2007 Preview Part 4

The bullpen must find a way to replace Mike Gonzalez and the Salomon Torres innings we potentially lose with him at closer.

This is the fourth part of a running season preview in which I look at things that I think have to happen in order for the Pirates to be a decent baseball team in 2007 and decide how likely I think they are to happen. Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

I hadn't planned on doing one of these this week because I've got a ton of stuff to do, but snow days can considerably lighten the load of a college student's life and so here we go...

The one aspect of the LaRoche trade that tends to get glossed over is the innings in the bullpen. Between Torres and Gonzo last year, they covered 147 and 1/3 innings. Since Gonzo only threw 54 of them, the lowest number by any regular in our bullpen, it would seem pretty easy to replace those innings with Torres as closer. The problem is that Torres probably isn't going to throw 93 innings this year (which is about his average the past three years) if he's used exclusively as the closer with the way the role is defined now. If Torres throws, say, 70 innings in 2007 then we've lost 14% of the 493 and 2/3 innings tossed by the bullpen last year (don't hold me to that number, it may not be perfect but it's pretty close). That's a pretty significant amount. So what do we do?

Insanely enough, I think the answer is that this is probably a non-issue and we can trust Jim Tracy to use Torres correctly this year. He is always one of the first to point out that Torres gets better with use and under his guidance, Eric Gagne pitched 82 and 1/3 innings (exactly) for three straight years in LA. If Torres throws that many for us next year, I don't think we have a problem in that department. The interesting question is probably more along the lines of "who do the high leverage innings go to now?" Last year, according to FanGraphs, the top three Pirate relievers in terms of leverage index (BP's definition of leverage is here) were (in order) Gonzo, Torres, and Roberto Hernandez. Two of these guys (who account for about half of the innings of the three because Torres is such a horse) are gone now, which means that someone (John Grabow, Matt Capps, Josh Sharpless, Jonah Bayliss) is going to have to step things up in 2007 in a considerably more difficult climate than they did in 2006. Of course that's not necessarily a bad thing; according to the FanGraphs chart linked above Hernandez cost us about a win from his pitching in those high leverage situations, so replacing that shouldn't be difficult. Still, it's going to be a huge change for a guy like Capps who, despite all of his impressive work and 9-1 record as a rookie, very rarely pitched in truly difficult situations last year. Despite all that, I don't know if this is something I'd spend a lot of time fretting over. Bayliss and Sharpless both have extensive experience closing in the minors and despite pitching in mostly easy situations, Capps really was incredible for a 22 year old last year. As long as a couple of them step things up and keep Danny Kolb to the sixth and seventh innings of games, I think we'll be OK in the pen next year.