Atlanta Braves bullpen: Trade options abound but could be costly

The Atlanta Braves roll along, winning games with late-inning magic but the bullpen’s displayed some late-inning vulnerabilities.

Last week’s acquisition (theft) of Kelvin Herrera by the Washington Nationals generated a series of how will the Atlanta Braves respond posts. That’s not a hard question to answer, they’ll stick with their plan.

With all due respect to the players involved who may eventually be stars, the Nats gave up little important in their push for a title while Bryce Harper remains a National. A matching deal from Atlanta would include Derian Cruz, Jefrey Ramos, and Joselin Vallejo.

If you said “who” to names after Cruz, you aren’t alone. The Nats also took the remaining $4.4M of Herrera’s contract, something Atlanta would decline to do.

The Braves aren’t going to go George Steinbrenner crazy at the deadline, and they shouldn’t. Moves that nudge the plan forward without incurring significant debt or emptying the farm system are possible. I discussed third base last Sunday, so let’s talk bullpen.

Bullpen pieces that fit the Atlanta Braves budget

With Herrera off the market, the price for the teams willing to discuss moving their closer went up. it’s that supply/demand thing. The market is still hungry and there are fewer entree’s on the table. None of the teams with desirable assets must trade this year so it’s a seller’s market, grab your checkbook.

I’m not including expensive rentals or relievers with contracts in this discussion.  Those are offseason additions made without a feeding frenzy roiling the waters. That eliminates Brad Ziegler, Brad Brach, Jeurys Familia, Joakim Soria (he’s been surprisingly good), Raisel Iglesias, Zach Britton and Brad Hand. I’m also eliminating a closer with an affordable contract.

No Blake Treinen for you

I knew Blake Treinen ranked in baseballs top ten closers;  I found out he’s probably in the top five. Pitching for a pretty mediocre team in Oakland he’s thrown 35 innings over 28 appearances, striking out 43 and walking ten.

Treinen’s posted an 18% whiff rate, 44% chase rate, a1.03 ERA, 2.62 SIERA. He makes just over $1M the rest of this season and has two more years of team control before he becomes a VERY rich man.

Trading for him will require an  Andrew Miller level return, one top 50, one top 100 and two good B prospects.  If they felt the World Series beckoned and Treinen finished the puzzle, maybe they’d do it. They don’t see it, he isn’t the last piece, so it’s highly improbable they’ll dump that many resources not now. There are other options, one a pretty good young closer.

First some notes

I wanted pitchers with at least a 25% K rate, a low line drive rate, high popup rate, low walk rate with sub 3.50 SIERA and DRA. ERA says little about how well a relief pitcher performs.

I wanted a metric that told me more about relief pitchers. Fangraphs shutdown/meltdown stat attempts to create an alternative to saves based on WPA but admits the stats have limitations.

". . .They don’t necessarily tell you if a pitcher pitched well, but they do tell you if the team had good outcomes. . ."

It tells you if the team did well, not necessarily the pitcher. They give a simple number, I looked at it as a ratio against innings pitched but it wasn’t what I wanted.

I like simple things and came up with something in the middle of the night. Maybe it’s used elsewhere but I haven’t seen it.  I call it no-hit innings pitched – NHIP.

It’s exactly that, the percentage of innings pitched where the pitcher finishes with a zero in the hits column.  I ignore walks, so in theory, he could walk the world and still look good for that inning.  I’ll adjust it later. For now, it’s a raw homemade metric’ take it or ignore it but I find it useful. Now for those pitchers.  (You may have to look below advertisement to find the link to the next page.)