- Lindstrom was the same guy who put up a 3.14 ERA in 2008 after recovering from injury. Unfortunately, that guy wasn’t very good either, but he held the ball in the park. Last year, Lindstrom allowed a few less ground balls and a few more homers, and it made his FIP skyrocket.

- Neither of the players we got are contributing any time soon. They’re both younger than me, and I just graduated from college a few months ago. Byran was just being born as I was watching cartoons on Saturday morning with my face way too close to the television screen for my own good (this was late 1990, and I was two years old).

- Bono has spent three seasons in the Astros organization and just completed a full 2009 in high-A. He was an 11th round draft pick in 2007. The last two seasons, he’s shown a pattern of not missing bats (11.9% K% between 2008 and 2009, in low- and high-A) and an equally strong avoidance of the outer part of the zone (3.1% UIBB% during that same span). I don’t know what his stuff looks like, but it has the makings of a strike-throwing, high-80′s/low-90′s kind of guy, which does not usually bode well in the majors.

- Bryan was an international signing participating in his first season in pro ball. He had a hot rookie-ball season, batting .340/.345/.491, good for a .394 wOBA. Yes, that slash line is correct, Bryan had an OBP only .005 points higher than his batting average. In 111 PA in rookie-ball this year, Bryan managed to avoid walking entirely, not recording a single walk and only being hit twice by pitches. An honorable feat, but it doesn’t bode well for his skills.

Since I already did my look back on the season after the Philadelphia Phillies series, tonight instead we’re going to look into the future, sort of. We’re going to look into the recent past to prognosticate a move in the near future, to be more exact. The Marlins have a lot of players coming up for arbitration this season (13 to be exact), and among the difficult decisions the team is faced with making is the decision between late-inning relievers who aren’t as good/bad as they appear. One of the battle royals for the few dollars the Marlins will be handing out in arbitration will be between current closer Leo Nunez and displaced closer Matt Lindstrom.

Let’s get this out of the way immediately: neither player is good. As of right now, Nunez has a FIP of 5.22 compared to Lindstrom’s 4.46. Lindstrom is walking too many hitters, while Nunez is being hurt by a particularly bad case of homeritis, especially for a reliever. I’m almost certain that Nunez’s true talent level is not close to this; I’d be inclined to say that they’re both about the same in terms of value, but I decided to take an analytical look to this question and see which one I’d rather have in heavy innings.

First off, a nice chart comparing some important statistics between the two. Stats are from this season alone, from Baseball-Reference.

Who will win?

From that comparison, you can tell a few things from the pitchers. Nunez has struck out more and walked less this year, but he’s obviously been at a huge disadvantage in terms of home runs. Lindstrom has struggled with his command, and for a guy who has a blazing upper 90′s fastball that often touches triple digits, he just can’t seem to get anyone out via strikeout. For him to have essentially a league average strikeout rate, along with the high walk rate (11%), he had better be keeping the ball on the ground. In fact, that’s exactly what Lindstrom usually does, though this season his grounder rate has dropped to 45%.

Lindstrom’s ERA has been sky high all season, but an interesting I just found out over at his B-R page is that he has been essentially the exact same pitcher from last season. His walks and strikeouts have climbed around two to four percent, but remain essentially the same. The grounders are down by one percent, but are still by far his most likely result. His BABIP for each of his first three seasons is astoundingly similar (2007 .332, 2008 .333, 2009 .331), and he’s put the same percentage of balls in play this year, which means he isn’t getting any more or less lucky on balls in play, a statement I was making earlier in the year when his BABIP was in the .360′s.

Lindstrom has essentially normalized to his two year average, except with a drastic increase in home runs. While it’s nothing like the 13 that Nunez has given up, Lindstrom has allowed five this year after allowing only three in his first 520 batters faced. His home run rates have been staggeringly low all throughout his career, and given his typically decent grounder rate/low fly ball rate throughout his career, we can expect him to have an ability to keep the ball in the ballpark.

As mentioned, this has been an issue with Nunez all season. What’s ironic is that he came off of a year in which he gave up only two home runs and an extremely low HR/FB%. Though Nunez has already had a season in which he gave up a similar home run total, it isn’t likely that he’s this bad with the longball. A projection of about 234 PA using a 5/4/3 system would give him eight home runs in 235 batters faced, which while lower is still a bad mark for a reliever, especially a late inning reliever. If his batted ball profile and BIP% remain similar, we’d say that that total is something like 15% HR/FB%.

So which player is better? Using the system to project the pitchers on their defense independent variables, I got a FIP of 4.74 for Nunez (using 3.22 as the additive factor) and 3.62 for Lindstrom. It seems the home run component has been the difference in the evaluation of the two. Using their past performance in the projection, the two came out fairly even in terms of strikeout and walk rate; Nunez had a  K% of 18.1% and a BB% of 8.0%, while Lindstrom projected with a K% of 18.9% and a BB% of 9,8%. These numbers for both are around league average, with Nunez having an edge with a more significantly lower walk rate. The difference was in the homers. Lindstrom projected to allow three home runs in 244 batters faced, while Nunez’s high homer rate bumped his FIP skywards.

Of course, you could argue that home run rates usually regress to the mean, but I think there is enough skill in preventing home runs to expect a lower rate from Lindstrom than from Nunez. The question is then whether or not you’d be willing to accept the home run threat that Nunez offers versus the slightly less efficient play of Lindstrom. Lindstrom is likely to allow more baserunners, which means his career BABIP of around .330 is more likely to hurt him with our defense. But of course, the home run threat is worst when dealing with relievers, especially those who are to be placed in high leverage innings like these two will likely be. I would take Lindstrom personally, even though Nunez is about four years younger. I suspect this offseason the team’s defense, especially on the infield, will improve, helping Lindstrom’s ground balls turn into more outs instead of singles just out of reach of fielders. In addition, with similar projected strikeout and walk rates, the biggest fear is undoubtedly going to be the home run for Nunez. We’ll see what the team’s plans are, but my guess is that the club will retain Nunez and allow Lindstrom to walk; such is the way of measuring only via ERA.

Here’s the chart again, this time with 2008 labeled.

What's with the shape of these things?

It seems apparent that the same sort of issue arises. Kevin Gregg was not clearly the worst reliever on the team (that went to, guess who? Renyel Pinto), but he was far and away taking on the highest leverage situations. Pinto faced the second highest average leverage when entering the game, even though he was the worst reliever on the team by FIP! It appears Fredi correctly pointed out the need to manage the leverage for Doug Waechter and Logan Kensing, so that their performances don’t hurt the team as much, but to have Joe Nelson and Justin Miller pitch in less meaningful situations than Gregg and Pinto is absurd.

Gregg and Pinto led the team in high leverage appearances (remember, B-R measures this as appearances with a leverage index of 1.5 or greater) with 44 and 36 appearances respectively. In contrast, Pinto only had 19 low leverage appearances. Matt Lindstrom, who had the second highest FIP+ on the team, was third on the team with 25 high leverage appearances, but also led the team with 30 low leverage appearances (appearances with a leverage index of 0.7 or less). Of course, FIP just tells us what happened, not what we would expect to continue happening. If we just judged it on strikeouts, walks, and ground ball rate, you would likely take a look at Miller and Nelson before you looked at Lindstrom. However, Miller did not see much high leverage work, with only 14 high leverage appearances. So Fredi decided to put his worst reliever in the second highest average leverage situations, while putting one of his best relievers in the significantly lower leverage innings. Another strike on Fredi’s bullpen management.

Finally, let’s delve into 2007, Fredi’s first year as a big league manager. Did he do any better?

Is that a no?

Probably not. Once again, Gregg, Pinto, and Taylor Tankersley received the highest number of appearances while posting the fourth, second, and third lowest FIP+ on the team respectively. Meanwhile, they more or less wasted Lindstrom’s only phenomenal season (21.8% K%, 7.3% BB%, 2.9% HR/FB%, 47.4% GB%) on an average entering LI of 1.10. They also threw away another solid season by Miller and the only good season (and only season in general) that we’ve seen of Lee Gardner. The pitchers with three highest FIP+ received the three of the four lowest average LI’s entering games.

The individual appearances recorded by Baseball-Reference paint a more even tale regarding Fredi’s bullpen management in 2007. While Gregg clearly received the most high leverage entrances (39 in total, expected for a closer), no one else received more than 24, and Pinto, Miller, Lindstrom, and Gardner each more or less received the same amount. However, the three best pitchers on the team by FIP (I can’t stress this enough), saw the three highest low leverage situations on the team, with Gardner leading the way with 29 low-leverage appearances.

One final, interesting twist on the situation. B-R keeps track of relief appearances when there are runners on and when the bases are empty. The three best relievers on the team by FIP faced a disproportionately high amount of empty bases when they entered, while the two pitchers who led the team with appearances with runners on were Pinto and Tankersley, two of the worst relievers on the team. In addition, Gregg, who was chosen as the closer and presumably the best pitcher on the team, faced only ten instances with runners on base, meaning he was held strictly for the ninth inning. Disgusting.

So in each of the three seasons in which Fredi has been manager, he has gotten the order and leveraging of his bullpen wrong. Of the three seasons listed, his 2008 season was the best managed year, and ironically that was the season when people started realizing that Fredi didn’t know how to deal with his pen. It wasn’t a good year, but it was something. I think of the three years, the worst culprit is 2007; in that year he had three high-end performers working junk seventh innings while he had three lower-end performers working the situations with the most runners and the highest leverage. Something tells me that is the wrong way to manage bullpens.

Even if you take the concept of FIP out of the picture and look at the stats themselves to determine who may be the best reliever on the team, Fredi has continuously gotten it wrong. In 2009, it was Calero. In 2008, it was Miller and Nelson. In 2007, it was Lindstrom and Miller. Yet each year, Fredi managed to bury these guys in lower leverage appearances while depending on the likes of Pinto to get him out of eighth inning jams with runners on. It seems absurd that he would miss this often, but such is the way of manager these days.

So I’ve sort of shown how Fredi doesn’t write lineup cards correctly and he doesn’t manage the bullpen correctly. So, with that in mind, what else is there for a manager to do to redeem himself? Does he make the best substitutions? Does he find the best times to pinch hit? Because really, that’s all managers can do. If Fredi isn’t choosing his lineup or managing his pen correctly, he’s basically doing 85% of his job incorrectly. Now, his lineup cards are bad, but they aren’t “bat Hanley seventh” bad (see Joe Torre, re: Matt Kemp), but his bullpen management may be one of the worst in the business.

In order to get some sort of ordinal value relative to the team’s average FIP, I took a sort of FIP+ approach, dividing the team’s average FIP by the FIP of the individual player. Using this format, we would expect a positive trend between leverage and FIP+; the higher the leverage index for a plate appearance, the higher the FIP+ we would expect, as a higher FIP+ would presumably mean a better pitcher. Here’s the graph, with the 2009 pitchers labeled first. On the x-axis is the average leverage index when the reliever enters the game (i.e. when the manager decides to have the reliever enter the game), while the

Hmm, I don't quite understand...

Immediately you can see that there’s something wrong with this picture. Leo Nunez, the team’s closer and reliever facing the highest leverages entering the game, is the worst reliever on the team in terms of FIP. Of course, FIP doesn’t take into account the fact that Nunez isn’t likely to give up as many home runs as he has, but even if you move him up to where Dan Meyer and Matt Lindstrom are, you’re still dealing with a reliever who is not performing the best on your team. There is no way Nunez should be averaging a starting LI almost 0.2 more than the next closest reliever.

If you looked at the track record of the team’s relievers in terms of defense-independent pitching, you would likely conclude that Kiko Calero was the team’s best bet in terms of a good reliever. Sure enough, Calero has been very good at missing bats and keeping the Marlins’ fairly poor defense out of the situation. However, Calero has only faced the third highest leverages when entering the game, despite having by far the best FIP, xFIP, and tRA on the team.

Baseball-Reference keeps track of the leverage of situations in which a reliever first enters. Calero leads the team in appearances in low leverage situations (leverage index less than or equal to 0.7) with 28, one more than the great Renyel Pinto. Meanwhile, Calero only has 18 high leverage appearances (leverage index 1.5 or higher), while Pinto has 24! For some reason, Fredi has cast Calero as a 7th inning guy while deciding that Nunez and Pinto are worthy of high leverage situations. And you wonder why Marlins fans want to pull their hair off with regards to the bullpen this season.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the last two years’ worth of Fredi’s bullpen management.