THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Friday, June 04, 2010

Why managers don’t utilize their bullpen’s optimally…

Just something I’ve been thinking about…

Ideally, matchups and things like that aside, a manager very clearly should use his worst relievers in low leverage situations and their best relievers in high leverage situations.  In fact, I’ve always said that all bullpens should have one or two low-paid relievers whose only job is to pitch in the lowest leverage situations.  And they should sometimes pitcher 3 or 4 innings or however long they can without ruining their arms.

Anyway, managers often bring in good relievers in low leverage situations at the expense of being able to use them in other games in higher leverage situations or even in the same game if it happens to turn into a higher leverage situation.  You see that all the time.  Pay attention to the next 10 or 12 games you watch.  This is a terrible strategy of course.  Terrible.  At the end of the season, you want your best reliever (usually your closer of course) to have an average leverage of 2+, your next best, 1.5+, etc.  You want your worst reliever or two to have an average LI of maybe .7 or .8 (I’m not really sure).

So, why do managers incorrectly use good relievers in low leverage situations?  Because when they are up 3,4, or 5 (or even more) runs late in a game, they are scared to death of using bad relievers lest they blow the game.  They are also scared of the wrath they might receive from the media and their fans (and front office) if that happens.

if they are down 3,4, or 5 runs (or more) late in a game, they feel like they want to keep themselves in the game and give themselves a chance to get back into the game.

Of course, those reasons are fine for using your better relievers, if you had an unlimited number of high quality resources. But the bottom lime is that in the course of a season, you will have 175 innings available of quality relief (2-3 relievers), another 150 innings of average relief, and 125 innings or so of your worst relievers.  You will also have around 450 inning of relief to accommodate over the course of the season.  Those innings have to be used optimally. It would be nice to be able to use your better relievers with a fairly big lead or deficit, but you can’t.  You have to be willing to use your worst relievers (and use them hard - you can always replace them) in low leverage situations even it means blowing some late inning 4 or 5 run leads or not coming back when you are down 4 or 5 runs.

Managers typically use their worst relievers in blowouts (very, very high leverage situations) or when they run out of good relievers in games when the starter comes out early or in the NL when lots of pinch hitters are needed.

I don’t have ANY evidence to back up these assertions, but given the number of games I watch and how intently I watch them, I am pretty sure I am right (for the most part).  If someone wants to present some pertinent evidence for or against, I welcome it.