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This Call to the Bullpen Is Eroding My Stomach LiningThe cruel torture of watching the New York Mets' relief pitchers.

By Josh LevinPosted Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008, at 3:37 PM ET

Luis Ayala. Click image to expand.On Wednesday, Sports Illustrated's Jon Heyman reported that National League scouts aren't fond of the New York Mets relief corps. To put it in the words of one NL talent evaluator: "Their bullpen is bleeping brutal.'' The bullpen wasn't the biggest villain in New York's latest loss, a spectacularly awful 9-6 defeat to the Chicago Cubs that left New York tied for the NL wild card—starting pitcher Oliver Perez couldn't hold a 5-1 lead, and the offense stranded seven runners between the seventh and ninth innings. Nevertheless, closer-by-process-of-elimination Luis Ayala threw gasoline on the Mets' funeral pyre by giving up three runs in the 10th. At least that wasn't as bad as Sunday, when three relievers gave up four runs in the eighth to cost the Mets a win against Atlanta. Or the Sunday before that, when the pen gave up five runs in the ninth to blow a two-run lead. Or the day before that, when they squandered a potential Johan Santana shutout. All in all, Ayala and his comrades-in-noodle-arms have blown 29 save opportunities in 2008, the most of any playoff contender. Now that's bleeping brutal.

Rooting for an otherwise-decent baseball team with a horrendous bullpen is like cheering on a soccer team that uses an armless goalie to defend against penalty kicks. Sure, you might get a few thrills along the way, but eventually you come to realize that the game was lost before it began. Or perhaps a better analogy is a basketball team that can't make free throws. In both cases, you're carried through the first two-thirds of the game by the excitement of building up a lead and spend the last one-third chewing the fingernail off your foam finger. Phase 1: We're going to win. Go team! Phase 2: Please. Please. Please. Not again. Why? Why? Phase 3: Come on, you're supposed to be a professional athlete! This is unbelievable. Phase 4: Deep, choking sobs.

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But the best comparison I can think of comes in football. For four quarters, running backs and defensive linemen break one another's bones to give their teams a chance to win. With a few seconds to go, a specialist shuffles onto the field and pushes the ball wide right—three hours of hard work undone by a guy who looks like the Great Gazoo.

The big difference between a lousy kicker and a lousy bullpen: An NFL team in need can always ring up Morten Andersen. Fixing a subpar collection of relievers is trickier. With closer Billy Wagner out (and eventually lost for the season) with an elbow injury, the Mets were left with the baseball equivalent of chewed-up bubble gum: a sorry collection of meatballers, castoffs, and should-be minor leaguers. None of the team's quick fixes—trading for Ayala, calling up various overmatched fellows from AAA—has made things any better. As a Mets fan, it's tempting to blame someone—say, General Manager Omar Minaya—for this debacle. But the reality is that the chewed-up bubblegum strategy often works and that it would've been impossible to predict in spring training that every single Mets reliever would either underperform, get hurt, or both. When a bullpen can't do anything right, the best strategy is also the most frustrating one: wait till next year.

For a case study in the unpredictability of major league bullpens, consider the Tampa Bay Rays. To go along with the best record in the American League, the Miracle Rays have the circuit's second-best bullpen ERA at 3.46. In 2007, the Rays finished with 66 wins and a bullpen ERA of 6.16, the worst in the majors since at least the 1950s. This season's dramatic turnaround isn't the result of a philosophical change on the part of Tampa's front office. In both seasons, the Rays threw together a collection of low-paid, hard-throwing retreads and never-weres. The 2007 group—led by Al Reyes, Brian Stokes, Shawn Camp, Gary Glover, Grant Balfour, and Dan Wheeler (a midseason acquisition)—was historically awful. The 2008 group—led by Troy Percival, Trever Miller, Jason Hammel, J.P. Howell (a converted starter who had a 7.59 ERA in 2007), Glover, Balfour, and Wheeler—has been stupendous. (Baseball Prospectus' Nate Silver argues that the Rays' bullpen has been helped by the team's improved defense, but the Tampa fielders would have to be toting 90-foot-wide gloves to account for a nearly three-run improvement in ERA.)

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Josh Levin is a Slate associate editor. You can e-mail him at .
Photograph of Luis Ayala by Al Bello/Getty Images.
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