Saturday, September 08, 2007

All NL Central Bullpen

(As always, stats are accurate as of the beginning of August 29th, when I started this project.)

The bullpen becomes more and more important in recent seasons as starting pitchers throw fewer and fewer complete games. Every pitcher relies on someone else to finish at least the 8th and 9th for them usually. Obviously when you look at people for your bullpen (at least if you're building an all-star type bullpen like this project is designed to do), you're going to look at a few things.

ERA is still important, but less important for relievers, because many times they come in with inherited runners, and letting those runners score is just as damaging to the game, but not at all damaging to their ERA. So in addition to ERA, the main stats I'll consider will be K/9, showing their ability to get a key strikeout in a tight situation, and WHIP, telling us how many baserunners they usually put on in an inning of work. Innings Pitched will also be important to show how big of a sample size we have to rely upon for the validity of their WHIP and K/9.

Remember our rules too - at least one lefty is required, with the real attempt being to have two. We also must have one person who is ACTUALLY their team's closer.

Anyway, enough talk, let's nominate!

The Nominees!
(leaders in each category are bolded/italicized, as in the last post)

Player - Team - ERA - IP - K/9 - WHIP - Salary - Throws

J. Burton - Cincy - 2.56 - 31.2 - 8.24 - 1.26 - 380k - R
M. Capps - Pitt - 2.06 - 70.0 - 7.20 - 1.01 - 401k - R (closer eligible)
F. Cordero - Mil - 3.20 - 50.2 - 11.90 - 1.14 - 5.4M - R (closer eligible)
R. Franklin - StL - 1.92 - 65.2 - 4.52 - 0.90 - 1.0M - R
J. Isringhausen - StL - 1.50 - 54.0 - 7.83 - 0.93 - 8.75M - R (closer eligible)
B. Lidge - Hou - 3.07 - 55.2 - 12.13 - 1.19 - 5.3M - R
C. Marmol - ChC - 1.53 - 53.0 - 12.23 - 1.15 - 400k - R
D. Marte - Pitt - 2.03 - 40.0 - 10.12 - 1.10 - 2.6M - L
T. Percival - StL - 2.39 - 26.1 - 9.23 - 0.91 - 400k - R
C. Qualls - Hou - 3.01 - 68.2 - 9.04 - 1.30 - 441k - R
B. Shouse - Mil - 2.38 - 41.2 - 6.26 - 1.03 - 975k - L
R. Springer - StL - 2.63 - 51.1 - 9.47 - 0.95 - 1.75M - R

And there we have our nominees for the bullpen. Feel free to peruse the last few posts if you want to participate in this. Anyone coming this way from Viva El Birdos, I appreciate your reading of my humble blog. Feel free to post your own teams on this thread in the comments or once I get the new thread up, which will be my actual team with a dialogue as to why I chose players in close situations, and post teams there.

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