Speaking at the beginning of spring training on Tuesday, Rays manager Joe Maddon reiterated the idea that the team will use a bullpen committee to close out games this season. There’s a lively debate about how this has worked in the past, but let’s focus on why this could work well for this team now.

First, here are the relevant arms, with some key pieces of information for you visual learners. Click to embiggen.

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Carlos Santana has only played forty major league games, but he’s already topped one significant leaderboard with his play. Consider this little nugget: Last year, he put up the best OPS by a switch-hitting catcher debuting under the age of 25 with 30 or more games. In fewer words, he was the best rookie switch-hitting catcher of all time last year. Of course, that assertion comes with some significant caveats, but after further inspection his supernatural feat holds up as historically great.

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The heat maps on our site are pretty amazing. Maybe you noticed that I’ve been having a lot of fun with them, as I wrote a piece on Derek Holland (high fastballs) and Zack Greinke (missing high curves) on the same day last week. Enthusiasm!

They are a tempting thing, these heat maps. Let’s just take a little trip together down Heat Map Lane, why don’t we? I’ve got my Mr. Rogers sweater on, and you’re stuck inside anyway. While Steve Slowinski’s library introduction to the tool is great, it might be worth visually exploring some of the things we can and can’t learn from heat maps.

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Last week, Craig Calcaterra pointed us to a great conversation between Mike Ferrin and Rangers’ Assistant General Manager Thad Levine on Sirius XM. Though Levine couched the news within some considerable caveats (“Probably there’s a little bit more onus now on him really wowing us in spring training to inspire the move”), the general point was that wunderkind closer Neftali Feliz would get the chance to start in spring training.

Should rotisserie managers switch Feliz over to their starters’ cheat sheet? Should Rangers’ fanatics begin dreaming of Feliz shutouts and checking out available relievers for possible mid-season pick up? Probably not. As you drill down into what Feliz truly represents, there’s little out there in terms of comparative players. It might be a problem of definition, so let’s get that part right.

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Since he’s become a regular starter, it’s tempting to look at Zack Greinke’s career and say that he’s been about the same pitcher with an outstanding peak in 2009. Other than that wonderful year, he’s managed an FIP in the mid-threes by striking batters out at a slightly-above-average rate for a starter and showing excellent control of his four-pitch mix. He’s no metronome – his ground ball to fly ball mix has oscillated – but he seems pretty stable.

But zoom in on just the last two years, and the change seems startling. He went from striking out 9.5 batters per nine to a mere 7.4. He added a run of FIP. His swinging strike percentage dove two percent (from above to below average). And his ground-ball rate changed, as is his wont (from dead-on average (40%) to above-average (46%)). His pitching mix changed fairly significantly, too, dropping almost four percent of his curves and five percent of his sliders, while almost doubling his changeup usage.

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Any more rosterbation and I might go blind. That said, this comment on last week’s second Phillies lineup session was too much to pass up:

Dann M. says:
January 27, 2011 at 11:47 pm
If they break camp as expected with Schumaker, Theriot and Punto in the starting lineup (David Freese not ready and Allen Craig primarily used in a platoon role with Lance Berkman), I think that he’d be justified batting Adam Wainwright 6th every fifth day.

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Earlier in the week, we focused on the top two spots in the Phillies order. Specifically, the revelation that using Jimmy Rollins in the leadoff spot over Placido Polanco would only cost the team about 1.18 baserunners over the course of a season. The commenters pointed out, rightly, that this analysis ignored the slugging aspect of the two batters’ repertoires. Questions were also raised about the lefty-lefty tandem at the heart of the order. So, let’s dive right in and try to get this right by the numbers: A little moron, the Phillies’ batting order.

Remembering back to the LOOGY wonder that was Javier Lopez in the playoffs last year, you might over-rate the “problem” of batting lefties Chase Utley and Ryan Howard back-to-back. Lopez only pitched 4 1/3 innings, but his four strikeouts were memorable, and it seemed that he shut the duo down. But this wasn’t really a year-long problem. Yes, Howard has a nasty platoon split (.424 wOBA vs righties, .324 vs lefties), but Utley doesn’t. His work versus righties (.382 wOBA) is basically indistinguishable from his work against southpaws (.390 wOBA). Opposing managers can bring out their LOOGY for both guys at their own peril.

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Judging from this ESPNinsider piece by Buster Olney, it’s about time for a yearly piece of rosterbation when it comes to the Phillies’ lineup. With such a veteran lineup, the question really boils down to the top two spots. The three veterans that could fill those two roles are all above-average, strong players, but that doesn’t mean that the team can’t get it wrong. In fact, it’s possible they’ve been getting it wrong for a while now.

Much of this discussion revolves around the decline of Jimmy Rollins, but not all. He’s been a negative with the bat the last two years, and his sub-par wOBAs came in about half a season last year. The rule of recency might make us over-rate how far his athleticism has fallen, but if we focus on his career rates, we see that he’s always been below average when it comes to getting on base (.328 career OBP, average is about .330 most years; 7.4% career walk rate, average is about 8.5% most years).

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When the Yankees announced their signing of Rafael Soriano, General Manager Brian Cashman admitted that he wasn’t fully behind the move. Rarely has an announcement of a big-ticket signing come with such an admission from the team’s General Manager:

I’m charged with getting the payroll down, and this certainly will help us try to win a championship. There’s no doubt about that, so that’s in the plus column, but I didn’t recommend it, just because I didn’t think it was an efficient way to allocate the remaining resources we have, and we had a lot of debate about that … My plan would be patience and waiting. They obviously acted. And we are better, there’s no doubt about it.

That Cashman didn’t find the signing to be an efficient allocation of resources is particularly telling, as many around baseball have questioned spending so much on a bullpen. Our own Dave Cameron has often talked about overspending on relievers, but this is about spending on the team level. Have the Yankees spent too much on the bullpen for the upcoming season? How does their spending this year stack up against years’ past, and other teams?

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Yesterday, the Cubs traded superfluous lefty starter Tom Gorzelanny to the Nationals for two fringe prospects. Though the Nationals don’t look like a competitor in a tough National League East in the upcoming season, the move, coupled with other moves by the team, does seem to suggest that there’s a near-term destination in mind for the team in our nation’s capital.

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