RSSEd Wade’s Bullpen Obsession
Mar 19
Texas astros, baseball, hobbies, houston, mlb, pitching, recreation, sports, Texas No Comments
When he was in Philadelphia, Ed Wade acquired a reputation as a builder of bullpens. Now the Astros’ general manager, Wade has continued that tradition. He seems to love crafting a bullpen the way he loves running triathlons. When he first got the job in Houston, it didn’t take Wade long to overhaul the relief corps. Gone were Brad Lidge and Chad Qualls. In came Jose Valverde, Doug Brocail, Oscar Villarreal and Geoff Geary. At the trade deadline last year, he added LaTroy Hawkins.
Wade’s strategy is very clear, and it involves a deep bullpen because of his belief that every bullpen is full of its disappointments. Building around this expectation helps to maintain depth in a department that is crucial to a team’s success. The problem with this strategy is the enormous price tag that it comes at.
The Astros are paying over $18 million in salaries to their bullpen pitchers in 2009. The only team comparable to the Astros here are the defending champion Phillies. To the Phillies, this makes sense since they won a World Series with such a talented bullpen, but teams with more success than the Astros are paying considerably less than the Astros are. The Dodgers and Cardinals, for example, are paying $7.2 million and $6.2 million respectively. This is the difference between one or two exceptional players.
To be fair, I don’t think Wade planned it to work out this way. His idea last winter was to trade Valverde after he had already re-signed Brocail and Hawkins, probably believing the two would compete for the closer job in spring training. When the economy collapsed and no market seemed to exist for Valverde, last year’s NL save leader, Wade decided it was smarter to keep him and bite the bullet financially. That decision had a trickle effect that cost the Astros Wolf and Ty Wigginton. I’m not arguing here that Wade made the wrong decision, only that those were the cards he chose to play.
The Astros bullpen has been a failure by all standards in 2009. With the second highest number of blown saves (only second to the Nationals of all teams) and a team bullpen ERA of 4.28, the bullpen in Houston has hurt the team more than it’s helped it. Cecil Cooper may be to blame for at least part of the woes in Houston’s bullpen.
Partly due to injury and partly due to a lack of confidence in his pitchers, Cooper rode Sampson and Hawkins hard for the first three months. By the All-Star Break, it was clear that both were running on empty and it was no surprise that both landed on the disabled list before July was over. Sampson, Hawkins and Byrdak lead the club in appearances but Byrdak has often been used to face just one or two batters. Sampson and Fulchino lead in relief innings pitched but Fulchino has often been the mop-up pitcher in blowout losses. There are some baseball thinkers who believe spending starting pitcher money on a closer is a bad idea. Why spend so much on a guy who might get in 70 innings when a starter should amass close to 200 innings?
Good minds can disagree on whether it makes more sense to have four bullpen pitchers averaging $2 million a year or one starting pitcher making $8 million a year. Mistakes can be made either way (see Jason Jennings and Woody Williams as recent examples where spending on starting pitching didn’t work out well). Given the Astros’ budgetary constraints, Wade needs to decide whether relief pitching counts more than starting pitching and spend accordingly. There doesn’t seem to be enough in the till to feed the need of both the rotation and the bullpen.
The Astros do have some talented young pitching in Bud Norris and Felipe Paulino, not to mention Wandy Rodriguez, whose contract expires after the season. Players like Hunter Pence and Michael Bourne have rising contracts, and Miguel Tejada will be an undertaking in its own class. With this all said, there seems to be no way the Astros can hold onto such an expensive bullpen without making sacrifices in other departments.
Seeing Ed Wade’s track record, he may very well opt to continue focusing on the bullpen.
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