up a nearly all new bullpen keeping only Doolittle from the previous Opening Day.  By Gott, Solis, Romero! Grace and Suero would make it, along with Justin Miller to fill out the back end of the pen. Tony Sipp would be thrown in there too and honestly it wasn't a terrible mix. But to make up for the loss of the 7-8 guys the Nats threw their lot in with Kyle Barraclough, who was bad in the previous year, and Trevor Rosenthal who was hurt.

Results : The completely untrustworthy back-end imploded fast repeating the chain reaction from 2018 only worse. The rest of the pen was ok, but not good enough to cover for that, leading to the throw at the wall see what stick plan for the rest of the season. What stuck for a while was Fernando Rodney and Tanner Rainey but really only Daniel Hudson stood out and when push came to shove the Nats went to a two-man pen to make the magic work.


What did we learn? Well I'd say that depth is probably the most important. You need guys in every position that are passable even if they aren't the best. Injuries and failures happen, but so do found pieces every year so you can cover some spots, you just can't cover a lot of spots and that's what happens if you lack depth. Also you can't effectively cover for back-end issues well so really you have to do your best getting those Top 3 in and set and hope for the best. 

In 2019 I'd say they did an ok job with that Top 3. Remember Doolittle's 2019 wasn't great and Hudsons was a little fluky.  It's strong (assuming Harris is ok) but I'd like 2013s or 2018s group better. The rest of the pen - Rainey, Suero, Elias likely and ?.  That's pretty dicey and looks a lot like the pens they've been having since 2018 where the rest of the pen is just a wing and a prayer. Maybe this is the year it works out but with the Top 3 having now three injury concerns, (Hudson's history, Doolittle's history and 2019, Harris being hurt now) I'm concerned. Not a terrible pen but a couple solid vet pen arms you could probably have cheap would have made it a good one.

Coming In to a Season
Best Top 3 : 2013 probably. Soriano, Storen, Clippard should have been dominant. Then the Doo, Mad, Kintzler group, then this years.

Worst Top 3 : No doubt 2017's  attempt with Treinen, Kelley, and Glover.  Doolittle saves last year's group.

Best Pen : 2013 probably, though I'll listen to arguments for 2016 given Papelbon should have been better, most everyone in it was good in 2015, and the couple that weren't had recent history of being good. I think the better Top 3 gives 2013 the edge though.

Worst Pen : 2017 without a doubt. 2019 was set-up to fail but had a great closer and a reasonable 4-7.  2017 had nothing.  YOU KILLED DUSTY DAMMIT. 



*I don't consider 2012 a planned competitive season

** Big thanks to Federal Baseball for making these things a cinch to find

13 comments:

JWLumley said...

Bullpens are such a crapshoot, that I really agree that depth matters. However, for the Nats given their starting pitching, I think it matters less for them* than other teams because they typically have fewer innings to cover. If Joe Ross can return to being pre-TJ Joe Ross, he's an excellent #5 starter the first two times through the lineup, so in a given trip through the rotation you're looking at only covering 12-20 innings. The low end is somewhat unheard of in today's game. I think this year's bullpen will really come down to whether Harris is healthy and Doolittle can bounce back. If they can shut down the 8th and 9th, the Nats have enough arms that they should be able to get through the 6th and 7th most nights.

*Of course this is predicated on starters staying healthy, but if the Nats starters don't stay healthy, the season is pretty much shot anyway.

G Cracka X said...

Nice post! Fun to remember old bullpenners like Belisle and Enny Romero (though who is 2019 Romero?)

I respectfully disagree that that the 'pen knocked out Dusty. He was given a terrible hand to start with, did the best he could, and then Rizzo fixed it by bringing in KMD. Max and Gio gave up 7 of the 9 runs in the history-shifting NLDS G5 vs the Cubs. If the Nats win that game, I think the Lerners keep Dusty.

Ole PBN said...

I myself am not a fan of cross-sport analogies, however.... bullpen construction reminds me of how you build a football roster: building from the bottom-up; not the top-down. Top-down is "Doolittle is great, but everyone else stinks or is a question mark." We know that doesn't work. You're only as strong as you're weakest link.

Max said...

I expect a big acquisition or two at the deadline to improve the bull pen. They got the money!

Cautiously Pessimistic said...

Bullpen arms are mostly fungible. That's the main thing we've learned over the last few years. Just look at WAR or WPA for relievers over the last 5 years. The top 20 bounces around a ton with only a couple names being consistently there from one year to the next (Hader, Kimbrel, the pitcher formerly known as Felipe Rivero, Doo). Everyone else bounces up and down the charts.

My opinion is you can really only count on 1 arm to be a shutdown arm in a given year. The goal then is to construct a bullpen that either has a bunch of potential shutdown arms, or a bunch of consistent but not necessarily shutdown arms, or some blend of the two. Having an excellent top 3 is a pipe dream in my book and cannot be "planned" for, it just happens.

So looking at this year, I'm meh because I believe there is no "shutdown" arm except maybe Doo (I'm worried about his workload from last year...). But then everyone else is either consistent (Hudson, Harris, Elias), has the potential (Rainey), or has a potential to be garbage (Suero, Strickland, etc).

So I think there's still some work that could be done to improve the bullpen, but it definitely isn't the worst bullpen the Nats have thrown out there.

Kevin Rusch said...

Here's an interesting thought in Hudson -- he was pretty seriously meh for years, then he got here and was unstoppable. Do you suppose he (and/or Menhart) figured something out? If the nats thought they'd just caught lightning in a bottle, they probably wouldn't have brought him back on a multi-year deal.

Anyway, the fungibility of relief makes me wonder if we're not doing it all wrong. What if the bullpen were mostly built around 4 #7 starters (think Fedde) whose job it was to pitch several innings a day but in fewer outings? (think Gossage) Then you could have a couple one-inning guys for spot work and/or getting out of particularly tight jams. But a long man who's mostly a starter, pitching his 3rd inning of work in the 9th inning of the game shouldn't be that much less effective than Doolittle.

SM said...

Find three Goose Gossages and the baseball world's your oyster. Good luck, Mr. Phelps.
This tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds.

Mr. T said...

@Kevin, yeah that's how they used to do it. Problem is, there aren't enough good guys like that. If you got Gossage, great--but who pitches 7-8-9 tomorrow, and the day after that?

Also, a bullpen full of Feddes would...not be very good? That's why Doolittle is closing and Fedde isn't?

Ric said...

Cautiously Pessimistic said: "Just look at WAR or WPA for relievers over the last 5 years. The top 20 bounces around a ton with only a couple names being consistently there from one year to the next (Hader, Kimbrel, the pitcher formerly known as Felipe Rivero, Doo)"

Doolittle has hardly been consistently in the top 20 from one year to the next. In the last five years, Doolittle has ranked 69th, 9th, 18th, 88th, and 135th (fangraphs WAR).

Cautiously Pessimistic said...

@Ric,

Sorry I should have phrased that better, but you make my point. Very few relievers have two consecutive good years. Doo had the two years of 9th and 18th, but the rest were quite a bit lower. Even pitchers like Chapman or Miller or Kimbrel or Hader have trouble staying at the top of the leaderboard, which I'd consider the "shutdown" pitchers.

All this is to say, the bullpen is a crapshoot and you're better off filling it with people are consistently in the top 100-150 and hope you catch lightening in a bottle

blovy8 said...

I find it difficult to describe Soriano as shutdown after watching him continually have baserunners on, seemingly allergic to clean innings

I think the priorities are correct. Would you rather have a bad rotation, bad starting lineup, or bad bullpen?

Ole PBN said...

@Harper - just realized that this site is “still a no cabbage zone.” Not even for the 2019 defending World Series champions?? We all know the cabbage smashing during the tough times was behind that championship run!

Harper said...

Ole PBN - I find your cabbage take insulting. Obviously the turn from cabbage to no cabbage was instrumental in them turning it around. The facts are clear. I'll change the masthead though.