The National League is embarassing.

[tolbiny]

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After two years like this, is it possible that Cleveland's poor results versus expectation is some function of their terrible bullpen?

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The indians had high turnover the past year in their pen. They lost their best setup man (Howry), best - er only- lefthanded specialist (Rhodes), as well as David Riske in the Crisp trade, and in return the got Mota and tried out unproven arms in the pen.

[kyleb]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
After two years like this, is it possible that Cleveland's poor results versus expectation is some function of their terrible bullpen?

[/ QUOTE ]

The indians had high turnover the past year in their pen. They lost their best setup man (Howry), best - er only- lefthanded specialist (Rhodes), as well as David Riske in the Crisp trade, and in return the got Mota and tried out unproven arms in the pen.

[/ QUOTE ]

Pitchers in general are highly variable commodities - relievers especially. Very few relievers show the track record of being consistantly good, and the ones that do are well-known closers. Setup men are just failed starters and tend to have significant fluctuations in ERA from year-to-year, so paying Howry the large sum of money he commanded would be out of the question just because of his one great year in Cleveland. Dealing Rhodes for Michaels was an outright steal at the time, and trading Riske is more or less irrelevant since he wasn't really that good with Cleveland in the first place.

So, to recap, losing Howry was inevitable (unless you wanted to overpay for a historically non-dominant reliever, which no smart team does), losing Riske was no big deal, and trading Rhodes should have been +EV.

Losing Miller to injury was a huge problem, as was the regression of Fernando Cabrera. But, as I said before, fluctuations are normal and expected in relief work.