The Angels Bullpen

Well, it’s been awhile, but I’m back. Sorry for you folks (all two of you) who have been waiting patiently for a new post. I kinda disappeared off the face of the earth. I’ve been really busy at work and then went to Las Vegas for the weekend. Not that those are excuses. Well, actually, they are excuses. So there.

Anyway, the Angels are cruising. 15.5 games up with 43 left to play – seems like as insurmountable a lead as it gets, especially when the teams chasing them are very, very flawed. The Rangers have no pitching (when you score 17 runs in a game and lose, it’s time to take a hard look in the mirror and try not to vomit). The A’s have decided that they really aren’t as good as they seemed earlier in the year. So for all intents and purposes, the Angels have the West wrapped up.

But they can’t act like it. Scioscia preaches the whole “one game at a time” mantra, which is just as clichéd as it sounds, but has some merit. To a certain extent, they can’t put this thing in neutral and coast to the finish line. There is a definite advantage to finishing with the best record in the AL. Even though they’re as good on the road as they are at home this year, home field advantage is magnified during the playoffs when your home crowd is raucous. They also need the team to be sharp heading into October, and a month and a half of loafing might hinder that.

On the other hand, Scioscia really needs to get guys rest. He’s done a good job of rotating Vlad, Anderson, and Rivera in and out of the DH spot, even throwing Hunter in that mix. I think now is the time you get Gary Matthews a start a week to keep him involved and have a glimmer of hope of getting him back on track (whatever track that is) before the playoffs. I’m not all that worried about the offense, though. Nor am I worried about the starting pitching, which has been consistently good all year.

It’s the bullpen I’m concerned about. Let’s go through the key members

Here are Scot Shields’s monthly splits in ERA for his career:
March/April: 2.31
May: 2.20
June: 2.62
July: 2.45
August: 4.68 (yikes)
Sept/Oct: 3.28

So he does recover a little bit in September, but he seems to go through this swoon near the end of the season. He went through it last year and he had lost nearly all his confidence come playoff time. That can’t happen this year. Do you pitch him through it, or give him extra days off? Shields seems to be a guy who thrives on the workload, but that is an awfully risky gamble to make.

Darren Oliver? He’s been fantastic this year. Probably the biggest surprise bullpen guy of the season. His control has been great (8 walks in 52 innings) and he’s only given up 3 homeruns. He’s actually been better against righties than lefties, but that could be a sample size issue. He’s been used judiciously to this point (remember he was their long reliever last year and was a starter not that long ago). I’m not worried about Oliver.

Justin Speier is in trouble. He gave up ANOTHER homerun on Wednesday, which has been his problem all season. He doesn’t seem to have lost anything on his stuff (I’m not a scout, so take that for what it is), so I’m guessing he’s just lost command of his pitches. Just last year he was excellent in a 6th/7th inning, tight game role. He even picked up the slack for Shields when he lost it. At this point, I would NOT trust Speier to pitch a meaningful inning in October.

Darren O’Day and Shane Loux (or whoever they have down there) are mop up guys. They’re not great, but you’re not going to put them in unless the game is out of reach one way or the other.

Jose Arredondo has been a pleasant surprise. But there’s concern here too. The last few games, he’s had control issues. He’s still only walked 13 guys in 39 innings, which isn’t terrible, but it’s not great either. He’s also a rookie who has never been in a pennant race. You can dismiss that as one of those “intangibles” that don’t mean anything, but there are plenty of examples of young kids tensing up in the playoffs. There are also plenty of examples of kids pitching well, so we don’t know for sure. But I know that he’s been pitching having some trouble getting through innings lately and his ERA seems fortunate to be at 0.95. I’m not sure if I want him to have a bad game to get it out of the way, or if I want him to keep putting zeroes on the board to keep his confidence up. I just know that having a bad game in the playoffs could be devastating to the Angels and to his mentality for the rest of October.

Lastly, we have K-Rod. I blogged about him awhile ago, but here’s an update. He seems to have lost even more of his pure stuff. He was at 89 – 91 against the Mariners on Wed. He didn’t seem to trust his slider, which is odd, since that’s his go-to pitch when he’s in trouble. He couldn’t locate his changeup. He’s not on pace to throw significantly more innings than prior years, even though he’ll get into more games. His K rate is way down (9.8 versus 12.0 from last year). His walks are up. He’s had numerous innings where he’s been lucky to get through unscathed. I know he’s going for the saves record, but it seems fairly obvious to me that he needs to recharge. And that’s way more important than the record. K-Rod being who he is though, I’m not sure he’ll take kindly to that. He seems to want this record. Also, you know he doesn’t want to show any sign of weakness in the months prior to his huge payday.

So what is Scioscia’s action plan? Here are my suggestions:
1. Give Shields a break in the next few weeks. Let Speier pitch some of his innings. The Angels have a big enough lead that if Speier is still bad, they’re not completely killing themselves. The upside is that Shields gets to rest during his typical bad month and Speier might get on track. If Scioscia can have confidence throwing Speier out there in the 7th inning of a playoff game, that’s HUGE.
2. Keep throwing Arredondo out there in the 7th, but maybe give him a .
3. Rest K-Rod. Even if that means keeping him out of some save situations, rest the guy. Boy do the Angels need him in October. This is the move that I don’t see happening at all, but I think it’s the most vital. Who steps in for Rodriguez if he starts getting shelled? I don’t really want to think about it, but it’s a sobering proposition.
I think you do all these things at the end of next week, for about 3 weeks, so that you can work everyone back into their regular roles at the end of September. I’m not Scioscia, so I don’t have nearly as good a read on the ‘pen, but these are my observations. The Angels need these guys in October. We’ll see what happens.