Let's fix this f%#?@$!& pitching staff!

On the Jays' non-elite bullpen, the numbers game, the Kikuchi situation, the relief market, roster rules, big boy pants, and more!

Image via the Toronto Blue Jays/@BlueJays

Yusei Kikuchi has rather suspiciously been diagnosed with a neck strain. He was placed on the 15-day IL by the Blue Jays on Thursday. But simply because he’ll be out of sight doesn’t mean he should be out of mind. In fact, I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that Kikuchi and what happens next with him likely holds the key to how this Toronto Blue Jays season will ultimately play out.

*GULP*…

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The Blue Jays cannot claim that they've been caught flat-footed by MLB's rules on pitcher limits. The league announced before 2020 that going forward teams would only be able to carry 13 pitchers at a time, but because the pandemic and MLB's attempt at union-busting limited that season to just 60 games, because the lack of 2020 innings affected pitchers in 2021, and because of the lockout-shortened spring training here in 2022, those rules did not come into force until last month. The Jays had all kinds of time to ready themselves for this change, yet they went with a quantity over quality approach to bullpen construction this year. That is proving to be a significant challenge for a number of reasons.

Chief among those is the fact that they’re not getting enough quality out of their quantity. Even their best arms back there have simply not been good enough.

Jordan Romano is the last guy in this situation who should be picked on, so I'll try to make this brief, but while Romano has been far and away the Blue Jays' best reliever in 2022, if you put him in another contending team's bullpen which inning do you think he'd most regularly pitch in?

Before we try to answer that let me say that evaluating relievers is not as easy as it is starters or position players, because the samples are small — especially only halfway through a season — and very context-dependent. WAR is a counting stat that strips out context that is crucial to the role of a reliever and tilts toward innings pitched. WPA (win probability added) is interesting, but also a counting stat and not predictive. ERA isn't great not only because of how the subjectivity of errors comes into play but because relievers often enter the game to clean up somebody else's mess. FIP, though it ignores a lot, gets closer to the essence of what we're looking for here, but it can get funky in small samples because of home runs. There's really no perfect, all-encompassing stat for this, but something like K-BB% is a quick and dirty number that, for my money, does a good job. You want your big bullpen arms to avoid walks and to rack up strikeouts, and this stat seems to do a pretty good job of identifying the best relievers in the game.

Data via FanGraphs

Though not a word you typically want to use when you’re talking about statistics, this feels right to me — particularly in a way that a conceptually similar measure like K/BB would not. We can see each pitcher’s K/BB in the chart above, and the number in that column that clearly jumps out is the 34.00 next to the name of Joe Mantiply of the Diamondbacks. Mantiply has literally walked only one batter this season, while striking out 34 in 33 innings. Clearly he’s having a great year. But that 26.8% strikeout rate is a whole lot closer to average than the rates being produced by the other guys on the list, which means that a lot of his outs are coming from balls in play — and balls in play are dangerous for relievers. Adam Cimber does a really good job of inducing poor contact, for example, but because he doesn’t strike guys out his ideal role is really more as a seventh inning guy. Balls in play miss gloves, find holes, dribble into no man’s land, etc. To induce poor contact you need good command, and while command is important, it’s the combination of command and swing-and-miss stuff that truly makes a pitcher elite.

Anyway! Among the 22 pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched in the ninth inning this year, Romano's 14.9% K-BB rate ranks 17th. He can be better than that. Last year his mark was 26.4%, which ranked seventh of 31 ninth inning guys, but this year's version of Romano has been up and down. If we expand the list to pitchers with at least 20 innings from the seventh inning onward we get 129 names. Romano's mark moves to 16.0%, but his ranking among that drops to 70th. Adam Cimber is the only other Blue Jays pitcher to register on this list, and he ranks 89th at 13.9%.

Let me be clear here: Romano and Cimber are not the problem.

Romano being the best the Jays have got, and Cimber being the only other guy to have managed to stay healthy enough and be trusted enough to pitch so often in late innings is a problem, but it's not the problem.

The problem isn’t necessarily the other guys, either. At least not individually.

Tim Mayza, David Phelps, Yimi Garcia, and Trevor Richards can be better than what they’ve shown so far this season, but they are fine enough. The issue with them is that all four are basically locked into spots in this bullpen when healthy.

OK, so why is that? Well, Mayza gets a ton of leash because he's the only lefty of any kind of competence that the Blue Jays have. Phelps and Garcia do because they can't be optioned to the minors. Richards can't be optioned either, and his spot would seem to be easily the most precarious, but he's looked a little better in his very brief return from a "neck strain" of his own, and is also exactly the kind of guy the Jays would be rushing to add via waivers if he was made available by another organization. Richards has never before had problems with walks like he’s had this season and continues to do a very good job of striking batters out (though not as good as last year, when his 22.3% K-BB rate placed him between Romano and Mazya, as all three ranked in the top 30 among 144 "qualified" relievers). He’d be harder to simply jettison than I think a lot of fans, understandably frustrated with his results so far, would like to believe.

Because of the new roster limits, this puts the Jays in a tough place. Not only do they lack truly elite options, they only have two additional spots they can use to fit some in. Six more-or-less immovable relievers in an eight-man bullpen world is not what you want, unless those guys are great. Were there only five of these types it would leave two spots for waiver pick-ups and optionable arms to be cycled through, and one spot for a long man — a role that, as has been made abundantly clear of late, is really important too.

So, OK, let’s talk about long relief and, by extension, starting depth. Here, even while now mercifully absent due to that “neck strain,” the Jays’ hubristic Yusei Kikuchi project — something I wrote about the other week — is causing a major headache. The Jays’ top two rotation options are solid, and José Berríos is going to continue getting the ball no matter what. Ross Stripling has done everything that could have been asked of him this year, and I think Max Castillo has earned a shot in the rotation in Kikuchi’s absence. They can scuttle along like this for a bit, I think, provided everyone stays healthy. But when Kikuchi comes back, then what?

When the trade deadline hits on August 2nd, Kikuchi will still be owed $5.3 million just for 2022, with two-years and $20 million remaining on his front-loaded contract after that. While $25 million is not an unprecedented amount of money for a baseball team to eat, I have a very difficult time seeing the Blue Jays simply cutting bait so early on with him — almost to the point where I doubt it’s even worth bringing up here. Especially when the suits at Rogers are already aware that the final $40 million on Hyun Jin Ryu’s deal has gone up in smoke, just like the final $12 million of Tanner Roark’s deal did a year ago.

That’s a tough conversation for any president of a baseball club to have with ownership, no matter how much of Edward Rogers’ ear we think he has.

Unfortunately, the more realistic options for Kikuchi don’t feel any better right now. Under 2021’s rules, Kikuchi could have been the ninth man in the ‘pen and the Jays could probably have gotten away with that OK. Now if they try to hide him back there it will have to be in one of the two spots we discussed above — one that needs to be filled by a long man of some kind, and the other that the Jays need to earmark for an elite arm — a move I wouldn’t just call a priority, but a necessity.

Unless he gets it together in a hurry — a massive question for incredibly obvious reasons — Kikuchi can’t have a “role” where he’s “relied on” in either the rotation or the bullpen. And the Jays need to be prepared for just what the hell they’re going to do in that eventuality.

Do they flush $25 million? Do they give up on a more presently useful reliever like Trevor Richards just to keep Kikuchi around? Do they cross their fingers and make Kikuchi the long man? Do they give him some Spider Tack, tell him to do his best to hide it, and then not worry so much if he gets caught and suspended?

It’s not an easy question to answer.

There are, however, some ways that this could theoretically work out. Richards could pitch his way out of the picture (though this would also require someone like Sergio Romo or Anthony Banda not pitching their way in to the picture as well). One of the other six core guys could get hurt and open up a spot, freeing the Jays to stash Kikuchi and acquire the additional big arm they need, while still having a spot open for someone to soak up bulk innings when needed. Richards, who only makes $1 million this year and has two arbitration years remaining after this one, could be attractive as part of a trade package to the right team. Or, if you’re into pipe dreams, maybe Nate Pearson or Yosver Zulueta could ride in offering both bulk innings and the kind of big arm the team requires.

Perhaps more realistically — and, outside Kikuchi actually figuring it out, ideally — the Jays could find a way to nurse this “neck strain” into a more prolonged shutdown.

Players can only be sent on minor league rehab assignments with their consent, but once that’s in place pitchers can rehab for up to 30 days. Rosters expand to 28 players on September 1, and with that pitcher limits go up to 14. If the Jays can milk this “injury” for a couple weeks, delaying sending Kikuchi to Buffalo until the end of his 15 days on the IL, or potentially even longer, they could max out his rehab assignment and then only need to deal with finding room for him in an eight-man bullpen for a week or so at the end of August.

That could be dealt with through a phantom injury to someone else, which wouldn’t necessarily even kill the team a ton because starting on August 26th they have a run of 12 games in 13 days against the Angels, Cubs, Pirates, and Rangers.

If they can get Kikuchi to go along with that, they’re not positioned so badly — and with rumblings in Ken Rosenthal’s latest for the Athletic about the Jays being in on the starting pitching market, I can’t help but wonder if that’s already the way things are shaping up.

Rosenthal writes that “the Twins, Blue Jays and Rays are among the teams that would like to acquire (Marlins starter Pablo) López sooner rather than later,” though he also tells us that Miami is not ready to give up on their season just yet as they’re just three games below .500 and four games back of the third NL wild card spot (something more than a few salty Jays fans would do well to contemplate for a moment).

If the Jays really are being aggressive in on the starting pitching market it’s not difficult to see how the latter Kikuchi scenario could play out over the next few weeks. Hold down the rotation with Stripling and Castillo as long as possible, add a starter to push Castillo into the long man role, add a top-end reliever, option Castillo for as briefly as possible when Kikuchi comes back, then bring him back up when rosters expand.

On September 1st, that leaves you with a 14-man pitching staff that looks like this:

Rotation
• Kevin Gausman
• Alek Manoah
• José Berríos
• SP TRADE ACQUISITION
• Ross Stripling

Bullpen
• Jordan Romano (CL)
• RP TRADE ACQUISITION
• Yimi Garcia
• Tim Mayza
• Adam Cimber
• David Phelps
• Trevor Richards
• Yusei Kikuchi
• Max Castillo (LR)

Hell, you might even be able to get some use out of Kikuchi as the bullpen’s second lefty in that setup.

Now, obviously you can’t really plan for any of this to fall into place so neatly. Guys will get (legitimately) hurt, some might get healthy, depth will be tested. But there’s at least a framework there. What it means is Kikuchi signing off on going back to square one, if that’s what it comes down to. That could be tricky, but I think the first hurdle has maybe been crossed with the “neck strain.”

We’ll see where it goes, I suppose. What it means is a potentially bumpy ride over the three-plus weeks remaining until the trade deadline — especially if another starter gets hurt, or José Berríos hasn’t actually taken the step forward we all want to believe that he finally has. But it’s not like it wasn’t going to be a bumpy ride with Kikuchi in the fold either!

Obviously it would be preferable if Kikuchi gets himself right in short order and the Jays can upgrade the rotation that way. But… well… ideally he’d have done that by now.

Ideally they’d also find a way to get more out of their relievers not named Romano and Cimber so as not to be in such need of another elite relief arm — a process that has actually seemed to be happening for Garcia and Phelps of late, at the very least.

Either way, one elite reliever and one pretty good starter shouldn’t be impossible pieces to acquire. Quite the opposite, in fact. But they’re going to be costly, and they may not be gettable for another two or three weeks.

On that front there is, of course, another quirk of the new rules that Jays fans have to hope Ross Atkins and company are better prepared for than they were the imposition of pitcher limits. The Marlins are not the only team out there questionably fancying themselves a contender at the moment. Go back to our list of relievers ranked by K-BB% above. Hardly any of them play for teams that you’d expect to be sellers this month.

Joe Jiménez of the Tigers is a great target, as he throws 96 and is arbitration-eligible one last time this winter, but a lot of teams will be looking at a guy like him. David Bednar of the Pirates is another perfect fit, but won't even be arb-eligible until after next season, so there will be a huge premium to be paid. Scott Effross of the Cubs has even less service time than Bednar, but while he's done a great job of getting strikeouts this year, he doesn't throw as hard as either of those other guys, which maybe makes him maybe a little too Jays-y. Mantiply, too, plus he's left-handed, which is probably less useful here than a right-hander. I would trade Gabriel Moreno and any four players not on the big league roster to the Angels for Raisel Iglesias and Shohei Ohtani, but I somehow don't think that's going to happen. Hell, make it ten players not on the big league roster — still not going to happen.

Beyond that we’re going to have to start going farther down the list, meaning trading a dip in cost for a dip in quality. Personally, I’d rather the Jays aim for quality — and the fact that they’re reportedly looking at López is at least encouraging. But talking about these guys and actually landing them are two different things. It’s not like grabbing items from the grocery store shelf. There’s always competition for the best players available, and it seems incredibly likely that the addition of two playoff teams this year is going to amplify that competition significantly.

Time to put on your big boy pants, Ross. Getting real with Kikuchi was only just a start.

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