Thoughts, Graphs and Tables about the Giants Bullpen

So far this season I haven't been the biggest fan of the way that Bruce Bochy has managed the Giants bullpen. In the last month things haven't changed that much, I watch the games and scratch my head wondering what he was thinking.

My biggest problem is that Sergio Romo, one of the best non-closer relievers in baseball is treated like that really old can of soup in your pantry and that is only to be used when all the other food in the house has been eaten and it is 3 in the morning and the store is closed. That shouldn't be the case, he needs to be used and it needs to be in important situations.

Here is an updated table of something that made back in April that shows the leverage when each reliever entered the game and then the rank of their stats among the Giants relievers.

Name	gmLI	avg rank	ERA+	Rank	FIP	Rank	k/9	Rank
Sergio Romo	1.41	1.3	432	2	1.48	1	13.97	1
Javier Lopez	1.7	3.7	676	1	2.67	3	6.46	7
Brian Wilson	2.05	4.3	95	5	2.93	6	10.9	2
Guillermo Mota	1.32	4.3	163	4	2.84	5	8.06	4
Ramon Ramirez	1.28	4.3	374	3	2.05	2	6.35	8
Santiago Casilla	0.49	5.7	60	7	3.93	7	9	3
Dan Runzler	0.7	6.0	56	8	2.76	4	7.5	6
Jeremy Affeldt	1.05	6.3	76	6	5.08	8	7.63	5

The things that I take away from this is that Runzler isn't as bad as his ERA would suggest and that he should remain a decent option going forward in low to medium leverage situations or as a LOOGY.

Affeldt is a mess and should really be given time to sort out his control issues. From what I have seen it looks like his "stuff" is good but he is trying to be too careful and is too often outside of the strike zone.

Everything else based on leverage when entering the game seems to be pretty good so let's move on to the next graph with the innings for each relief pitcher.

Click for larger view

This is where things get screwy. Mota is a good pitcher but I am not sure he should be the guy with the most innings (although 7 of his innings came in the long relief role and if taken out put him even with Affeldt and Lopez) and Romo really shouldn't have among the fewest innings pitched.

We have only reached the 20% mark of the season so it is still early but man there have been some interesting usage going on so far.

UPDATE 7:41 am: After I posted this I noticed that Chris from Bay City Ball had done something similar check that out too. Well at least my graph is prettier. 

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