2016 Seattle Mariners Spring Preview: The Bullpen

Thursday, March 03, 2016

Kenny Darling, Oregon Sports News

Joaquin Benoit

In the early 1960s, the save statistic was introduced to baseball. In that era, teams would occasionally bring in a pitcher in the later half of a game to relieve a pitcher who was too tired to keep going, or just didn’t have their stuff that day. The save statistic began much the same way many baseball statistics do, as a way of measuring the value of a certain type of player. In this case, baseball needed a way to measure the value of a relief pitcher.

Since the 1960s, the reliever position has slowly evolved to where it is today. In 1964, MLB teams used an average of 2.58 pitchers per game. By 2014, teams were using 3.92 pitchers. The increase over the last 50 years in both pitchers per game and innings pitched by relievers has been a slow and steady climb. And in 2016, after watching the Kansas City Royals ride a strong bullpen to a World Series title, it’s more obvious than ever that the bullpen is a huge part of modern baseball.

Last season, the Seattle Mariners bullpen ranked 25th in ERA, 8th in walks allowed and 6th in hits allowed among all MLB teams. They were also 26th in WAR. For those of you who are les stat-driven, that means the Mariners gave up a lot of hits, walked a lot of players and gave up a lot of runs, all while not winning many games. And the most frustrating part of it all is that the team looked great going into the year. In 2014, the Mariners bullpen was excellent, and that same bullpen mostly returned in 2015.

That’s always seemed how bullpens are to me. It might be the hardest thing to predict on a baseball team. And if there was any lesson to take from the Mariners disappointing 2015 campaign, it’s that bullpens are as important as they are fragile.

Here’s what we know. We know we need a closer, a set-up man to get to your closer in tight games, a long-relief type who can come in and give the team three or four innings when a starter gets into pitch-count trouble early, and a couple of guys who can get tough lefties out. We also know that you can’t just throw the same three or four relievers out there 162 times, so most teams carry six or seven relievers on their 25-man roster. From what we’re hearing from the new skipper, Scott Servais, the Mariners will carry seven pitchers in their bullpen this season.

To make matters more complicated, those same seven guys won’t all perform well, and they won’t all stay healthy. Most years the bullpen sees the most mid-season changeover of any position group. Last year the Mariners used 23 different relievers… if you count the two innings Jesus Sucre threw. Starting to remember how bad it got last year? Remember repeatedly crossing your fingers that this would be the day Lloyd McClendon finally wouldn’t use Fernando Rodney in a close game?

So, it’s needless to say at this point that no matter how we breakdown the relievers on the Mariners 40 man roster, it will likely all change a lot over the next seven month. We might see all of these guys at some point, but hopefully we’ll see as few of them as possible. If the Mariners don’t have to shake up their bullpen much, things are probably going pretty well.

Here’s a list of the potential relievers in camp.

RHP - Jonathan Aro
RHP - Joaquin Benoit
RHP - Steve Cishek
RHP - Ryan Cook
RHP - Justin De Fratus
LHP - Charlie Furbush
RHP - Mayckol Guaipe
RHP - Cody Martin
LHP - Mike Montgomery
LHP - Vidal Nuno
LHP - David Rollins
RHP - Evan Scribner
RHP - Joe Wieland
RHP - Tony Zych
RHP – Joel Peralta
LHP – Danny Hultzen

Of those 16 players, 7 will make the team. Steve Cishek will, in all likelihood, be the team’s closer. He was the Miami Marlins’ closer from 2011 until last season, when he struggled and was trade to the St. Louis Cardinals mid-season. He started to put it back together in St. Louis and is now one of the Mariners’ many bounce-back candidates. He’ll have every opportunity to start the season as the teams closer. It’s his job to lose, with Joaquin Benoit probably being the insurance plan there.

Benoit is a veteran of the league and was an elite closer for many seasons, but has more recently been relegated to the set-up role where he’s preformed very well. That’s where he projects to fit in on this team as well.

Charlie Furbush is one of the few players from last year’s bullpen who managed to make it through Jerry Dipoto’s trading frenzy and still have Seattle jersey in his locker. Charlie missed the second half of the 2015 season with shoulder problems, but all reports out of spring training are that he’s throwing free and easy and should be the go-to lefty out of the ‘pen to start the year.

Which brings us to another interesting lefty, Mike Montgomery. Montgomery is out of options, meaning the Mariners can’t simply send him start the year in the minor leagues. If he doesn’t make the major-league roster out of camp, he’ll have to clear waivers. And it’s very doubtful another team wouldn’t pick him up right away.

While I think there will be a lot of competition between relievers in camp, I think Montgomery’s got a good shot at making the club. He’s out of options, but he’s also a left-handed arm with experience starting, which means he could serve as a lefty option in late inning games where Furbush isn’t available, and could also come in and give you four or five good innings in the event that one of the starters has a rocky first couple of innings. It’s worth giving him a shot in the face of losing him all together.

After those four, I think the other three spots could go to almost anyone. There are several talented veterans in Justin De Fratus, Evan Scribner, Joel Peralta and Ryan Cook. And there are some exciting, less experienced pitchers in Tony Zych, David Rollins, and Danny Hultzen. It’s my thinking that the Mariners will bring along two of the more experienced players and one more of the younger guys.

With all of the factors that go into putting together a bullpen, it’s definitely the position group that I find most intimidating to try to predict. But here’s what I would go with given what we know today.

Closer – Steve Cishek
Set up – Joaquin Benoit
Long Relief – Mike Montgomery
Reliever – Tony Zych
Reliever – Even Scribner
Reliever – Charlie Furbush
Reliever – Justin De Fratus

Looking at different projections, that bullpen could hold up, though it still doesn’t quite look like a shutdown group. Looking at the team as a whole, it’s the bullpen and the catchers on the roster that I’m most concerned about at this point. Hopefully the group of starting pitchers on the Mariners can make a little easy on them by going deep into games often, and taking some pressure off the relievers. If not, we could be in for another bumpy one.

If the bullpen improves, the record will improve. And there’s no telling if a bullpen will work until the day it doesn’t.

Well, this concludes my five-part series on the Mariners different positions groups going into the 2016 campaign, and it’s been a blast to write about. Over the course of the series I’ve outlined the 25 players I believe will be on the team when the regular season starts in April. For a good look at the rest of the players battling for playing time, take a look at the rest of the series here.

Go Mariners!