Evan Meek The Only Bullpen Holdover Since 2008

i thought a team had to be really good then sell off the expensive parts for it to be called a firesale. uhhhh, marlins/indians???

I stumble across a copy of Baseball Prospectus that’s four years old, and I look with pity upon the Pirates chapter. I always get some terrifying reminder that Britt Reames used to pitch for the Bucs, or that Yurendell DeCaster was sort of a prospect.

For me, that guy will always be Kevin Haverbusch. Who was apparently still an active player through 2008, if you can believe that.

Speaking of which, ever notice that ex-Pirate pseudo-prospects seem to stick around in indy ball forever? Look at Will Pennyfeather, for example, or Trey Beamon. In a way, it’s kind of neat.

I just took a look at the Yankees bullpen (15 games pitched in relief or more) from 2008 compared to their current roster, and they have a whopping 4 holdovers from 2008, those being Mariano Rivera, Joba Chamberlain (who started 31 games in 2009 and was then relegated back to the pen in 2010), Damaso Marte and David Robertson.

How about the Red Sox, who have two holdovers (15+ games pitched in relief) in the persons of Jonathan Papelbon and Hideki Okajima from 2008 to today? Manny Delcarmen? Gone. Javier Lopez? Gone. Mike Timlin, Justin Masterson, David Aardsma, Craig Hansen? All gone.

The writer takes the Angels to task for having only 4 (3 if Scot Shields retires) returning guys in the pen, but then ignores the Yankees’ and Red Sox’ similar turnover. It’s sloppy and typical, portraying teams like the Pirates, Mariners and other poor-performing teams as aberrations, when in reality, many teams turn over their bullpen on a near-annual basis.

in your analysis… Brad Lincoln could be pretty awesome out of the pen imo. If we keep him in the rotation I just see him as a future Ian Snell (in performance only).

that 2010 was the year NH learned to assemble a bullpen. It’s now looking like 2010 was the year NH got lucky with relievers.

I don’t really think that last year was pure luck – I think he had a sound strategy, that he’d learned from mistakes in ‘08 and ’09 (#1 mistake: valuing “power arms” over anything else), and that he made good decisions (and then got lucky, with Donnelly the only bullpen failure of the offseason signings, and surprisingly few failures from the midseason pickups). But I do think that NH has failed this year in not adjusting to a changed market and now being frozen out. And so what I suspect is that NH doesn’t really “get” bullpen assembly, that he had the right strategy for the right year once, but otherwise has been clueless.

It doesn’t matter as such with a team that will struggle to win 75, but it would be nice not to see a bunch of solid starts from Morton (I hope), Locke, and Morris go down as disheartening losses.

So, it’s tough to say whether the comparisons are correct or not. But, obviously if your bullpen sucks, there’s every reason to turn it over completely.

Other than Meek, the only arms worth keeping from 2008 would have been Matt Capps and Sean Burnett.

Burnett, of course, was turned into Hanrahan, who is better.
And Capps was turned into Dotel who was turned into James MacDonald.

Marte and Grabow did well on the 2008 team, but were traded and have not done all that well since their trades.

Marte (together with Nady) got us Karstens and Ohlendorf, and if you can get a decent starter out of that, that’s pretty good.

Grabow got us some surgery arms, and I guess we’ll see how those turn out this year.

Wil Ledezma outrighted by the Jays… can we pick him up, and/or any chance we do?

I think the bull pen will be the least of our worries, except the lack of a stud lefty. I’m more concerned about just about every other aspect of the team. Wouldn’t surprise me if the bull pen ends up being a comparitive strength, which is a pretty scary thought. But as spring training rolls around, I’ll start getting all optimistic again, so who knows ?