Let’s Make a Deal! Reliever Edition

Paul Rutherford-USA TODAY Sports

Let’s play some word association. I’m going to name someone, and I want you to say the first two words that come to mind. Okay, I’m ready: Richard Bleier. Did “middle reliever” jump to the fore? You’re exactly right; Bleier spent 2022 chipping in mid-quality work in the middle innings for the Marlins. One more: Matt Barnes. Did you say “middle reliever” this time? If not, maybe it was “ex-closer.” Barnes was a roller coaster ride of a closer right until he wasn’t, and he spent 2022 pitching anywhere from the sixth to ninth inning depending on need, at least when he wasn’t on the IL.

This year, I can guarantee you that those two won’t be reprising their roles. On Monday, the Red Sox and Marlins swapped their relievers in a one-for-one trade. It’s not even a contract-based swap; both players are under contract for 2023 with a team option for 2024, and the Red Sox sent $5 million to Miami to even out the payroll expenditure on the deal. It’s simpler than that: I want your reliever, and you can take mine.

You can stare at this trade and see whatever you want to. For example, one side got a much better reliever, based on their stats from 2020 through 2022:

Two Mystery Relievers, Run Prevention
Pitcher IP ERA FIP xFIP
Reliever 1 125.1 3.09 3.09 3.27
Reliever 2 117.1 4.07 3.75 3.87

Except, wait, maybe the other side got a much better reliever:

Two Mystery Relievers, Peripherals
Pitcher K% K-BB% SwStr% Weak-Side wOBA
Reliever 1 16.9% 13.0% 9.5% .336
Reliever 2 29.8% 18.8% 12.9% .273

The first reliever is Bleier, and the second is Barnes. They’re very different pitchers, but they accomplish very similar things despite their differences, providing above-average but hardly perfect relief innings. Bleier doesn’t strike anyone out and struggles with righties. Barnes walks far too many batters and saw his strikeout rate fall off a cliff in 2022.

Boston’s perspective on this trade is relatively straightforward for such a weird deal. They designated Barnes for assignment last week, which meant that they had to trade him or risk him refusing a minor league assignment and leaving for nothing. They were going to owe him roughly $10 million for that; instead, they’re paying roughly the same amount of money between Bleier’s salary and the cash they sent to Miami, but they also have Richard Bleier.

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of Bleier. He’s a LOOGY living in a post-LOOGY world. The one constant in his career has been a complete inability to retire righties. Against lefties, he’s nails. He’s faced 549 of them in his career and allowed a .250 wOBA (3.02 FIP, if you’d prefer that as a metric). That’s really good – like, really good. That’s how good Carlos Rodón has been against lefties in the past three years. It’s how good Julio Urías has been, or Blake Snell. Bleier is great-lefty-starter level good when he gets to face opposing southpaws.

Against righties? We don’t need to talk about righties. Well, actually we do, unfortunately for Bleier. He’s faced 690 of them and allowed a .332 wOBA (3.92 FIP). That’s Bad Lucas Giolito territory, or late-career Sergio Romo. Or Paolo Espino? Maybe Chris Archer? The point is, Bleier against right-handers is someone you’d prefer not to have on your roster. He was downright abysmal against righties in 2022, surrendering a .336/.370/.513 slash line against them.

It’s not that Bleier doesn’t have a plan for righties; in fact, he has a pitch (his cutter) reserved exclusively for them. In 2021 and 2022 combined, he threw 400 cutters to righties and exactly one to a lefty. He also experimented with a changeup last season, again only for righties. They just… didn’t work. Neither pitch is objectively great; they’re exactly what you think they are, get-me-over pitches from a sidearm lefty who can’t rely on his normal sinker/slider combination against righties.

Maybe the Red Sox have some magical fix for Bleier, but at this point in his career I’m skeptical. He’s a fully formed product at this point, a 35-year-old who knows how to get lefties out. If they can find places for him to face two lefties out of his three batters, or to face a lefty to end an inning and then leave the game, he’ll be a perfectly reasonable piece. If he ends up facing a lot of righties, it probably won’t be a good time for the Fenway faithful.

Speaking of bad times for the Fenway faithful, Barnes had his fair share of meltdowns in his tenure as Boston’s closer – 18 meltdowns as calculated by our WPA model between 2021 and 2022, to be precise. That’s not even close to the most meltdowns in baseball, but it’s certainly more than you’d like, and I think that his uneven nature had a lot to do with his DFA. There are a lot of relievers capable of posting Barnes-esque results; maybe the Red Sox would prefer to have a different one just for variety’s sake. Bleier fits that bill – heck, he had more meltdowns than Barnes over the past two years, he just had them largely against righties.

For the Marlins, though, Barnes represents a reasonable gamble. Bleier is what he is, a perfectly cromulent lefty who won’t do much to change your team’s fortunes. Barnes has a much higher ceiling, and he could absolutely return to it. He might have had a disastrous 2022 (half as many strikeouts as in 2021 but more walks — not great, Bob), but he also hit the 60-day IL with a shoulder injury, and some of that ineffectiveness could be rust-related.

On the other hand, uh, he had a 7.94 ERA before getting hurt, and the strikeouts had already vanished. Maybe he was pitching hurt all year, but short of that, it was just a complete washout of a season. His stuff didn’t play, his command was off, and everything that could go wrong did. This is just something that happens to relievers sometimes; they’re good until they aren’t. Sometimes they rediscover it, and sometimes they fade into obscurity.

To be clear, Barnes is definitely capable of regaining his earlier form. His curveball and fastball are both superb when he’s on top of his game. He’s the kind of pitcher who can come in and set the middle of the other team’s order down on strikes, no questions asked. Again, he hasn’t done it recently, but the form is there. While projections might not show it, I think that gambling on big-stuff relievers is a worthy move given how good teams have become at working with relievers to fix what ails them.

As I mentioned, that gamble makes sense for the Marlins. Their closer right now is some combination of Dylan Floro and Tanner Scott. Scott has some gaudy projections, but he also has a career 4.61 ERA and leads baseball in meltdowns over the last two years. Floro has been steadier, but most of his value comes from his ability to suppress home runs, and that’s not the most stable of skills, to put it mildly.

Somewhere in Barnes, there’s a pitcher who posted a five-year stretch with a 35% strikeout rate. Whether the Marlins can unlock that form again, I have no clue. I like that they’re trying, though, because I don’t think Bleier had any shot of ending up atop their bullpen hierarchy. Barnes probably won’t end up there either, but there’s at least some chance that he will. If the Marlins decided they didn’t want Bleier’s lefty stylings – and that’s hardly an irrational decision, as he’s right on the cusp of bullpen playability in my opinion – a swap for a high-variance bullpen option seems eminently logical.





Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Twitter @_Ben_Clemens.

34 Comments
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Ivan_Grushenkomember
1 year ago

I’m not seeing how Boston wouldn’t have been better off giving Barnes a shot and then making a similar deal if he failed. If he’s successful they could have made a much better deal if they thought he’d pumpkin.

It’s not even as though there’s some lefty heavy division foe. Anthony Rizzo, Brandon Lowe, Daulton Varsho, Cedric Mullins and Gunnar Henderson are hardly reasons to make your roster worse

Last edited 1 year ago by Ivan_Grushenko
rwillh11
1 year ago
Reply to  Ivan_Grushenko

I think the article overlooks that Barnes was also really bad in second half of 2021, after the sticky stuff ban. While it’s impossible to prove that his decline is related to that, his command hasn’t been good since then and the spin rates on both his fastball and curveball tanked around then and haven’t bounced back. To me, that Boston made this deal suggests that they attribute his decline to not being able to use spider tack or whatever anymore.

Plus, Bleier isn’t exciting but he’s useful as the lefty specialist to take up the last spot in the pen, and a current better fit for the Boston bullpen which is actually pretty deep otherwise.

Ivan_Grushenkomember
1 year ago
Reply to  rwillh11

Even though they saved no money they genuinely think they have a better chance to fix Bleier than Barnes apparently. Or use Bleier as 2 out LOOGY and long man

Last edited 1 year ago by Ivan_Grushenko
darren
1 year ago
Reply to  Ivan_Grushenko

Barnes finished fairly strong last year. Maybe they think he’s at the peak of his value.

butthole25
1 year ago
Reply to  Ivan_Grushenko

He’s garbage tho

D-Wizmember
1 year ago
Reply to  butthole25

^ Strong argument.

sadtrombonemember
1 year ago
Reply to  Ivan_Grushenko

IMO this deal is pretty meaningless. There’s a pretty good chance neither of these guys makes the opening day roster and they’ll have to sign a minor league deal with someone to work their way back up.

Ivan_Grushenkomember
1 year ago
Reply to  sadtrombone

Yes but we have nothing else to talk about now

sadtrombonemember
1 year ago
Reply to  Ivan_Grushenko

I kind of figured that after yesterday. I mean there are things I’d like to talk about but maybe I’m the only one.

Ivan_Grushenkomember
1 year ago
Reply to  sadtrombone

Who has the best 28th man. Nats or A’s?

proiste
1 year ago
Reply to  sadtrombone

This trade is definitely not a big deal, but both of these guys are almost certainly making opening day if healthy

proiste
1 year ago
Reply to  Ivan_Grushenko

I don’t understand how this is making the roster worse. Bleier is projected to be better than Barnes by every system, and fills a clear need for a lefty option in Boston, who have four righties clearly better than Barnes and a bunch more who easily could be. I guess you could dream Barnes gets back to first-half 2021 form, and he wasn’t as terrible in the last half of 2022, but the K/BB numbers were still pretty mediocre and the spin rates were still down.

It’s a very much incremental upgrade that won’t affect Boston’s outcome much, but this definitely isn’t a downgrade.

Last edited 1 year ago by proiste