The Washington Nationals and Baseball’s Freshest Bullpen

So, bullpens. We can all agree they’re pretty important, yeah? In the postseason, the importance of the bullpen is magnified. It’s on national television, everything is magnified. Every pitch seems more important. Every swing seems more important. Every decision made by a manager seems more important. Each of these things inches a team one step closer to a having World Series title, or one step closer to having tee times.

But also, as our own Dave Cameron has pointed out, the importance of the bullpen is magnified in the postseason because, strategically, the role of a bullpen simply becomes more important the more times you work through a batting order. Relievers are often the most effective pitchers on a team and, at this point in the season, it doesn’t make sense to save or protect your arms. You use what you’ve got when you need outs.

Perhaps you might recall, from last year, the Cardinals and their seemingly endless supply of fresh, live arms out of the bullpen, blowing away everyone they faced in their deep postseason run. This isn’t the reason the Cardinals advanced to the World Series, of course, but it certainly helped.

Perhaps you might recall, from last night, the Athletics and their bullpen allowing three earned runs on seven hits and a walk in four-plus innings of work. This isn’t the reason the Athletics lost the Wild Card game, of course, but it certainly didn’t help.

Obviously, these are just two cherry-picked examples to help prove a point, but it’s a point you already knew and didn’t really need proving: bullpens can make or break a potential World Series run.

So, we’ve got the Nationals. The Nationals have a first-year manager in Matt Williams. The interesting thing about a first-year manager is seeing what changes that manager instills in his new team. A lot of these things are unquantifiable and go largely unnoticed. We don’t know the differences in how the Nationals practice or prepare for games under their new manager. We don’t know the differences in how the Nationals communicate with their new manager. These are the kind of things that make it impossible to pin down what exactly is a manager’s value.

Still, there are things we can look at. We can look at in-game strategy, we can look at lineups and playing time allocation, and we can look at bullpen management. Let’s look at bullpen management.

Last year, Davey Johnson’s bullpen threw 477 innings, right in the middle of the pack. This year, Matt Williams’ bullpen has thrown 468 innings, a little closer to the bottom (or top, depending how you want to look at it.) Granted, the workload of a bullpen is largely reliant on the starting rotation; the more innings your starters can eat up, the less innings your bullpen has to work. Makes sense. The Nationals have a very good starting rotation – the best, probably – and were fifth in innings pitched this year. That helps keep a bullpen fresh right there.

But a manager can do his part in keeping a bullpen fresh by who he choose to use in each situation and how often he uses them. Last year, Davey Johnson asked his relievers to pitch with zero days rest on 99 occasions – right in the middle of the pack. This year, Matt Williams has asked his relievers to pitch on zero days rest just 56 times – fewest in the MLB. For comparison, the league-leading Cleveland Indians asked their pitchers to throw on zero days rest a staggering 150 times.

Pitching a baseball at the major league level is incredibly stressful on a human arm. Having an appropriate amount of time to recover is crucial, so long as we’re dealing with humans. We may have just seen the effects of this on Tuesday night when Ned Yost elected to use Yordano Ventura after he had thrown 73 pitches just two days prior. At this point in the year, every player still standing is dealing with the effects of a season’s worth of fatigue. At this point in the year, every little advantage can go along way. And the Nationals appear to have an advantage, in having a bullpen which has been granted more recovery time than any other bullpen in baseball.

Craig Stammen and Ross Detwiler have pitched on consecutive days just twice – fewest among all qualified relievers. Jerry Blevins and Drew Storen: just 10 times. Even Rafael Soriano, who was the closer for the majority of the season, pitched on consecutive days just 12 times. The reliever they’ve asked the most of, Tyler Clippard, has thrown on consecutive days 15 times, and even that’s just the league average.

Of the 50 relievers who were asked to throw consecutive innings most often this year, they posted a 2.82 first-half FIP. In the second half, that jumped to 3.36, for a 54-point jump. Of the 50 relievers who were asked to throw consecutive innings least often this year, their FIP remained constant, raising just eight points from 3.62 to 3.70. Surely, there’s some noise in here, and we can’t say for sure that the reason behind the first group’s increase is directly correlated to how often they threw consecutive days, but it seems to support an idea that is accepted as common sense – the heavier the workload, the more a player might feel the effects of fatigue. The Nationals, as a unit, actually saw their bullpen’s FIP decrease eight points from the first half to the second half.

Let’s take it a step further. Something that would seem to have an inverse relationship with how often a team asks a reliever to pitch on consecutive days would be how often a team asks a reliever to work multiple innings. If you’re spreading your guys out, the logical trade-off would be to have them put in more work when they’re called upon. This line of thinking is backed by the numbers. The other teams, besides Washington, who have called upon their relievers to work consecutive days the least often are Toronto, Texas and Houston. Toronto had relievers work multiple innings 133 times – seventh in the MLB. Texas was sixth, at 138. Houston had the fifth-highest total, at 140. Washington? Fourth-fewest multi-inning relief appearances of any team in baseball, with just 76. Stammen and Detwiler are the long relievers, so they’ve racked up 45 of those 76 multi-inning appearances. Blevins? 12. Clippard? Just one. Soriano and Storen haven’t worked more than a single inning in a game all season, and they’re two of just seven qualified relievers in the MLB who can say that.

So in Washington, you’ve got a bullpen that has been asked to pitch consecutive days less than anyone in baseball, and also they’re rarely called upon to work more than one inning. How has Williams’ bullpen management worked for the Nationals? Well, we can’t say for the postseason just yet, but it worked out pretty splendid during the regular season. Their 3.00 bullpen ERA was fourth-best. Their 3.05 FIP was number one.  The Nationals’ bullpen already has an advantage on the rest of the MLB by being full of great pitchers. Looks like they’ve got another advantage of being fresh. Fresh as you can be in October, anyway.