Wednesday, September 17, 2003

 

Bullpen or Blowpen?

I'll be honest. The Giants bullpen has made me sad for the last month or so. I think it started the day Tim Worrell gave up that walk-off grand slam in Montreal. Maybe it started before that. But recently, the pen has worried the heck out of me, especially with the playoffs looming.

So let's go to the ERA stats and see if they really are worse in September than before. I'll just do a quick & dirty comparison of their September ERAs to their ERAs for 2003 as a whole. I'd love to do a WHIP comparison instead, but ESPN doesn't do WHIP splits by month. (That sounds painful, come to think of it.)

                        ERA

Pitcher        Sept. - 2003 =   SAR*      Sept. IP

Brower          4.91 - 4.07 =   0.84        7.1

Christiansen   16.20 - 5.24 =  10.96        1.2

Eyre            2.08 - 3.52 =  -1.44        4.1

Herges          1.69 - 2.81 =  -1.12        5.1

Nathan          4.77 - 3.12 =   1.65        5.2

Rodriguez       1.59 - 3.20 =  -1.61        5.2

Worrell         4.32 - 2.53 =   1.79        8.1

Zerbe           6.75 - 4.66 =   2.09        1.1



*September Awfulness Rating

As you can see, it's really a mixed bag. Worrell has been pretty bad this month, and has pitched the most innings in relief. But most of the rest of the guys are actually doing better, from a strictly ERA perspective, than I thought.

This doesn't really mean too much--ERA isn't really as complete a measure for relievers as it is for starters. (This is because relievers often inherit baserunners from the pitchers they're relieving.) And you can't really tell anything from a 5-8 inning sample.

But Worrell *has* been raising my blood pressure with his rocky outings, and I'm not entirely crazy! (At least, not for believing that.)

However, the Giants bullpen has the 7th best ERA in the major leagues in 2003. As a team, the Giants bullpen has an ERA of 3.56. Of the teams likely to make the playoffs, only the A's (3.48) and Astros (3.21) are better. (The Mariners bullpens has a 3.35 ERA, but I don't think they'll make it.)

So now that I think about it, the Giants bullpen should be a strength going into the playoffs.

Unless Worrell continues to suck.

Or something.

Jefferson 6:48 PM

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