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Texas Rangers 2024: Run It Back

ztejas

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gofuckyourself
gofuckyourself

117 wins. Sweep the bitchass Astros regular season and playoffs. Carter/Langford co-rookie of the year Eovaldi Cy Young Seager MVP Bochy MoY Back-to-back champs. LET

shadow_operative2.0
shadow_operative2.0

Congrats Angel, you have the record now! 

Jameslaw121
Jameslaw121

gonna cross post this. But during the Rangers/Astros game my 5 year old daughter comes out and see an Astros player bating(It was Yainer Diaz, not Altuve). Her "Is that short fuck Altuve?"  

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28 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

The whole “no defined roles in the bullpen” thing is bogus.  He’s pushing a closer. And where was Sborz today?

Was warming up for the Leclerc collapse. 

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gofuckyourself

gofuckyourself 8941

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Long ass + article about bullpens.

Here's hoping ours doesn't open up like the roof.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/39873751/houston-astros-texas-rangers-building-bullpens

What Astros, Rangers can teach us about building bullpens

Spoiler

The Houston Astros needed to find help for their bullpen over the winter. They did not need a closer, not really -- but they signed one anyway.

And not just any closer. The Astros landed Josh Hader, the top free agent reliever, and perhaps the game's best current fireman, with the largest present-value contract a reliever has ever signed. Now they have two closers, though it will be Hader who gets the bulk of the save opportunities that were once the domain of Houston's incumbent closer, Ryan Pressly.

"Our main offseason target was to strengthen the bullpen," Astros GM Dana Brown said during the spring, summing up an otherwise relatively quiet winter for Houston.

Sounds good, but locking in the game's best closer isn't the only way to go about improving a relief corps. Here's a closer look at how some of the league's best bullpens have been built, as well as a deep dive into the strategy of the Astros -- and their opponents this weekend, the AL West rival Texas Rangers.

Astros vs. Rangers: Big splash vs. volume play

The Astros-Rangers rivalry has become one of baseball's best, heating gradually ever since Houston moved over to the American League, fueled by a few on-field disagreements. Things simmered last summer thanks to the Rangers' rise, as the two combatants vied for the AL West crown all summer. Finally it boiled over in October, when the Astros and Rangers played a seven-game ALCS.

Now that rivalry extends into the realm of the baseball wonks and the area of bullpen architecture, thanks to their juxtaposed approaches to the winter.

The Hader contract is the second-largest free agent deal Houston has ever doled out in terms of guaranteed money, according to Cot's Contracts. The only one bigger was the six-year, $100 million pact signed by 31-year-old outfielder Carlos Lee in 2006. This was not a typical splash for the Astros, especially under present ownership.

For a franchise that has morphed into a dynasty on the strength of innovation and efficiency, the Hader contract was a stunner. The bold move was motivated by the Astros' offseason exodus of relievers, a list that included free agents Ryne Stanek and Phil Maton, the loss of Hector Neris, who declined a player option, and the absence of Kendall Graveman, who is out for the season after shoulder surgery.

Those four lost bullpen arms accounted for half the Houston relievers with enough innings to qualify for rate statistics last season. Yet none of them was the Astros' closer. That would be Pressly, who saved 90 games for Houston over the last three seasons, plus 10 more in the postseason.

The obvious strategy would have been to target relievers in bulk to build back the lost depth. Instead, the only reliever Houston signed over the winter to a big league contract was Hader, who found himself back with the franchise that traded him to Milwaukee back in 2015, when the Astros were just exiting their rebuild.

"We guys had who left who were pitching in the middle for us," Brown said. "When we started looking at bullpen help, it was expensive just to get a guy for the seventh inning. So we figured, man, if we're going to spend this much, let's just go and get Hader. So we went and got Hader, and that pushed everyone down [in the bullpen hierarchy]."

After seven straight American League Championship Series appearances, Houston is far removed from the rebuild from which Hader originally emerged. And Hader is far removed from his days as a minor league starting pitcher. While the Astros lost a lot over the winter, they still have a number of pitchers now lockering around Hader who have gotten really big outs in the biggest of games.

"This game is hard as it is, but on this team, you've got guys who were in some really big games," Hader said. "My goal is to not just win the World Series but win multiple World Series."

If he does so, he'll do it with the Astros, and not the defending champion Rangers, where he seemed like an ideal on-paper fit. Texas took the crown despite a season-long experiment in ad hoc bullpen construction and management, and the complexities of that bullpen project were on display for the champs again before the 2024 season even began.

Before the opener against the Chicago Cubs, the Rangers presented the Commissioner's Trophy to their fans at Globe Life Field for the first time. They couldn't do so when they won the title last November, since the Game 5 clincher was in Arizona. Before the team raised its title banner on March 28, the trophy was displayed on a pedestal at home plate and a little ceremony was held. Manager Bruce Bochy addressed the crowd.

Standing next to Bochy was one player, reliever Josh Sborz, who on the first day of last November struck out Ketel Marte to earn a seven-out save and become the first-ever Rangers pitcher to record a title-winning pitch. How unlikely was that? When the playoffs began last fall, Sborz owned one career save and a 5.08 career ERA.

That last out capped a meandering journey in which the Rangers burned through 26 different relievers on their way to a 26th-place finish in bullpen win probability added, per FanGraphs. No one symbolized that roller coaster more than Sborz. The onetime Dodger was one of baseball's top relievers early last season, then fell off badly amid a Texas staff running on fumes. Then he gave up one run in 12 playoff innings (0.75 ERA) and got the most important out in franchise history.

That's the uncertainty of relief pitching on display. And it's an uncertainty Texas general manager Chris Young was not content to accept as unavoidable. Instead of leaping into the fray for a shiny free agent addition like Hader, he tasked his front office staff with studying bullpens. Who has had the best ones? How have they done it?

"We did an internal review of the best bullpens and kind of came up with some similarities," Young said. "I wouldn't say that it dictated every aspect of our decision-making, but you want different arm angles and different looks for different lineups. Obviously swing and miss is a critical item for a good bullpen. And having guys who can sink it, ride it, sweep it, spin it from the left and the right side, a lot of different things go into it."

As you might expect, Young didn't get too deep into specifics, but the Rangers' approach to addressing the bullpen says a lot. Sure, signing Hader would have locked down the back end and moved everyone else into lower-leverage roles. But Young was more focused on depth and flexibility than specific job descriptions.

The Rangers added no fewer than 13 relievers over the winter. All but two of those firemen signed minor league pacts. The pair who landed big league deals got just a single year apiece -- former closers David Robertson and Kirby Yates. After a fierce (and crowded) spring training, Robertson, Yates and veteran combo pitcher Jose Urena are on the big league roster, and most of the minor league invites now largely comprise Texas' bullpen at Triple-A Round Rock.

That Round Rock development wasn't assured, as any veteran on a minor league deal who doesn't make the Opening Day roster can opt for free agency at the end of spring training.

"They're great people," Young said. "I really enjoyed getting to know them during spring training. Very happy they stayed, because we're going to need maybe all of them at some point."

There will be travails. The Rangers will have to dip into that added depth frequently, as all good teams have to do. It's particularly important for Texas, which needs to protect its bullpen back end because innings will be crucial in the early going while the team awaits the return of injured rotation stars Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom and Taylor Mahle.

If it all goes according to plan, that back of the bullpen may not feature the elite ninth-inning hammer of Hader, but it will be deeper than a season ago. Now, in the highest-leverage games, you can picture Bochy turning to his bullpen to protect a lead as early as the sixth inning, while some order of Robertson, Sborz, Yates and Jose Leclerc trot out of the bullpen.

It's a formula written in chalk, not ink. That's kind of the point.

"We're in a better situation now than we were last year," Bochy said. "Mainly, Leclerc's healthy and you acquire Roberts and Yates, and Sborz is healthy. We're much better down there."

What we learn from the rest of the league

As the Astros and Rangers show, there's no one way to build a bullpen. But there are a few rules that most -- if not all -- teams live by, and a few elements of putting together a squad that are universal.

"If we do our jobs correctly, with the data we have, we should be able to put together, at worst, a league-average bullpen," Young said. "If we can develop internally and keep on top of the waiver wire, you should be able to be serviceable -- at a minimum."

Here's the top five bullpens over the past three years, based on win probability added (WPA) at the team bullpen level, expressed as an index (where 100 is average):

1. Los Angeles Dodgers (bullpen index of 112.9)

2. Seattle Mariners (110.2)

3. Milwaukee Brewers (109.0)

4. New York Yankees (108.8)

5. Toronto Blue Jays (105.4)

The Dodgers, Mariners and Yankees have been among the six teams to be above average in each of the past three seasons, along with the Atlanta Braves, Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox. The highest single-season index was the 2023 Brewers (121.4). The Astros rank ninth with an index of 103.9.

Now here are the bottom five:

26. Rangers (91.7)

27. Kansas City Royals (90.1)

28. Oakland Athletics (88.2)

29. Washington Nationals (86.9)

30. Arizona Diamondbacks (83.6)

Both of our 2023 World Series opponents land here. Texas and Arizona were similar as breakout teams emerging from rebuilding situations during which the bullpen is often the last area addressed. Both teams carried their bullpen woes into their breakout campaigns (Arizona ranked 16th in bullpen WPA) but found the right combination at the right time in October.

During the early part of this season, Arizona has mostly relied on the bullpen mix that got it through October, though the D-backs have had to work around an early injury to closer Paul Sewald. The Rangers, on the other hand, have a very different look even with Sborz and Leclerc back in key roles.

As for those top-tier bullpens, they are a mixed bag in terms of strategy, but one obvious point is that, of the top five, only the Blue Jays have had the same closer for all three years (Jordan Romano). In fact, Romano is one of three pitchers to earn at least 90 saves over the last three seasons with the same team. The others: Emmanuel Clase of Cleveland (the sixth-ranked team by bullpen index) ... and Pressly.

For these elite bullpen teams, it's more common to emphasize depth and complementary fit than to lean too heavily on any one reliever.

"Ideally, you're giving your manager and your coaching staff a bunch of different types of weapons," said New York Mets lead executive David Stearns, the architect of so many strong bullpens in Milwaukee. "You're giving the manager the guys who can get different types of hitters out, who have different stuff packages and come from different arm angles.

Sounds simple, but Stearns quickly added, "I have also found it is extremely difficult to predict bullpen guys, except for the handful of elite guys who do it year in and year out. It's a really tough job to go down there and pitch 65 or 70 games a year. Some years it works for guys, and some years it doesn't."

You have to be flexible, which arguably is made more difficult when you lock in someone like Hader to such a long, expensive pact. The Dodgers still had Kenley Jansen during the first season of the window we're looking at. Jansen was one of the few relievers to get a long contract, but once that was done, the Dodgers began rotating save chances for the most part. The Brewers (under Stearns) and Mariners both traded closers (Hader and Sewald, respectively) in the midst of contending seasons. Clay Holmes has gotten the most save opportunities for the Yankees, but they've been flexible in this area as well.

That's not to deny that having that back-end hammer clarifies matters. Hader has been that for two playoff teams and counting (Brewers, Padres and soon likely the Astros). He was replaced in that role in Milwaukee by an elite closer in Devin Williams, who was his setup guy before that -- just as Hader had once been for Corey Knebel.

There is no one way. And the Astros' newest approach is in itself novel, if expensive. Not only is Hader's five-year pact a rarity for a reliever, but it's also rare for an established big-name closer still producing well, as Pressly was, to be shifted into a lower-leverage slot. But that's what's happening to Pressly, who is in the last year of his contract with Houston.

"I'll say it this way, Pressly is not one of these guys who wants to hand his job to anyone," Brown said. "He's an absolute competitor. He's been really good in the closer role for multiple years for this club. He's been almost perfect in the postseason. At the end of the day, he's also a true professional and if we add a guy like Hader, the team is even better."

Ego plays a part, but on a well-functioning team, winning trumps all. Hader has been on all sides of this.

"It's huge for [Astros manager Joe] Espada to know he can count on guys in big situations," Hader said. "A lot of times, it's one run that matters, especially when you're going against other teams' bullpens that may be really deep. When you have guys like we do, it gives that confidence that guys are going to go in and do their job."

The onus for making all of this work falls on the manager, in conjunction with the pitching coach and his underlings. The buck stops with the skipper, though, and it was Craig Counsell's established ability in bullpen management that was arguably why he landed the biggest managerial contract ever from the Cubs over the winter.

"[The important thing] is communication with one another, in how they recover and bounce back," Hader said, "but also, it's a long season. Games are important. What [Counsell] did really well was not blow you out early so that when you were in August and September and you needed those big, big wins, you were on edge, but you weren't worried about it because you were in a long run, not a sprint. I think that's the most important part."

Hader made those comments during spring training. During the opening week of the season, he pitched in four of Houston's first seven games. Two of those appearances were low-leverage outings. Under Counsell, Hader had just three low-leverage outings in all of 2019, during which he recorded 37 saves.

One rule to remember: Experience matters

If no bullpen construction rule is hard and fast, this one might come closest: Teams find their most important relievers from the pool of relievers who were in the major leagues the previous season.

To answer the simple-sounding but impossibly difficult question of "Where do relievers come from?" we looked at the makeup of bullpens from that 2021-23 period.

To do that, each reliever was placed on one of three tiers, based on importance of role. Tier 1 are the guys who get the saves and hold chances for the most part. Tier 2 are the middle-leverage types who are important but don't pick up many of the lead-protection stats.

Tier 3 is everyone else, and there are a lot of those. Of 4,396 reliever seasons since 2018, about 42% of them didn't contain a single save opportunity. There were five or fewer save opportunities in 74% of the reliever seasons. It truly takes a village to fill bullpen innings. Of 2,176 reliever seasons between 2021 and 2023, roughly half of them were comprised of 16 innings or fewer.

Also, each reliever was classified based on what he was doing the season before. The classifications are: MLB starter, MLB reliever, minor league starter, minor league reliever and other. "Other" can be a lot of things, such as did not play because of injury, played overseas or, in a handful of cases, the player was pitching at the college level.

Overall, the first thing you notice is that the relievers most relied on for holds and saves, i.e., the high-leverage innings, tended to be relievers the season before. Among Tier 1 relievers, 83% of them were MLB relievers the prior season. Another 8% were relievers in the minors. There was a smattering of MLB starter conversions (1.6%) and very few minor league starter conversions (0.6%).

Still, new relievers have to be uncovered. You find this most in Tier 3, where just 30% of the pitchers were MLB relievers the season before. Over 21% of the relievers on this tier were full-time starters the year before, either in the minors of the majors. On the lowest tier, the relievers can come from anywhere and the attrition rate is sky high.

Well, in general, relievers can come from anywhere, but the most important roles are typically filled by those established in the job. You see this reflected in the makeup of the pitchers Texas targeted over the winter. All 13 of those pitchers were relievers, age 28 or older, and they averaged 5.8 years of service time. All of them are the right profile for a top-tier reliever but, alluding to Stearns' comments on variability, you don't know what you're going to get from most of them. That's why the quantity of options is so important.

Meanwhile, in addition to Hader, the Astros added Tayler Scott and Wander Suero on minor league deals and traded for Dylan Coleman. Scott and Coleman both have just over a year of big league service time. The acquisitions were a lot more targeted than the Rangers' pickups, even though Houston arguably had just as much need for quantity. But the Astros instead went with the big splash in Hader and will rely on internal options for depth.

"We pushed Pressly to the eighth, and [Bryan] Abreu to the seventh," Brown said. "Now what we're doing is trying to figure out what we're going to do if our starters get into trouble between innings five and six, because we feel like our back end is as good as anybody."

There is also this: According to Cot's Contracts, the seven pitchers who comprised Houston's Opening Day bullpen will earn a collective $47.5 million this season. That figure for Texas's eight relievers is $26 million.

Which approach is better -- the big-splash bullpen, or the crowdsourcing/depth approach? We'll find out, starting this weekend when the Astros and Rangers meet for the first time this season. The outcome will be determined not by the production of any one reliever, but how all of them fit together and function as a unit to be deployed by their managers, situation by situation.

It's all another chapter in the rapid and ongoing evolution of what bullpens look like.

Rangers vice president and consultant Dayton Moore constructed a championship-winning bullpen during his long tenure as the baseball chief in Kansas City. Moore used to describe his approach with a visualization: Imagine an open hand, finger extended. All five fingers are unique in themselves but to make a hand, they all have to fit together. If they do and you close your hand and make a fist, you might just have the bullpen hammer championship teams need.

Young has learned a lot from Moore, for whom he played when Kansas City won the 2015 World Series. But during the relatively short time since that happened, a lot has changed in the relief pitcher world. More of them are needed and, thanks to advanced tracking metrics that capture precisely the behavior of every pitch, the problem of the bullpen fist grows only more complicated.

"There's at least eight prongs now," Young said, laughing. "I really think there is. That extends into Triple-A, too, in that you want to have 14-15 deep. And sometimes, you just have to ride the hot hand, too."

 

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ztejas

ztejas 44114

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9 minutes ago, George said:

They still doing Friday Night Fireworks? We’re headed out to the game tonight. 

There's gonna be some fuckin fireworks when Adolis is at the plate.

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ztejas

ztejas 44114

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I bent over and let apple fuck me for $9.99.

I will say - the quality on their sports broadcasts is excellent. It's the locking me out of watching my teams part I'm not a fan of. 

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ConferenceRoom

ConferenceRoom 6210

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2 minutes ago, ztejas said:

I bent over and let apple fuck me for $9.99.

I will say - the quality on their sports broadcasts is excellent. It's the locking me out of watching my teams part I'm not a fan of. 

T-Mobile hooked me up with six months of Apple TV free a couple of weeks ago. Can’t say enough about their free offers in their app. 

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ztejas

ztejas 44114

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Just now, ConferenceRoom said:

T-Mobile hooked me up with six months of Apple TV free a couple of weeks ago. Can’t say enough about their free offers in their app. 

Yeah well I have a real cell-provider.

that I may or may not pay for 

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