AB4AR 2011 Season Review: The Bullpen

(I'd be excited too if I was that badass.  Courtesy of The Star-Ledger)

The 2011 'pen was expected to be the team's biggest strength back when I previewed it in March.  It had incredible depth, incredible power, incredible experience, incredible flexibility, and it had Mariano Rivera.  Dave Robertson opened the season as the 6th-inning guy for crying out loud.  The thought was that the deep bullpen could help ease the burden of what was considered a patch-work rotation and that Joe would be able to rotate his top 4 guys (Mo, Soriano, D-Rob, Joba) around to use them in high-leverage situations as needed and still keep everybody fresh.

Well things didn't exactly work out as planned for the bullpen thanks to injuries, but it was still a very good year for the Yankee relief core.  Anchored by Mo and D-Rob, the Yankee bullpen was easlily one of the 5 best in baseball in 2011.  In 479 combined innings of work, the 'pen put up a 3.12 ERA (4th in baseball, 1st in the AL), a 3.65 FIP (9th MLB, 3rd AL), and 7.0 WAR (2nd).  Their success was due to a combination of killer stuff, evidenced by their 6th-ranked 8.65 K/9 (2nd in the AL) and their ability to shut down situations with runners on base (MLB-leading 78.8% LOB%).  So the Yankee relievers excelled at doing what they're paid to do, but it wasn't all done by the same crew that started the season.


After Bartolo Colon was shifted to the rotation in April, the role of long man fell into the hands of Hector Noesi.  After not being used much early, Noesi made the most of the first chances he got and earned more trust from Joe as the season progressed.  It was a bit of a waste of Noesi's talent, as he has been projected to be an even better version of Ivan Nova as a starter, but his 51.2 innings of 0.4-WAR middle relief work were beneficial to the team.  The Yanks also received a ton of help from FA signings Luis Ayala and Cory Wade, who combined to throw 95.2 innings of various levels of late-game relief.  Neither has the best stuff in the world, but their ability to throw strikes helped Wade (91.2 LOB%) and Ayala (85.7%) be among the most effective at stranding runners.  None of these 3 got the ink that D-Rob and Mo did, but their work was critical to the Yankees' success.

With Pedro Feliciano and Damaso Marte on the shelf all year, the LOOGY burden fell entirely on Boone Logan's shoulders in 2011.  And while Logan's surface numbers (9.94 K/9, 2.81 BB/9, 3.46 ERA, 3.29 FIP, 0.7 WAR in more innings than 2010) all look solid, his inability to limit damage as a usual mid-inning guy and his inconsistency against lefties was the real story.  While he did strike out 34 over 27.1 total innings against lefties, Logan also allowed 38 baserunners and 9 ER in those innings, and his FIP vs. lefties was over a full run higher than against righties (3.65 to 2.61).  There were times when Logan was near unhittable and times where you knew he was going to give up a run after he threw his first pitch, and while he will assuredly retain his role to start 2012, Logan needs to show improvement against left-handed hitters to hold the job down.

The walking wounded are next on the ledger.  Joba and newcomer Rafael Soriano were penciled in as the 7th and 8th-inning bridges to Mo coming out of Spring Training.  And from early on, they struggled in those roles.  Soriano had a tough time pitching in The Stadium and put up an ERA in the 7s and a FIP in the mid-5s in April, and Joba wasn't much better.  But they started to turn things around in May before both being shut down with injuries.  Soriano had shoulder problems that kept him out until July, and Joba went under the knife in June for TJS, ending his 2011 campaign and likely the first half of his 2012.  Their final numbers weren't horrible (2.83 ERA/3.55 FIP in 28.2 IP for Joba; 4.12/3.97 in 39.1 IP for Sour Puss), but both will be looking to rebound and live up to expectations in 2012.

As Joba and Soriano faltered, however, a new star rose to fill the void in the form of Dave Robertson.  D-Rob had already put together 2 solid years in '09 and 2010, but 2011 was really his coming out party.  In my bullpen preview post, I said of Robertson, "If he can tighten up the command this year, he could put up closer-type numbers" and he did just that.  After an early bout of wildness in April, D-Rob was an absolute monster for the remainder of the season, finishing with career bests in ERA (1.08), FIP (1.84), K/9 (13.50), LOB% (89.8%), and WAR (2.8), and doing it over a career high of 66.2 innings, many of them in high-leverage situations as Mo's setup man.  Looking at the breakdowns, D-Rob's best strength is his ability to make pitches when the situation calls for it.  He allows fewer baserunners and strikes out more guys when there are more runners on base and RISP, which is just what you want from a setup reliever, and his numbers with the bases loaded are just ridiculous (14 K in 19 AB with a .053/.053/.105 line against).  D-Rob was arguably the best reliever in baseball this year, and has firmly entrenched himself as the next in line after Mo.

Which brings us to the man, the myth, the legend.  Mariano Rivera.  2011 was another typical Mo year for Mo, even as he faced more questions of "What's wrong with Mo?" than usual.  Seriously, you would think people would have learned by now.  At age 41, Mo had his best year since 2008 this season, posting a 1.91 ERA, 2.19 FIP, and 2.4 WAR on his way to 44 saves over 61.1 IP.  His cutter is still the gold standard for pitchers who throw it and his command is still 2nd to none.  But more importantly than the numbers was the fact that Mo took the final step in cementing his legacy as the greatest closer of all time (not that he needed to) by passing Trevor Hoffman for the all-time saves record on September 19.  He's got 603 now and every save he records next year will set the new record, but will 2012 be Mo's last season.  He'll be 42 and on the last year of his contract, so we'll have to wait and see.  But at least we get one more year of the G.O.A.T.

The bullpen was expected to clean up a lot of messes in 2011, and while they didn't have to be quite the janitorial service that some of us anticipated, they still had an excellent year and did it without the beastly lineup we were expecting.  Many of the pieces of this year's 'pen will be in place in 2012 (Mo, D-Rob, Soriano, Logan, Wade) and at some point the Yankees will get Joba back.  Another arm here and there to fill out the group and we should be looking at another solid year of relief work in 2012.