Bullpen Superiority Isn't That Important

The Joba-to-the-'pen debate is one I wage quite often with co-workers and friends (and once in a while with my dad). There is a lot of passion on both sides. The argument from the other side (I'm for Joba staying at the rotation) is that Mariano Rivera was a great set up man in 1996 and Joba can be like that in 2009 (or so they say). I say that the saying is "starting pitching wins championships"...not "middle relief wins championships". But there are no stats involved in that argument. So I wanted to find some stats to back up my argument and in a series of posts I'll be trying to anaylze which is really more important and where Joba should be in 2009.

I decided to look at the World Series participants for every year since 2003 and their respective bullpens. I examined bullpen ERA and blown saves put my findings on a Google Docs spreadsheet so you can see my findings. There is a little caveat for these findings: if a team was tied in ranks, I just used the best rank possible so these stats are actually skewed against my argument.

The average major league rank for American League participant's bullpen ERA is 10th and for the National League was 9th. Only one team out of the 12 was first in the league in bullpen ERA, while 7 out of the 12 were 10+ in their rankings. That means that less than half the World Series participants for the past 6 years were in the top third of the league in bullpen ERA.

For blown saves, the average American League participant was 6th and the National League was 9th. While one major league team was ranked first in this one as well, only 3 teams were ranked 10+.

So it seems that this is a more important statistic than bullpen ERA, a stat that certainly gets skewed in blowout games, and the Yankees have had a few of those on the losing end. In fact, if you take out the 14 earned runs they gave up in the ridiculous 22-4 blowout against the Indians, the Yankees bullpen goes from ranking towards the bottom of the league to ranking right in the middle.

And the Yankees are 4th in the American League with only 5 blown saves (Mariano Rivera has one of those). In fact, if you look back at many of the Yankee losses this season, a set-up man couldn't have helped (and if you take into account Girardi's mismanagement in the bullpen, it's even less). If you consider that even the great Joba would blow one once in a while, you're talking about maybe one or two more wins for the Yankees this season if he's in the bullpen. And since he's won two as a starting pitcher, that stat is cancelled out.

Tomorrow I'll look at the other side of things: how important having good starters are at winning championships.