The Texas Rangers' Bullpen Is In Shambles

Bruce Bochy managed the San Francisco Giants to three World Series Championships in five years. In all three postseason runs, the Giants were underdogs, because their offense was underwhelming and lacked star power (2010 and 2012) or because their starting rotation was held together with crazy glue and duct tape (2014).

In all three World Series wins, the X factor was the bullpen. And not just the relief pitchers themselves, but the way Bochy used each one at just the right moment, for just the right number of batters. I came to think of Bochy as a bullpen whisperer; he had an instinct for knowing how to get the most out of each pitcher, over the course of the season, and throughout the playoffs.

I suppose I should have reevaluated my view of Bochy as a bullpen savant in 2016, when the Giants blew a 6.5 game lead over the Dodgers in the National League West at the All Star break and ended up in second place, 4 games behind LA. That brutal second half wasn’t all the bullpen’s fault, but it was a big factor. And the bullpen failed spectacularly in Game 4 of the Division Series against the Chicago Cubs, when the Giants took a 5-2 lead into the 9th inning and five relievers combined to give up four runs, the lead, and the series.

Bochy is a master tactician and in-game manager. But there’s only so much you can do when the relievers aren’t performing well or have simply run out of gas.

And that’s precisely the situation Bochy finds himself in as the first-year manager of the Texas Rangers.

Let’s start with the big picture.

Heading into Monday’s action, the Rangers are 73-57. They are 1-9 in their last 10 games. With the Seattle Mariners surging, the Rangers have fallen out of first place in the American League West for the first time all season.

The Rangers have scored 727 runs, the most among American League teams. Their run differential is +172—second only to the Tampa Bay Rays in the AL. Of their 73 wins, 30 have been by 5 runs or more; another 8 wins have been by 4 runs.

On the flip side, 18 of the Rangers’ 57 losses have come in 1-run games, compared to only 9 wins. Texas is also 2-6 in extra-inning games.

In other words, the Rangers’ offense is so good that it covers up for a lot of mediocrity in the bullpen. Until recently.

Take a look at Win Probability Added. Just as a reminder, WPA describes the changes in each team’s Win Expectancy from one plate appearance to the next and credits both the batter and the pitcher with how much each PA contributed to his team’s chances of winning that game, positively and negatively. If a game is close—say, within 3 runs—PAs later in the game will have larger swings in WPA, because each one has a greater impact on the ultimate outcome of the game.

That’s why WPA for relievers is meaningful. Relievers tend to come into games in the later innings. So WPA tells a story about how well a particular reliever or a whole bullpen performed when the game was on the line.

So far this season, the Rangers’ bullpen has a -3.46 WPA. In the American League, only the Oakland A’s and Kansas City Royals have bullpens with worse WPA scores. I don’t need to tell you that the A’s and Royals are the two worst teams in the majors this season.

What’s remarkable about the bullpen’s -3.46 WPA is that the Texas relievers have pitched the fewest innings of any team in the majors (430.1). Yet, the relievers have accumulated the third worst WPA among all MLB bullpens.

Now let’s look at Blown Saves. A pitcher is “awarded” a blown save if he enters the game in a save situation and allows the tying run to score. Blown saves are awarded in any inning and in a back-and-forth game, there can be multiple blown saves for each teams.

The Rangers’ bullpen has 25 Blown Saves, tied for second-most in the American League. Both the White Sox and the Orioles have 26. The Rangers have more Blown Saves than Saves this season.

Earned run average? The Rangers’ bullpen ERA is 4.75, fourth highest in the American League. Since the All-Star break, the ERA is 5.18.

The bullpen has been the Rangers’ Achilles Hell all season. That’s why they acquired Aroldis Chapman on June 30, a full month before the trade deadline. And Chapman has been fairly effective for Texas—in 20 innings pitched across 19 games, Chapman has struck out 37 batters, given up 12 hits and 5 runs. Yet, even with Chapman, the bullpen has been worse.

The Rangers then acquired Jordan Montgomery and Chris Stratton from the Cardinals at the deadline, along with Max Scherzer from the Mets. Montgomery and Scherzer are starters; with their addition, the Rangers moved Martin Perez to bullpen. Stratton has been effective; Perez has not.

The weakest links in the Rangers’ bullpen have been Jonathan Hernández, Ian Kennedy, José Leclerc, Yerry Rodriguez, Cole Ragans, and Grant Anderson. These six relievers have combined for -4.01 WPA in 121.2 innings pitched. Rodriguez and Anderson are now in Triple-A. Hernández was called up on Sunday and took the loss in the Rangers’ 13-inning game against the Twins.

After leading the AL West all season, the Rangers’ odds of making the postseason have dropped by a lead balloon in the last two weeks. FanGraphs gives the Rangers only a 64.6% of securing a postseason spot. Baseball-Reference is more optimistic, giving the Texas a 78.5% chance of playing in October.

It will take some Bruce Bochy bullpen magic to successfully navigate this bullpen to and through the postseason.