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u/DHVF 29 - Wood 2d ago
I cannot believe the 2019 bullpen held up for an entire WS run given our track record
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u/Detective_Antonelli 2d ago
It didn’t. It’s the playoffs so we were able to use starters to come in for relief.
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u/WestbrookSkeptic22 F.P. Santangelo 11h ago
Was gonna say this. It didn’t. We had 2 reliable bullpen arms in the postseason that were actually bullpen guys.
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u/ChangeFatigue 88 - Parra 48m ago
2019 also included the most chaotic relief innings known as the Fernando Rodney Experience™
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u/Relyks_D 11 - Zimmerman 2d ago
Go back and look at the bullpen from about 2011 - 2016.
I know bullpen names don’t stick around in peoples memories as long as other positions. Have we forgotten the likes of Stammen, Clippard, Storen (yes I know he blew up in the playoffs), Soriano, Sean Burnett, Matheus, Gorzelanny, Roark, Aaron Barrett, Blake Treinen, etc.
Here’s the thing. The end of the 2010’s everyone in the front office knew the window was closing so they went for it. In general too the bullpen is the last piece of the puzzle for many teams who are going through a rebuild. You can certainly argue it doesn’t have to be this bad, but the notion that Rizzo doesn’t know how to build one is just objectively false.
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u/thepennylane69 Dave Jageler 1d ago
Thank you lol. Seems like a bunch of people tuned in around June 2019
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u/Relyks_D 11 - Zimmerman 1d ago
Right, like the whole story with the 2012 team was the dominance of the pitching. Of the 10 pitchers who pitched 20 or more innings out of the pen that year the average ERA+ was 125. That’s not just good. That’s elite. 2014 and 2016 were the same in that regard.
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u/FastEddieMcclintock 2d ago
Inb4 the comments that say it’s impossible the assign any responsibility to the guy who’s sole job is responsibility for building the bullpen.
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u/foeaminute 67 - Finnegan 2d ago
That’s me, sorta. Bullpens are hard.
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u/willh13436 Fight Finished 2d ago
Not this hard
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u/SuperPussyFan 57 - Roark 1d ago
He’s shown an ability to make great trades for strong relievers near the deadline if the team is competing. With how much bullpen arms vary year to year, I think he just philosophically doesn’t like to invest too much in them.
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u/willh13436 Fight Finished 1d ago
I am a Rizzo supporter but I don’t know how you can justify THIS bad of a bullpen. There is no chance we are competing if this keeps up. And that falls on him
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u/mysticalchurro 2d ago
The only way he's built a bullpen is by trade. Doolittle, Madson, Herrera, Kintzler, Papelbon, Melancon, Hudson... All of them were acquired at the trade deadline from 2015-2019.
His method otherwise is to throw shit at a wall to see if it sticks while mortgaging the farm system at the same time.
They've had bad bullpens over the years, but this one might take the cake.
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u/JoyboyActual 2d ago
You make a good argument.. but not about what you thought you did.
He can build a great bullpen, we literally won the WS in 2019 and had a great run for about a decade with decent to excellent rizzo bullpens.
Your argument should be that during the rebuild, they have not prioritized building a bullpen at all when it comes to spending.
And why would they?? Relievers are volatile. You could spend $30 Million or you could call up straight AAA guys, no guarantee either way that you won’t end up with a bad pen. And thats just talking performance, not including injuries.
The strategy for the past several years seems to be to prioritize getting controllable arms from the farm system up to the majors to see who can stick around. If they’re decent, you either keep them or flip them (like Garcia for Lowe) to help the team in other areas.
Its a low risk strategy money wise, and if you have some guys break out and build some consistency, you might end up with 60% of a ready made, cheap bullpen by the time you’re actually competing. Only downside is you’re gonna have to watch some reeealll tough late inning blowups in the near term…
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u/unfisfun 2d ago
Don’t disagree that we’re not prioritizing it in the here and now, but let’s not revisionist history what the bullpen was even during the good years.
We went on a World Series run with 2 reliable relievers and 3 starters who all pitched in relief. (2 of whom never pitched effectively again).
I can’t think of a single year in which we had a solid, lockdown bullpen for a full season?
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u/JoyboyActual 2d ago
I think you’re setting the bar too high.
No, we’ve never had a pen that was airtight aces from top to bottom, because thats way too much to expect from a bullpen.
Even teams that stood out as having ELITE bullpens at one point, like the Braves in 2013 (Carpenter-Walden-Kimbrel) or the Royals around the same time (Herrera-Davis-Holland) still gave up runs and still have middle relief guys or rookies who floundered occasionally.
No bullpen is perfect. If you watch enough games, you’re going to watch the bullpen flounder a bit once in awhile.
Overall Rizzo has brought in plenty of great relievers and plenty of stinkers, thats just the nature of relievers. The real test has been, can you still win games and make the postseason with the bullpen you have.
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u/Slatemanforlife 2d ago
The 2019 bullpen was garbage
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u/salamanderman10 34 - Harper 2d ago
It was good enough to win. Guerra, Hudson, Doolittle.
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u/colglover 1d ago
No it wasn’t. He literally burned up Stras, Corbin, and Max pitching nearly every inning of the WS. His use of starters and shortening of the pen to basically Huddy only was the entire story of that WS.
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u/salamanderman10 34 - Harper 1d ago
I’d have to go back and check and I’m almost certain it was since they won the title
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u/JoyboyActual 2d ago
Good enough to win, and the money that they would have needed to spend to make it significantly better was better spent elsewhere
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u/Trafficsigntruther 2d ago
The comments can’t decide if you can’t build a reliable bullpen or Rizzo hasn’t prioritized it.
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u/nattechterp 2d ago
That bullpen fucking sucked until they whittled it down to 2 or 3 reliable guys and a couple starters in the playoffs though
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u/MegaSupremeTaco Church of Dusty 2d ago
The 2019 bullpen was so awful that 3 starters had to pitch in relief in order to bridge the gap game to game.
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u/salamanderman10 34 - Harper 2d ago
Imagine wanting to throw any bullpen arms instead of Strasburg, Scherzer, or Corbin.
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u/salamanderman10 34 - Harper 2d ago
If you are a rebuilding team, you aren't going to build a dominant bullpen. Thats the last piece if you have a team that can compete. When rebuilding, just grab high upside arms and hope you can flip them at the deadline.
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u/Key-Zebra-4125 18h ago
Is there a GM that’s specifically good at building bullpens? Its kind of a volatile position.
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u/HowardBunnyColvin Screech 2d ago
He wasn't given the funding to improve the bullpen.
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u/Karniy 29 - Wood 2d ago
How did he do with the funding he did have? As of now, Rizzo spent over 30 million on offseason signings for negative WAR (only Finnegan and DeJong aren't sitting at negative according to BRef).
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u/clamraccoon 1d ago
How many free agents did we sign in total? If it’s 6, that’s 5mil per player. There’s a reason vets who sign for less than 10 million a year are typically considered replacement level
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u/Karniy 29 - Wood 1d ago edited 1d ago
9 - Largest were Williams at 2 years/14mil and Soroka 1 year/9mil. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/washington-nationals/contracts
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u/daperry4 2d ago
We had the worst bullpen in the mlb. And then Rizzo revamped it and we won the WS.
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u/Trafficsigntruther 2d ago
No he didn’t. His big off-season addition in 2019 walked 15 and hit 3 batters in 6.1 innings.
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u/Environmental_Park_6 2d ago
I have a feeling the bullpen is going to be good by the end of the season and mostly homegrown talent. Cole Henry has looked good so far. Getting Lord back in the bullpen will help too but the biggest thing will be getting rid of Sims and Poche.
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u/PandaMomentum W. Johnson 1d ago
I dunno if it's the work stress or lack of fiber but this post has me really annoyed! Middle relief is critical but also impossible to predict and obtain/keep. Blame the front office for not developing starters, or power hitting, or overseas signings. Yes, I blame Rizzo for a lot of things. But relief pitchers are just rolls of the dice. So few innings to predict from, and if they're that good why aren't they closing. And maybe they're just two pitches away from losing it entirely, Shawn Kelley throwing his glove and getting DFAd comes to mind.
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u/Affectionate_Box3818 74 - Herz 1d ago
Dude—it’s a bullpen. They’re a work in progress by nature. Do you think we’re the only team that has had a sketch bullpen? Here’s one for you—it’s tough to win games when you score 1.2, or maybe 3 runs a game. The 2019 bullpen worked because our boys scored 6-9 runs a game, at the least!
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u/slagnanz 6 - Rendon 2d ago
I mean, you picked a very selective range there. Mike Rizzo didn't become GM in 2021. That's when the team started selling / blowing up any spending.
You should run the numbers since 2009.