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July 2004 Archives


posted on July 31, 2004

Reliever Usage

First, I would like to point out that as of right now, I have had 10,290 visitors this month.  I am thrilled that so many people have found my writing entertaining and have been willing to continue paying my site a visit.  Aaron Gleeman probably sent a few of you here yesterday with his link.  While I appreciate the compliments he gave me, I know that the real reason he wrote those kinds words was because he felt sorry for kicking my Diamond Mind Baseball team's ass this week. 

I joined a league with him a few months ago and the team I inherited is bad - 2003 Detroit Tigers bad.  In fact, the Washington Cold Warriors fired their manager a few weeks ago and replaced him with figurehead Henry Kissinger.  Anyway, couple the Cold Warriors' ineptitude with the fact that Aaron's team is about 56 games ahead of me within our division and that he played me this week, and it's no wonder he had a little sympathy for me.  In all seriousness, thanks for the link Aaron; I can only dream of being about ten percent as interesting and thought-provoking in my writing as you are in yours.

Besides using that introduction to thank Aaron, it also ties nicely to another participant in that Diamond Mind League.  Bill Liming is the author of Phillies Fan in addition to being in the league.  I really like his writing style as well as the interesting studies he digs up relating to strategy and roster construction related to the Phillies.  I finally got around to running of one his studies on the Twins.  Hopefully, he does not get too angry with me for copying his idea, but I was curious and it was pretty cool.

Anyway, the study relates to the high leverage innings pitched by members of the bullpen.  Bill identified high leverage innings as "innings in which the reliever comes on with the tying run either on base or at bat, or with a 1 run deficit".  That seems simple enough to understand.

Now the whole point of this study was to see how frequently these innings go to the best pitchers in the bullpen.  In the following table, I placed the pictures from top to bottom in the order that I would like to see them enter the game in a close situation (basically, a tie-game in the ninth inning with all of them at my disposal).  Here is the table:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

High Leverage

 

Low Leverage

Pitcher

IP

HLI

HL%

 

G

HLS

HLF

HL%

 

W

L

SV

 

W

L

SV

Nathan

47

24.2

52

 

44

20

1

48

 

1

 

13

 

 

 

15

Rincon

52.1

27.2

53

 

47

16

10

55

 

7

3

 

 

1

 

2

Balfour

27

10

37

 

22

5

1

27

 

4

1

 

 

 

 

 

Romero

42.2

25.2

60

 

43

18

10

65

 

5

1

1

 

 

 

 

Fultz

40.2

11

27

 

43

10

5

35

 

2

2

 

 

1

 

1

Roa

47.1

14

30

 

34

9

2

32

 

2

2

 

 

 

 

 

Mulholland

35

7.1

21

 

23

5

2

30

 

1

2