Is 2021 a replay of 2014? Lack of bullpen pieces may sink the Blue Jays playoffs hopes once again

Noah Eliot

When I see, and feel, the frustration that comes with another close loss for the Toronto Blue Jays, I keep coming back to a sentiment that Andrew Stoeten mentioned on a recent episode of the wonderful Blue Jays Happy Hour Podcast he records with Nick Ashbourne. Stoeten mentioned in one of the recent episodes that Blue Jays fans were not that enamored with manager John Gibbons’ cranky charm until the players he was working with got good. Good enough to match the growing expectations fans had after the Marlines trade and the acquisition of R.A. Dickey. This makes sense because in a lot of ways in the current era of Major League Baseball the manager is a reflection of the thinking of the front office, but also no matter what the strategy the manager employs, in the end it is up to the players to execute it. Now it still matters what strategies the manager turns to. Turning our attention to current Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo, his penchant for bunting and gripes with his lineups last year and at the beginning of this year, where Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batted fifth on opening day, are reasonable.

However, the Jays offence has begun to click into gear around Vlad and the need for small ball tactics like bunting has been reduced. The bottom of the order is still occasionally a slog, but this is more down to who is available to play in those spots than anything the manager can consistently do to turn light bats into scary ones. Even that concern will probably be reduced in a week(?) when the Blue Jays will hopefully be able to trot out something like this (assuming health and a more conservative approach to rejigging the lineup with pandemic mirage or possible weekend Florida Man siting George Springer’s return) 1. Springer 2. Semien 3. VLAD 4. Hernandez 5. Bichette 6. Grichuck 7. Gurriel 8. Biggio 9. A. Catcher. Here we can begin to see how the front office may have built Montoyo a line up that limits the need for much strategizing beyond setting the lineup card and alleviates much of the concern with the manager on the offensive side. At this point the same can not be said about the bullpen, which is one of the areas managers still shoulder a great deal of the blame, regardless of how medical staffs and the front office may advise on the bullpen as well.

In fact, the bullpen may be the main reason that prognostications of the Blue Jays making their non-expanded playoff return may be a year too early, just as they were in 2014. I wanted to see how the bullpen evolved from 2014 (the year before the Blue Jays’ proper playoff return), 2015, 2016 (the current front office’s first attempt to assemble a contender’s bullpen in Toronto) and the current season of 2021. I gathered the stats from the wonderful Baseball Reference franchise season pages and away I went. They had grouped off the five main contributors from each seasons relief corps, which I thought was sensible to use because I think that is the main group you would concern yourself with over a whole season, and anything beyond that is more often depth. From this I took the averages of each year’s core group to create a composite average reliever in each bullpen, which you can see in the table below.

The 2014 Blue Jays had a fairly average bullpen, with most of its five main members having an ERA+ around 100 (the league average of this park adjusted measure of league average ERA divided by a pitcher’s personal ERA) that was not really bulked up meaningfully during the season. Only Brett Cecil truly stood out as he continued his strong work out of the bullpen, after originally debuting for the Jays as a starting pitcher, and was proving to have strong strike out stuff out of the ‘pen. He would continue to be a valuable bullpen arm and be a major part of the large step forward the Blue Jays bullpen ultimately took in 2015. Roberto Osuna, who was arrested and charged with assault against a woman in May 2018 and later suspended for 75 games in 2018 for violating MLB’s policy on domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse, was also a key piece of the strong bullpens the Blue Jays had in 2015 and 2016. However, what Jordan Romano is doing so far this year has far eclipsed the levels the leaders of those bullpens were pitching at. His standout performance is one of the main reasons why people seem to have expressed such frustration with Montoyo’s bullpen management. With every loss or high leverage spot he does not appear in, which often seem to blow up in Montoyo’s face, conjuring up images of Zach Britton still waiting to come into the wild card game against the Jays in 2016.

But I do not think that is totally fair to Montoyo. The only reliever he trusts physically cannot be expected to pitch in every situation that demands a pitcher of his quality, remember he has already dealt with a injury scare this season.. That is why most good teams have multiple good relievers. Can you imagine the Blue Jays bullpen without Romano, who only a few days ago could not pitch due to forearm tightness? I can show you that below.

It is not pretty without Romano, with the ERA ballooning to nearly 5 and the ERA+ falling below league average. If you include Joel Payamps and Anthony Castro the rest of the options Montoyo is presented with are either relatively unproven if performing well, hello Anthony Castro, or they are currently struggling to approach major league average as a group. This means that the proven guys the front office has provided him with are not repaying anyone’s trust in them, but the alternative is also daunting. As he is faced with turning to pitchers who are performing, but have track records of being on the fringes of major league rosters. They could turn out to be the carriages the Blue Jays need to finish off the journey to victories. But what if they are pumpkins? Is Joel Payamps going to turn out like Ryan Tepera? Who rode his luck in 2015 with a FIP (fielding independent pitching, measuring a pitchers ability to prevent home runs, walks, avoid hitting batters and rewards their ability to strike batters out) well above his actual ERA — similar to Payamps who currently has an ERA of 2.96 but a 4.40 FIP — but then was able to put together a strong 2016 season with stronger peripheral numbers by greatly limiting his walks. Is Anthony Castro’s strong fastball-slider repertoire going to hold up as batters begin to have data and video to look at on him in this form? I hope so, but there is no guarantee, and with that the frustration could be more reasonably directed in the direction of those who provided Montoyo with the bullpen he has to work with.

We know it is purportedly hard to make trades in June, when everyone knows what you are in dire need of, but is that not kind of the job of a general manager? To make their team better when something is clearly not good enough. Besides, it is generally hard to try and win in any professional sports league, where losing and failure are the surprisingly normal when only one team can ultimately win. Everything about their job is generally pretty hard, but they still do it. It is also hard to patiently build a sustainable contender, but once that window opens the job also arguably shifts and a lack of aggression can become an oversight. Just ask the fans of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who saw James Harden, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook leave without bringing in one championship because of conservative management that never moved off of long-term thinking. With George Springer and Hyun Jin Ryu not getting any younger, perhaps the “well run” thing to do would be to maximize this year where the young players are putting it together and the older stars are still stars. It is possible that with some of the injured pitchers eventually returning, and some other pitchers making their case on the Bisons, that the solutions may be internal. However, relying on Ryan Borucki and Julian Merryweather to stay healthy is part of the reason the Jays are in their current situation. It is not like this management group has been unable to smartly add to their bullpen, as the 2016 additions of Francisco Liriano and Joaquin Benoit were very effective. But currently Montoyo is very much the face of the Blue Jays’ bullpen woes, but I think people would like him a lot more if he were given the tools to match their growing expectations of this team.