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Outside of 20-year-old rookie Roberto Osuna and newly converted starter Marco Estrada, the Blue Jays bullpen has been a mess this season and when you’re a team that is dealing with issues in the starting rotation, having an unreliable back end doesn’t help matters much.
This weekend’s series in Houston highlighted the issues, as the Jays relievers let solid starts by Drew Hutchison and Estrada turn into no decisions by blowing leads in eventual losses on Thursday and Saturday.
First up it was Aaron Loup, the once reliable lefty who has seen his ERA climb over each of the last two seasons. Entering with a 4-2 lead, Loup didn’t register an out after entering in the Houston half of the seventh, giving up four runs (three earned) on three hits and a walk. By the time manager John Gibbons called for the hook, it was too late – the Astros had taken a 6-4 lead and their bulalpen made sure it stayed that way.
Saturday it was the tandem of Canadian lefty Jeff Francis and righthander Liam Hendricks that struggled, taking over for Estrada with a 3-2 lead heading into the bottom of the sixth. By the time the top of the seventh rolled around, the Blue Jays were behind 6-3. While they got two back off Houston closer Luke Gregerson in the top of the ninth, the rally fell short and their losing streak reached four.
To his credit, Hendricks has been mostly good this season and his peripheral numbers (0.81 WHIP, .183 BAA) bare that out, but on the whole, this group just isn’t good enough and Francis stands as perhaps the greatest example of that.
The 34-year-old from North Delta, British Columbia was one of two Canadians drafted in the Top 10 of the 2002 Major League Draft and hit the big leagues with a lot of expectations. Now into his 10th season, it’s hard to figure out how Francis is still holding down a place on a Major League roster.
Opponents are knocking him around to the tune of a .314 batting average this season, his ERA stands at 6.75 and the worst part is that none of this is too far off from his career numbers. Sure, the ERA is elevated and the average his high, but Francis has a career ERA a touch under 5.00 and a WHIP hovering around 1.50, yet he’s still lingering as a regular piece in the Blue Jays bullpen this season.
You can’t expect to win when you’re counting on guys like that every couple of days, but that’s the position Toronto is in because they don’t have the bullpen depth to turn to anyone else and you can only run Osuna and recent call-ups Ryan Tepera and Steve Delabar to the bump so much.
As the team continues to scuffle and the pitching staff continues to struggle, it makes you wonder if general manager Alex Anthopoulos is feeling any pressure to swap one of the team’s numerous bats for some bullpen help or maybe even punting on the season and allowing some of the younger arms in the system a chance to gain valuable big league experience without any pressure?
Mid-May might be too soon to look at the season as a lost cause, but if Toronto can’t right the ship by the time June 1st hits, it wouldn’t be surprising to see some of the established talent being shopped around the league in order to help this club improve now and into the future.
Numbers Definitely Lie: ESPN used to have a show called Numbers Never Lie, where Michael Smith and – after a couple years with a revolving door of co-pilots – Jemelle Hill talked about different topics using numbers to back up their points. The problem is that numbers most certainly do lie.
Mark Buehrle is 5-2. Drew Hutchison is 3-0. Sports has conditioned us to believe that winning is all that matters and as such, those two pitchers being a combined 8-2 to start the season looks like a good thing. The problem is that they both sport hefty ERAs and have benefitted from playing for a team with a potent offense.
If you want to get a better read on how a pitcher is doing, look to things like WHIP and Opponent’s Batting Average – they’re far more accurate indicators of what to expect when a pitcher takes to the mound than they’re win-loss record and for Buehrle and “Hutch,” those numbers are not pretty.