With at least a dozen MLB-caliber starting pitchers in their system, the Atlanta Braves have the “luxury” of sending a recently called-up guy down after one bad start. Atlanta’s triple-A affiliate being in Gwinnett, just an hour away from SunTrust Park, looks as if it will help evolve this luxury into somewhat of a routine. As seen with the Dodgers in recent years, Injured List manipulation has paved the way for teams to be able to call up a guy to make one start without losing an option, thus providing more flexibility in the future. Per current MLB rules, a player must remain in the minor leagues following an option for at least 10 days, unless the player is recalled to replace someone headed to the Injured List. Due to the nature of teams typically having one off day within ten days, teams have had the ability to essentially employ a six-man rotation through retroactive Injured List additions and quicker-than-anticipated recalls.

Luckily, Major League Baseball will be making efforts to curb teams’ desires to manipulate the IL, as rules will take effect in 2020 to increase both the Injured List period and recall period from 10 to 15 days. This increases the sacrifice necessary to pull off the manipulation, and would likely steer teams away from trying to do so as often. Alas, with 2019 being the final year for teams to be able to trick the system, the Braves find themselves in perfect position to take peeks at guys from the minors. With this, though, can come a great deal of frustration for the young guys. Each one wants their shot at stringing together a few starts at the MLB level, but it seems as if the club is looking for instant gratification from its starters. Meanwhile, the bullpen is whatever it is, and there will always be a handful of MLB-ready guys sitting in the minors until they’re either traded, or something else…

The Bullpen is a Polished Turd, yet Josh Tomlin is flourishing.

Of the five Braves pitchers who have appeared in at least eight games, the lowest WHIP belongs to rookie Wes Parsons, who owns a 1.435 mark in 7.2 innings. Josh Tomlin, hopeful long-man, has appeared in six games (8.2 IP), and boasts a 0.808 WHIP, but he’s also the ‘pen’s oldest member at 34. For what it’s worth, Tomlin has yet to walk a batter, and his peripherals look great, but the question lies within whether or not his stuff will play into a relief role in the long haul. Tomlin was primarily a starter until last year, when he posted a 6.14 ERA with Cleveland, and his lack of effectiveness has lied within the fact that he throws an absurd amount of pitches in the strike zone. However, after a week working with the fine professionals over at Driveline Baseball, Tomlin gained a better understanding of his pitch arsenal, and was quoted in this FanGraphs article back in February saying that he should be using his change-up closer to 20% of the time. He’s used it at a 19.4% rate so far this year, and it looks to be the pitch that could turn his career around as a reliever.

Outside of Josh Tomlin, there isn’t much to cheer about in regards to the bullpen. Arodys Vizcaino was shut down this season due to shoulder surgery, and the remaining bullpen arms have subscribed themselves to the idea that if you can strike guys out, it doesn’t matter how many you put on base. That’s been… less than ideal. Jesse Biddle has shown great maturity through taking ownership of his last few bad outings, and his 2.38 ERA in a bullpen-high 12 games and 11.1 innings are certainly bright spots. The big turn-off has been his 4.8 walks per nine innings and the untimely hits he’s given up, and his 3.88 FIP suggests that regression may be to come. Credit is certainly due to Luke Jackson for running off nine straight scoreless appearances after his Opening Day grand slam debacle, but he’s even got a 1.286 WHIP in those nine appearances — not exactly lighting opposing hitters on fire. His saving grace has been his curveball, which he can attribute his 13.1 K/9 towards.

The Atlanta Braves’ bullpen currently owns three blown saves and four of the team’s ten losses. Compare that to Houston, who has just one blown save and one bullpen loss, and you have the difference between those two teams to start the season. Sure, it’s still very early in the season, but after winning the division in 2018, it would be nice for Atlanta to have started the year with a leg up on the clubs who did everything they could to catch up. Nevertheless, there’s still an opportunity to improve this bullpen both internally and through free agency *cough* Craig Kimbrel *cough*.

Situational guys are becoming a thing of the past.

In 2020, MLB will be introducing another rule that is designed to eliminate unnecessary pitching changes throughout games, establishing for the first time a three-batter minimum. Pitching changes add anywhere from two to five minutes of non-action onto games, and there have been numerous instances where a manager chose to use three pitchers to get three outs in an innings. The exception to the three-batter minimum rule will be if a pitcher comes into an inning with one or two outs already recorded. In this instance, the reliever simply has to finish the inning. The rule change may not seem huge in-and-of itself, but it will inevitably force pitchers to face batters they don’t fare well against.

A pitcher having to step out of his comfort zone and get an opposite-handed batter out is not inherently bad, as it promotes the idea of having the best overall guys on your big league roster. Think about it — when the rule is implemented, teams will benefit more from carrying their younger pitching prospects rather than the 35-year-old journeyman LOOGYs of the game. This is not to say that the situational guy does not have his place, but the new rule will drastically reduce the opportunities for that role to come into play.

With an inclination to roster more young, promising arms will come bullpen flexibility, as there are fewer pure relief prospects being drafted and groomed in the minor leagues. A vast majority of the arms coming up from the minors will have ample starting experience, and that could translate into a bigger-than-usual role in the bullpen. Most bullpen arms nowadays are already converted starters who pitch at max effort for an inning. My belief is that these guys would be just as effective if they paced themselves and “piggybacked” off of other starters. Having that kind of reassurance in the bullpen would allow teams to stronger embrace the idea that pitchers shouldn’t face the opposing lineup more than twice. It’s much more comforting to know that you can pull your pitcher after four or five innings and have one, maybe two guys finish the game out every time.

I wrote this post a little over a year ago, and it’s more relevant than ever now. The Braves have made it clear that they are not going to make a major external addition to the bullpen unless it’s Craig Kimbrel after the draft, but they may not need to.

Getting Ahead of the Curve

Seth Lugo had his share of one-inning appearances in 2018, but I love how the New York Mets used him in 2018. Lugo had a great curveball in 2017 that showed as a starter, but his 4.71 ERA in 19 games (18 starts, 101.1 innings total) was underwhelming, to say the least. The following year, the Mets used in him 54 games (5 starts, 13 games finished), but he tallied the same 101.1 innings from the year before, and the results were astounding. Lugo’s 2.66 ERA in his new role was made possible by his allowing just 81 hits while striking out 103 batters, just over one per inning. In his 49 relief appearances (78.1 IP), Lugo allowed just 57 hits, struck out 76 men, and posted a gorgeous 2.30 ERA. His 3.91 ERA in five starts, while not impressive in a vacuum, took a great deal of pressure off of a Mets rotation that had been bitten by the injury bug. Every relief pitcher should be as capable, if not more capable, than Seth Lugo.

With an increasingly large talent pool across the country thanks to programs made available by companies like Driveline, there will be an increasing number of arms capable of touching the upper-90’s for several innings. Major League Baseball has already seen an increase in fastball velocity almost every year since 2002, and with the paths guys are already on in high school, that trend won’t expire anytime in the near future. There’s a world of new data to help young pitchers master their craft, and not just in terms of velocity. With the right combination of coaching and analytical data, a player can put tighter spin on his slider, change the axis of his arm to get the most out of his vertical hook or change-up, or get just the right amount of downward bite on his sinker despite only touching 87 with it. There’s simply too much widely-available data for guys not to become the best they can be, and a lot of this same data can be used to help guys stay healthy and prolong their careers, something guys like Trevor Bauer are fighting hard to spread the message about.

There are very few pitchers that make it to the MLB level nowadays and throw 180 innings a year for ten-plus years. The game is trending away from the overuse of arms, resulting in bullpens playing a bigger role in the outcomes of games. If Alex Anthopoulos refuses to trade out of his bevy of highly-regarded arms to fix the bullpen situation, he’s going to have no choice but to flood the Atlanta bullpen with them. With the talent levels of guys like Touki Toussaint and Kyle Wright, it would be foolish to restrict them to tossing just one inning per game. Instead, they can be paired with other starters in order to keep either from throwing too many pitches or getting too deep into games.

Just about any starter at any level above rookie ball could be trusted to throw between 100 and 120 innings without putting his arm in harm’s way. If a team can groom a guy through the system to meet at least that level of production, why should all the hard work go to waste by reducing him to a one-inning bullpen role? Some guys can give you 120 innings in 20 starts, while others could do so in 40-to-50 relief appearances. The ultimate goal when building a team around a young pitching corps is to keep the majority of the arms healthy, and that’s most effectively done with lower pitch counts and innings limits applied and enforced.

The Logjam Only Gets Worse

I’ve long loved the word “logjam” used to describe the eventual situation the Atlanta Braves would face with the army of arms assembled by John Coppolella prior to his departure, because there’s no other analogy that works quite as well. Once everyone is healthy, Mike Foltynewicz, Julio Teheran, Kevin Gausman, Mike Soroka, Touki Toussaint, Max Fried, Kyle Wright, Sean Newcomb, and Bryse Wilson are all capable of starting MLB games. That’s nine guys to fill five spots. You do the math.

Now, consider the fact that Luiz Gohara, Kolby Allard, Joey Wentz, Patrick Weigel, Ian Anderson, Kyle Muller, Huascar Ynoa, and several others are just baby steps away from being ready to try their hand at starting MLB games. That’s at least seven other arms that could contribute in some way, shape, form, or fashion. Nine plus seven is sixteen, and a team can’t even roster that many pitchers. The Atlanta Braves have a chance to do something special in rostering so many multi-inning guys to piggyback off of each other, and while a handful of traditional relievers could remain in the mix, it’s hard to see any manager, let alone Brian Snitker, pull off this kind of flexibility. Pioneering an idea will always be difficult, but hey, someone has to be first.

A complex solution to a complex issue doesn’t happen overnight, but most of the prep work for an idea like this has already been done in drafting a crop of high school arms with a fast-track college arm here and there. The more difficult part may have been putting together such a dynamic lineup while focusing so heavily on arms in the draft, but luckily the International market paid off in the forms of Ozzie Albies, Ronald Acuña Jr., and Johan Camargo. Without them, the offense wouldn’t be far from what it was during the lowest point of the rebuild.

Four of the five teams in the National League east are currently treading water around the .500 mark, and your Atlanta Braves are one of them, albeit just a game out of first place. It’s time for this front office to do something to get the bullpen up to par. It doesn’t make any sense to rely on your scary-young pitching rotation if you’re going to back that rotation with a bullpen that’s streakier than Ender Inciarte at the plate. Something has to give. Take your pick of two or three guys in this bullpen, send the rest on the next shuttle to Gwinnett, and let’s get all of these promising arms in position to deliver on the hype that’s surrounded them for the last few years.

Chop On!