You Can Still Build a Full and Complete Bullpen

Here’s what we know about what’s left on the free agent market: If you wanted a bat, you should have acted months ago. Hanley Ramirez, Pablo Sandoval, Michael Cuddyer, Russell Martin and others came off the board pretty quickly. With Nori Aoki in San Francisco and Colby Rasmus in Houston, the best remaining bat might be… who? Geovany Soto? Rickie Weeks? It’s similar for starting pitchers, because while James Shields is still out there, after him, it’s something like Kyle Kendrick and the remains of Chad Billingsley.

But relievers… well, relievers are another story. The big fish like Andrew Miller and David Robertson are long gone, and guys like Zach Duke and Luke Gregerson got paid too, but you could still put together an entire big league bullpen, at reasonable cost and decent productivity, with what’s still left out there.

In fact, let’s play a quick game. “Free agents” are listed as though they’re baseball’s 31st team on our Depth Charts, mostly so that players without a home have a place to be listed so that we can see their projections. With the caveat that WAR isn’t exactly the best way to rate a reliever and that this is for entertainment purposes only, look at where the Free Agent team ranks on the per-positional projection pages:

Catcher: 20th
First Base: 30th (poor, poor Phillies)
Second Base: 11th
Shortstop: 28th
Third Base: 31st
Left Field: 31st
Center Field: 31st
Right Field: 30th (poor, poor Phillies)
Starting Pitcher: 31st, even with Shields
Relief Pitcher: 2nd

Again, that’s not to be taken as anything like a scientific study, because we’re dealing with fractions of a point of WAR and some positions that have more players listed than others, but you get the point. If you need a reliever, there are relievers to be had. Camps open a month from now, and you could still build an entire bullpen. Let’s do just that.

What’s our bullpen going to look like? Well, the archetypal seven-man bullpen — if not always seen in practice — looks something like this:

1. Closer
2. High-leverage eighth inning type
3. Setup man (RH)
4. Setup man (LH)
5. LOOGY
6. Middle reliever
7. Long man

Here’s the level of difficulty, though. It’s no fun to just pick the best seven and stash them into roles, though that might be what a real team would do. We’re going to stick within these slots — for the most part. We can do this. Let’s do this. It’s Jan. 21, anyway. This is for fun.

1. A closer

I hate the modern usage of the “closer” every bit as much as you do, but we’re going to stick with recently accepted baseball tradition here.

Francisco Rodriguez has been in the big leagues for 13 seasons, yet he only just turned 33 earlier this month. Last year was either his worst (4.50 FIP) or second-best (2.91 xFIP) year, depending on how you want to look at it. I might argue that over the last two years, he’s a very similar pitcher as Steve Cishek, except that he’s been much better at stranding runners and much worse at allowing homers. I’d like to say that a 23.3% HR/FB is a blip, except that it’s the fourth straight year it went up. Still, we’re not looking for All-Stars here, just moderately-priced value, and you crowd-sourced one year for $5 million. That’s essentially free, isn’t it? Last year, he didn’t return to Milwaukee until Feb. 7. There’s still time.

On the surface, it seems that Rafael Soriano put up a typically Soriano season, erasing 2013’s strikeout dip… right up until the final six weeks. On Aug. 15, Soriano successfully finished out a game for the third night in a row, going to bed with a 2.05 ERA/2.74 FIP. In 15 games after that, it was 7.24 ERA/4.30 FIP. A bad stretch, or the beginning of real concern? You still crowdsourced 2/$14M.

Also floating around is Casey Janssen, a non-traditional closer sort in that he tops out around 90 mph. He also had an atrocious season in which his strikeout rate collapsed, and he’s actually a few months older than Rodriguez. Much was written about the impact of a severe bout of food poisoning in July, but it’s pretty fair to wonder if we ever see the formerly-good Janssen return.

It’s a bit of a toss-up between Rodriguez and Soriano, but on this team, we’ll go with Soriano, and hope that the last six weeks weren’t as much of a concern as Rodriguez’ ever-increasing homer problems.

2. The eighth-inning guy / 3. Setup man (RH)

The eighth-inning guy doesn’t have to be righty, but unless Miller suddenly drops in, ours will be. I want very badly to cheat and go with Rodriguez, but we’re going to play by the rules. Rule No. 1: Brian Wilson, though he wasn’t nearly as bad as he looked last year, has no place on this team. Nor does Chris Perez. Rule No. 2: Don’t ever, ever trust Ronald Belisario. If you believe reports, four teams actually have interest in Belisario. Four! And you should always believe reports, really.

What we’re left, unfortunately, is a quartet of very flawed righties. Do you want grounder machine Burke Badenhop, even though he doesn’t miss any bats? John Axford, who struck out 63 in 54.2 innings in 2014 but still can’t find the plate? Joba Chamberlain, who had a superficially good season (3.16 FIP) but fell apart in the second half, seeing his K%-BB% drop by two-thirds? Jared Burton, who had quietly had some solid years but struggled badly in 2014 as both grounders and strikeouts dropped?

One of those choices is easy: Badenhop, who can function as our ROOGY and our double play specialist. As for the other… I already don’t like any of these. Axford, I suppose, but in a way I absolutely don’t feel strongly at all about. I don’t like this at all.

4. Setup man (LH) / 5. LOOGY

We’ll combine the two lefties in our ‘pen too, and there’s some reasonably decent names out there. Let’s start with the more specialized LOOGY by looking at performance over the last two  years against lefties, and…

… this sure looks like it’s going to be Cotts, who kept his comeback going by putting up his second straight solid season, with Texas even reportedly considering extending him in July, though of course nothing came of it. But it’s not going to be Cotts, not here, not when he’s got a career platoon split with lefties hitting him for 20 points of wOBA more than righties do, splits that are even worse in his renaissance with the Rangers.

For the LOOGY, that job instead falls to Thatcher, who throws only a cutter and a slider but has still whiffed 31.6% of lefties in his career. For the lefty setup man? Might as well get someone who can get righties out too. Now, Cotts. Now.

6. Middle reliever

This could be anyone, really. This could be praying that Jesse Crain is actually healthy, or taking a shot on Alexei Ogando. Maybe it’s the ageless Jamey Wright. What this probably is is a minor leaguer from the farm system, or adding one of the other closers and pushing everyone’s role back, but that’s not how this game is played. Now I’m actually trying to talk myself into Wilson. Hey, Mike Adams looked okay before his shoulder popped again, right? This is getting desperate. This probably doesn’t matter all that much.

Let’s take a deep breath, and settle on… Jose Veras, who still throws hard and misses bats, but has terrible issues with lefty hitters. If you squint hard enough and keep him against same-side hitters, Veras could… eh, let’s just move on.

7. Long man / swing man

Carlos Villanueva has started at least five games in eight of his nine seasons, yet never more than 16. He’s the definition of a “swing man” in a way that we rarely see in modern baseball, and he has absolutely no platoon split. He is, unsurprisingly, far better as a reliever, dropping his FIP down a full run to 3.72 and pushing his K%-BB% to a perfectly acceptable 15.2.

He’s the clear front-runner here — might as well go ahead and just say Villanueva wins this job — but we should at least pause to mention that Wade LeBlanc would have been in the running had he not left for Asia last month. Otherwise, the only competition would be Paul Maholm, who attempted to move into the role for the Dodgers last year, missing fewer bats than just about anyone in baseball before injuring his knee.

* * *

So here’s our still-available bullpen, and even while knowing that this could include Rodriguez or Janssen if we really wanted it to, this might not be all that bad:

Soriano
Badenhop
Axford
Thatcher (L)
Cotts (L)
Adams
Villanueva

That’s not the same thing as good, of course, and it’s certainly not young. Also, no team would ever do this. I made up some arbitrary rules to constrain a little, and you could do this by starting off with Soriano, Rodriguez, and Janssen. Totally fine. You can still find some useful relievers, however, and they aren’t going to cost all that much. Spring training isn’t that far away. Bullpen shopping isn’t done yet.