Capitol Punishment had a great post yesterday. And I don't mean great as in
“We have a great show, tonight. David Schwimmer is here.” I mean actually
great, like “We have a great show tonight. David Schwimmer is dead.” It was
about how the the blaming the bullpen for walks isn't pulling together the
whole story.

If you look at the overall stats, it's easy to place a good portion of blame
for the Nats woes on the bullpen. The ERA has jumped up nearly a run from
last years dream season and all the peripherals look worse (except, oddly
enough, the Nats’ strikeouts are much higher)


       ERA OBP  SLG  OPS WHIP K/BB  K/9 P/PA
2006 4.52 .349 .428 .777 1.51 1.48 6.99 3.89
2005 3.55 .334 .380 .714 1.36 1.80 5.99 3.73


The obvious excuse, the innings pitched, aren't really that different from
last year overall. Last year the pen pitched 491 1/3 innings. This year they
project to pitch 502 2/3, only 10 innings more.

It's more a function of the fact that the bullpen was so good last year,
that it's easy to place blame on them. Who is performing well below
expectations? Three out of our four main pitchers are around where they
should be. Rauch is good (2.98 ERA), Cordero (3.34) is about right, so is
Majewski (3.61). Maybe a little high, but just a little. Last year though,
Cordero and Majewski were just lights out. (1.82 and 2.93 respectively). So
the Nats lose something there, with them regressing toward the mean, but gain
something with Rauch’s improvement.

More importantly, they had Ayala (2.66) and later Carrasco (2.04) picthing
in. That's about 130 innings that have to be made up. Rauch is doing his
part, and he'll probably suck up 60 of those, but the rest? Up until
recently the Nats haven’t found that other pitcher who can help out.

As Chris alluded to, it's that the bottom of the bullpen is doing much
worse. Or more accurately doing much worse far more often. In 2005, Horgan,
Osuna, Nitkowsi, TJ Tucker, Travis Hughes (all the just bullpen pitchers with
ERA > 5.00) pitched a total of 37 1/3 innings. In 2006, Stanton, Jason
Bergmann, Felix Rodriguez, Santiago Ramirez, and Eischen have pitched 87 1/3
innings so far. (Even if you take out Stanton they are still at 50+ innings
with half a season to go) We've wasted a lot of innings on pitchers who weren
't very good (X-Rod) or pitching guys the wrong way (Eischen held lefties to
a .087 average, while righties hit .421 off him, yet he faced 23 lefties and
38 righties this year.)

Who's to blame? If you are looking for a player, blame Stanton, who after a
decent 2005 is finally letting his own runners in rather than everyone elses.
I feel more compelled to blame Robinson and Bowden. Robinson for running guys
out there at a higher rate then any other manager (3 out of the top 5
pitchers in appearences are Nats) and often in questionable ways. Bowden for
gambling that the same plan of retreads and never-weres that worked for 2005
could again strike gold in 2006. When Ayala went down, the Nats really needed
to come up with another proven arm. Bowden didn't do it and that one arm is
making a world of difference in the late innings.

(To be fair, Bowden did find Kevin Gryboski, who other than a bust up in
Texas for half of 2005 had been a rather good reliever, but they chose to go
with Felix Rodriguez in the starting staff since Gryboski had options left.
Since then Gryboski languishes in AAA, as they keep bringing up guys with
better stats than Kevin but 0 major league experience. I definitely approve
of the youth movement (Bray and Rivera should have passed Stanton already in
the bullpen pecking order) but I think we should bring up Kevin. Bringing up
Gryboski would serve two purposes; we'd have someone we don't really care
about developing to throw to the wolves once in a while, and we'd see if he
can contribute anything to the club short-term. If he can't, well then, he
shouldn't even be taking up a spot in New Orleans. Frank might kill my plan
though. Kevin is wild (Frank hates that) but he is a proven major leaguer
(Frank loves that) but Frank doesn't throw anyone to the wolves (Frank
thinks every game is the 7th game of the World Series).

The core of the Nats bullpen is sound. Three out of four go to guys (I think
any bullpen should have 4 reliable pitchers) are fine. The problem is with
that 4th guy and frankly, every other pitcher the Nats have trotted out to
the mound for a number of appearences in 2006. Bullpen depth is created from
minor league depth or smart free-agency moves. The Nats have neither.

Other thoughts

Anyone watch/catch highlights of last nights game and thought “ That's the
Soriano I thought the Nats were getting.” I swear he struck out on a ball
Burnett was tossing into the stands for some little kid.