Astros Playoff bullpen question...

Wandy is in the bullpen, Zeke is not...

Also you forgot to mention qualls as a solid reliever. He's pretty much our 7th inning guy for now. Also, Gallo just seems to do terribly against lefties but for some reason he does well against right handed hitters. And Springer hasn't pitched in a while so I assume he's rusty but I agree he is inconsistent.

So our reliable bullpen consists of wheeler, qualls, lidge and wandy is probably the left handed specialist at this point and gallo probably is the fallback option. Everyone else is just trash.

 

Garner said before the series that Gallo was the left-handed specialist still. Not sure I agree, but that's what he said.

 

This puzzles me as well... wouldn't be Zeke be a more viable option than Springer in the bullpen??

Zeke seems to have his good moments and bad.. but Springer is an earned-run waiting to happen. Why??? -baseball experts, can u explain?-

 

Wasn't Springer the leader of the bullpen group because he was the veteran and treated the other guys out for dinner?? Maybe it's just chemistry.

 

Geez guys, the last 20 games Springer has pitched, he has only given up runs in 4 of them. Granted he is only pitching an inning or so at a time, but that's a pretty reliable streak. His ERA in August was less than 1 and his September ERA was a solid 3.65.

There would be no way Astacio would get out of the bullpen unless it was a blowout loss and he would be there to eat up innings.

 

Astacio isn't on the roster for this series.

I like Wandy but I don't know if I feel confident in him as a reliever since this season he has shown a tendency to get into first inning trouble before settling down.

Qualls & Wheeler are both great relievers that I feel very confident in.

Despite a couple of rough patches this year, Springer has show to be a very reliable pitcher. He is good to bring in when we are either down a run or two and hoping for a comeback or when we are up 2 or 3 runs.

And when it comes to our requisite Italian-American reliever, Gallo, well... Gallo is much better than Franco or Miceli.

 

everyone else is just springer. we only have a 10 man pitching staff.

 

Exactly who in the playoffs has a better bullpen ERA than us? I'm assuming we're #2 at the worst, and the Cards will have the best one we'll even get to see. Our guys really finished the season strong. I still get nervous watching everyone but Lidge, but i don't really think reshuffling our bullpen with young guys just because they we're starters is a good idea at this time.

Lidge-->Dotel-->Wagner will probably be the best bullpen most of us will have seen in our lifetime.

 

And that bullpen won us exactly 0 division titles, 0 wild cards, and 0 playoff games.

Jimy created that bullpen, but in the process it took away any sort of "gamesmanship" from our starting pitchers. They knew they had no trust from the manager... only Oswalt was really allowed to pitch into the 7th.

Last year, down the stretch, Garner won more games out of a starting rotation of Backe-Munro-Hernandez (with Oswalt and Clemens) than Jimy ever did in an extended stretch... and Garner had a bullpen of Qualls-Miceli-Lidge working for him.

 

what did i say about springer yesterday???? i would rather have zeke who is consistently inconsistent (either lights out or awful), over springer who is consistently crap. with zeke at least you have the option of him actually having a good outing, unlike springer who throws batting practice.

 

You CANNOT base the performance of a bullpen on them giving up a couple of runs when they have a 7 run lead... their mentality just isn't the same when it is a close game, that is why when there are huge leads (think St. Louis vs. Padres game 1) in the MLB the team behind makes up some slack by the end.

 

If any of the starters has a rough outing, Wandy will no doubt be brought in for long relief. I don't think he'll make any late-inning appearances, except maybe in the deciding game of a series.

 

He isn't a relief pitcher, so it is going to take him longer to get warmed up and ready to go... so that is why he is our "#2" lefty out of the pen and Gallo is still our situational lefty. As far as Zeke out of the pen, I don't like it so I'm glad he's not on the roster this round.

 

So you think Springer is consistenly cr#p? I guess my stats point out that he has only given up runs in 4 of his last 20 games is cr#p? I guess his 0.93 ERA in August and his solid 3.65 ERA in September is cr#p? Meanwhile you write off Astacio's roughly 4.40 ERA in August and September has "consistently inconsistent".

 

Apparently, you can't use ERA to defend your position. Only OBA, WHIP, SLG against and OPS against. If those help your argument, Springer and Gallo and whoever still sucks because they said so.

 

Well you could also ask yourself," How many games did the bullpen lose for us last year?" Not nearly as many as the starters. So did we go undefeated last year?

You could also say Dotel took us farther in the playoffs than anyone, since we traded him for Beltran, the most clutch hitter in the post season.

So far, Billy Wagner has already got us a win considering if he wasn't dumped, it would have been nearly impossible to sign Pettitte no matter how bad he wanted to come here. His salary went straight to Pettite.

The bullpen is more important to us than most teams because we don't have 6'5 pitchers that can throw complete games. Look up the stats and we're always at the bottom of that category. I'm not looking up stats here, but can you recall Oswalt and Miller throwing 9 innings? Obviously, you're bullpen doesn't win games unless it's late and a tie or you make a comeback.

I can't really tell if you think a bullpen is overated. But there are teams from just this last year that lost 20 games because of their bullpen. So i find having a strong bullpen extremely important. There's gotta be a logical reason closers get paid the millions they do. Not to mention the growing importance of a set up man.

 

While the Astros did not have many complete games, their starters were 2nd in the league in innings pitched which is more indicative of how much a team's starters pitch than complete games are.

 

I agree. But it also means that our pitchers stayed healthy most of the season and didn't get blown out of games early. Those 2 factors can scew your total innings pitched.