Category Archives: 2012 in Review

2012 Dodgers in Review #46: RP Josh Lindblom

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(w/ LA) 3.02 ERA 5.07 FIP 47.2 IP 8.12 K/9 3.40 BB/9 -0.7 fWAR C

2012 in brief: Lindblom was seemingly one of the more effective Dodger relievers in the early going, but had trouble containing longball problems before being dealt to Philadelphia (and performing poorly there) in the Shane Victorino trade.

2013 status: Moves on to his third team in less than six months after being traded to Texas for Michael Young.

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See that huge difference between ERA & FIP for Josh Lindblom above? That’s a fantastic example of why ERA for relievers just doesn’t work, and it’s also a pretty good indicator of just how big the gap was between Lindblom’s perceived performance and his actual contribution.

We spent most of the spring expecting that the addition of veterans like Todd Coffey & Jamey Wright to an already-crowded bullpen would push Lindblom to the minors, despite the fact that Lindblom’s quality 2011 debut proved that he was ready for a job. Lindblom lucked his way into a spot when Blake Hawksworth & Ted Lilly each had to start the season on the disabled list, though with Lilly’s stay expected to be short, that just turned into a daily game of “when will the guillotine finally come down on Lindblom?”

Surprisingly, it never did. When Lilly returned, it was Coffey landing on the disabled list to make room; when Ronald Belisario was activated, it was Mike MacDougal who was DFA’d only a month into his contract. While that was obviously the right choice, I was still pretty surprised at the time that Ned Colletti would really whack a veteran like that rather than ship out a young pitcher with options:

I have to admit, even though this was clearly the right move – you just can’t send down Josh Lindblom after how good he’s been this year, and MacDougal has shown no ability to get anyone out – I’m still pretty surprised that this actually happened. MacDougal was signed to a guaranteed deal over the winter, and in a bullpen with one NRI (Jamey Wright) and a few guys with options remaining, the fact that the Dodgers chose to eat MacDougal’s deal rather than ship off Lindblom or gin up a phantom DL stint is encouraging. Hey, maybe Stan Kasten’s new fan email box is paying off already!

Lindblom continued performing well through the end of May, joining with Kenley Jansen, Javy Guerra, &  Belisario to form one of the better youngish relief quartets in the game. As the calendar flipped to June, Lindblom had pitched 25.1 innings, striking out 24 against 9 walks, with a 2.13 ERA that would have looked even better if not for one awful outing in Colorado on May 1 when he allowed three earned runs in 0.2 of a terrible inning. But hey, it’s Colorado. Those things happen.

On June 1, the Dodgers were again in Colorado, and Lindblom again struggled, allowing two solo homers. He followed that with seven consecutive scoreless outings, so no one was that worried, and after a scoreless inning against the White Sox on June 15, his ERA was down to 2.12. Unfortunately for Lindblom, it was downhill from there. On June 21 in Oakland, he allowed three runs without getting an out. Three days later against the Angels, he allowed two more runs in just two-thirds of an inning. In his final outing before the break, he allowed another homer in Arizona, and our concerns about his longball problems at the time were summed up in our midseason review:

Josh Lindblom (B)

You probably don’t remember this now, but Lindblom came pretty close to not making the team out of camp, avoiding being sent to the minors mainly because Ted Lilly ended up on the disabled list. As the season went on, Lindblom became a primary set-up man and has cemented his place on the team… yet has had a disturbingly high home run rate, contributing to a FIP over 5. He gets a B because he’s stuck around all season and been decent doing so, I’m just not sure how to reconcile this longball issue.

In Lindblom’s first outing after the break: boom, another homer to Chase Headley, just one of four hits he allowed to San Diego in two-thirds of an inning. Five days later against the Mets, he allowed three of four hitters to reach. Lindblom finished the month with five straight scoreless outings, but as the Dodgers grew increasingly desperate for left field help, he was dealt to Philadelphia on July 31 for Victorino.

Much as we disliked Victorino, I didn’t mind the thought of trading Lindblom:

Victorino didn’t come for free, and both Josh Lindblom and Ethan Martin will be missed – though not quite as much as you’d think. I like Lindblom well enough, but he’s an eminently replaceable non-elite middle reliever with home run problems. Martin is someone a lot of people think of as having a bounceback season in his second try at Double-A, and while I’m still a fan of his, it’s more than a little concerning that his big year is one in which he’s walking “only” 4.7 per nine. I’m not happy to see him go, but he’s the kind of guy the Dodgers have several of.

Dave Cameron over at FanGraphs agrees on Lindblom, even if I know you won’t:

Lindblom is an extreme fly ball pitcher, as only 69 of his 141 career balls in play (34.3%) have been hit on the ground. Not surprisingly, that has translated into a bit of a home run problem, as he’s given up 1.05 HR/9, a bit above the league average for NL relievers. But, HR-prone fly ball guys can still be good relievers as long as they pound the strike zone and miss a lot of bats.

Unfortunately for the Phillies, Lindblom has been essentially average at those two things as well. His 9.0% BB%/22.7% K% are just barely ahead of the average marks for an NL reliever (9.2 BB%/21.7% K%), and are supported by the underlying numbers as well — he throws an average number of strikes and gets an average amount of contact.

Toss in the significant career platoon split (.244 wOBA allowed to RHBs, .360 wOBA to LHBs), and Lindblom essentially profiles as a decent situational middle reliever. This is basically the same skillset the Dodgers got in Brandon League, so their bullpen won’t take much of a hit at all in this series of moves.

Lindblom went to Philadelphia and upped his strikeout rate, striking out 27 in 23.1 innings, but his control fell apart (17 walks in that span) and he allowed four more homers; of the 205 pitchers who threw at least 70 innings this year, only seven had a higher dinger rate than Lindblom’s 1.65/9. He’ll only be 26 next summer, and I still like his talent, but it’s hard to shed too many tears over losing a non-elite reliever from a position of depth; it’s just too bad that Victorino didn’t end up being worth the risk.

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Next up! Tough year, Javy Guerra!

2012 Dodgers in Review #45: RP Shawn Tolleson

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4.30 ERA 4.08 FIP 37.2 IP 9.32 K/9 4.78 BB/9 0.0 fWAR C+

2012 in brief: Raw talent dominated minors and showed flashes of excellence in up-and-down major league debut.

2013 status: Having options left always makes roster games possible, but should spend most or all of the season in Dodger bullpen.

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You know, since Rubby de la Rosa missed most of the season and then was traded immediately after returning, and Jerry Sands & Alex Castellanos never really got full chances to perform, I think Shawn Tolleson is the Dodger prospect I was most excited to see who actually spent a decent amount of time with the team.

That was made clear early on in the season, since we’d barely made it into the first week of May before I started gushing over how much I wanted to see him. Four days later, he at least got promoted to Triple-A, and in early June he got the call to the bigs. We were, frankly, thrilled:

But it’s the second, completely-out-of-nowhere move which is far more interesting. Javy Guerra has been placed on the DL right knee inflammation, and that means we’ll get our long-awaited first look at Shawn Tolleson. (Matt Guerrier was pushed to the 60-day DL to make room for Tolleson on the 40-man roster.) Guerra struggled in his most recent outing on Saturday against Colorado, allowing two hits & a walk in just 0.1 inning, but we had seen no indication that he might be injured. Tolleson, meanwhile, joins the club with an absolutely ridiculous track record, having struck out 34 against just 5 walks for Chattanooga & Albuquerque this year, and with a 178/28 K/BB across 120 minor league innings over parts of three seasons. He got off to a briefly rough start upon his promotion to ABQ, but has an amazing 15/1 K/BB in eight AAA games. Frankly, I’ve been dying to see him for some time, and the thought of him along with Kenley Jansen & Josh Lindblom in the bullpen – and yes, Guerra belongs in that group as well, when healthy, as does Scott Elbert, who has been very good – really makes you salivate at the future of the young bullpen arms in this organization.

Tolleson had a rough debut in Philadelphia — he threw ten pitches, eight for balls — and was only okay over his next four outings before getting blown up against the Mets on June 29. A few days later, he became the answer to the trivia question of “who got sent down when Luis Cruz was recalled?,” but his bizarre season had only just begun. The next day, Todd Coffey‘s Dodger career ended when his elbow exploded, and Tolleson’s option was canceled before he even got out of Los Angeles.

Tolleson took advantage of his second chance and was a much better pitcher in July, striking out 10 in 10.2 innings while allowing only two walks and four hits. Two of those hits came in New York on July 22, which was the game otherwise remembered for being Nathan Eovaldi‘s final Dodger start and Josh Wall‘s debut. I bring it up here because the story of Tolleson’s afternoon was a little more complicated than the box score would indicate:

But the main story of the day, as it always seems to be, was the umpiring, where there were at least five calls that were either clearly incorrect or very questionable, and that’s not even counting balls and strikes. In the fourth, Murphy doubled down the right field line, a ball that clearly seemed to land foul. That didn’t hurt the Dodgers, but a call by home plate umpire Jim Joyce in the seventh loomed large. Tolleson had seemingly struck out Ike Davis to complete a 1-2-3 inning, but home plate umpire Jim Joyce argued that Davis had tipped the ball as the Dodgers ran off the field.

Uh, you tell me:

Given a second chance, Davis doubled to right and came home on a Murphy single, and I think we’ve all seen enough baseball to know that given a gift like that, the chances of Davis turning it into something were approximately 10000%. Someone really ought to set up a real-time sports book that allows me to bet on things like that happening.

After leaving New York, Tolleson ran off a streak of 13 consecutive scoreless outings into late August, but not without another aborted transaction: he was briefly optioned to Albuquerque in late July to make room for Randy Choate, yet was again quickly recalled when Scott Elbert landed on the DL. That scoreless streak ended against Miami on August 26 when Jose Reyes & Carlos Lee went back-to-back. After having thrown 52 pitches in three days, Tolleson was once again optioned to the minors, this time to make room for the return of Wall to reinforce a tired bullpen.

Yet for the third time in less than three months, Tolleson’s demotion was short-lived, because he was gone for only three days before returning once again to replace Elbert, who once again was shelved because of his elbow. Despite all the roster shenanigans, Tolleson didn’t actually burn up an option year since he was always recalled before ten days to cover for other injured players.

With expanded rosters in September, Tolleson had no worries about being sent down and struck out 13 in 12 innings, giving him 39 whiffs in 37.2 innings on the season. While he had some control issues — 4.8 walks per 9 isn’t great — and occasionally ran into the big inning, it was a pretty impressive debut for Clayton Kershaw‘s schoolboy pal. As I said above, further offseason moves may crowd the bullpen enough that Tolleson may not be assured of an Opening Day spot, but we should be seeing plenty of him in 2013.

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Next up! So long, Josh Lindblom!

2012 Dodgers in Review #44: RP Todd Coffey Is a Socialism

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4.66 ERA 3.61 FIP 19.1 IP 8.38 K/9 3.19 BB/9 fWAR D+

2012 in brief: Veteran was quietly effective in between April knee surgery and July elbow surgery which ended his season.

2013 status: $2.5m club option was declined and he’s unlikely to pitch at all as he rehabs from Tommy John surgery, though it may not stop him from attempting to defend America from the unseen threat of forces that threaten capitalism.

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I feel like I’m not even sure how to appropriately grade Coffey here. A 4.66 ERA isn’t great, and neither is missing several weeks in April with knee surgery and then blowing out his arm entirely in early July, limiting his season (and likely Dodger career) to only 19.1 innings over 23 outings. Since he allowed four earned runs in his first three appearances, he fell victim to the usual trap of ERA over small sample sizes, and it didn’t get back below 7 until June. As you can imagine, he was hardly the most popular reliever among fans simply due to that.

And yet… when healthy, Coffey was actually pretty effective. He appeared in 10 June games, and didn’t allow an earned run in any, part of a “15 scoreless outings in 16 games” streak dating back to early May. Of his 23 games, he allowed earned runs in only five, and three of them came in appearances clearly affected by his knee & elbow.

Besides, if we remember when Coffey was surprisingly signed in February, I was pretty pleased with the move:

So a durable, pudgy, entertaining ROOGY for $1.3m? Can’t argue that, even if you can make a pretty convincing argument that he’s a better reliever (younger, better FIP, higher K/BB in 2010-11) than Matt Guerrier, who received 9.2x as much cash last winter over three years.

I’m not entirely sure that another veteran bullpen arm was strictly necessary at this point, but Coffey is useful enough and for the $1.3m he’s getting, you can’t really argue with it. Works for me.

And I think it would have, had he not been injured. Sadly, his Tommy John surgery is likely to keep him out well into next season, and it’s doubtful he suits up as a Dodger again.

But let’s be honest, none of that is why we’re going to remember Todd Coffey, right? I feel like Coffey’s the kind of guy who worries that “Red Dawn” — the original one, not the remake that never happened — was a documentary.

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Next up! Shawn Tolleson makes his debut!

2012 Dodgers in Review #43: RP Scott Elbert

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2.20 ERA 3.80 FIP 32.2 IP 7.99 K/9 3.58 BB/9 0.1 fWAR B+

2012 in brief: Was quietly a reliable bullpen lefty for the first half before missing most of the second half with left elbow soreness and undergoing surgery in September.

2013 status: Enters final year before being arbitration-eligible and should return as steady member of the bullpen.

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Quick: what’s your favorite memory of Scott Elbert this year?

You don’t have one, do you? Well, if you can’t remember much about what a non-closing reliever who got into 43 games did, that probably means he did a solid job. It’s when you start hearing about these guys that you’ve got a problem, and so Elbert’s general lack of publicity is a good sign.

It wasn’t always that way for Elbert, of course, who rebounded from a troubled 2010 marked by his mysterious departure from the organization to mark his first full season in the bigs in 2011. It’s actually kind of interesting to note that despite the fact that Elbert’s been around seemingly forever — 2012 was the fifth year in which he suited up for the Dodgers — and has been a primary lefty for two seasons now, he’s pitched just 92.1 innings in the majors. He’s actually been around for so long that when he debuted with the team on August 29, 2008, not only was Russell Martin leading off, but Jeff Kent & Nomar Garciaparra comprised the middle infield. Of the 15 Dodgers who played that day aside from Elbert, only Matt Kemp & Andre Ethier remain with the team, and otherwise only Martin, Hiroki Kuroda, James Loney, & Juan Pierre seem assured of big league jobs in 2013. Yet still, over four years later, Elbert’s not even reached one hundred innings yet.

That’s the life of the non-elite situational reliever, I suppose, though it’s more than fine for a minimum-salary type. It’s also the kind of guy you usually want to move on from as he reaches arbitration years, but his lack of wins and saves will hurt him with the arbitration board, and the Dodgers are far from a usual team anyway.

OPS
Home
Away
 vRH
vLH
2011
.623
.600
.726
.517
2012
 .431
.838
.515
.727

It’s that lack of meaningful sample sizes which has led to some wild splits over his two full seasons. As you can see in the chart at right, in 2011, Elbert was slightly better on the road — though not by much — while doing better against lefties, as you’d expect. In 2012, neither of those held true, and in fact they swung wildly in the other other direction. Considering we’re talking about just 30+ innings per year, I’m not sure we can really put a lot of stock into those trends either way, at least not without another year or two of data.

The biggest problem for Elbert last year was that after a good first half, he pitched only 7.2 innings after June thanks to two stints on the disabled list with left shoulder soreness, the second of which ended his season with cleanup surgery in September. He’s expected to be ready for camp, and he should have a spot waiting for him. At the moment, he’s the only lefty in the pen, unless Paco Rodriguez makes the cut or a long-expected trade for a veteran lefty gets made.

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Next up! Todd Coffey is a socialism!

2012 Dodgers in Review #42: RP Brandon League

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(w/ LA) 2.30 ERA 2.77 FIP 8.89 K/9 4.61 BB/9 0.5 fWAR B+

2012 in brief: Overcame atrocious start after deadline trade to become nearly unhittable fill-in closer when Kenley Jansen was lost.

2013 status: Like it or not, the 3/$22.5m contract he signed in the offseason makes him the closer, at least to start.

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I almost feel like bullpen coach Ken Howell deserves a grade of his own here, because the mechanical adjustments he (along with pitching coach Rick Honeycutt) made to Brandon League turned what was quickly becoming a disaster into one of Ned Colletti’s better moves of the season.

Ah, but that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves here, isn’t it? League was acquired just before the deadline on July 31, largely as a replacement for Josh Lindblom, who had been sent to Philadelphia for Shane Victorino. As I noted at the time, I was moments from boarding a plane so my thoughts had to be brief:

Let it be said, quickly, that while I liked both Leon Landry & Logan Bawcom, neither were irreplaceable parts. I dug Bawcom’s ability to miss bats, but the level of failure from minor league relievers is huge, and Landry hasn’t shown he can hit outside of high-offense environments; neither were even among the top-30 Dodger prospects per Baseball America entering the season, though that may have changed now since each were doing well. Each clearly had others at their position ahead of them on the depth chart, so to give them up, while disappointing because I liked both, is hardly fatal.

League, however, is… well, he’s a guy. He’s still got a great fastball, but his strikeout rate is disappointingly down to a 5.44/9, the worst it’s been since 2007, while his walks have increased (highest since 2008) and his usual ability to induce groundballs is down to 46%. He’s not bad, he’s not great, he’s just a guy – I assume I don’t have to tell you not to get too pumped over his 37 saves last year, especially when he lost that job to Tom Wilhelmsen already this year – and while I don’t mind having him for two months, I also don’t see him as a huge improvement.

For League’s first two-plus weeks as a Dodger, not only was he not “a huge improvement,” he was an enormous catastrophe. Over his first seven games, he pitched only five innings, allowing 12 baserunners and six earned runs. League didn’t pitch for four days after the August 17 outing which ended that streak, instead working with Howell, and finished August on a nice run of six scoreless & nearly perfect innings, including a 9/2 K/BB. The timing couldn’t have been better; Jansen was lost for weeks after August 29 with a recurrence of his heart ailment, and if League hadn’t been available to step into the role I’m not entirely sure what Don Mattingly might have done.

League picked up his first save as a Dodger on September 1 and collected five more over the month, pitching 16.1 September innings and allowing only a single earned run; the 60 batters he faced hit a collective .137/.267/.157 against him. The turnaround was so stunning that when Mattingly failed to use him in a crucial situation against the Giants on September 7, we were practically apoplectic:

Josh Beckett was more than effective through six two-run innings, but ran into some trouble in the seventh. After a single, a walk, and a sacrifice bunt, Beckett was faced with men on second and third with one out. Mattingly ordered the intentional walk to red-hot Angel Pagan to load the bases, and with Brandon League ready to go, the manager walked out to remove Beckett.

Except, no. He didn’t. Or as I recapped it in real time:

Remember, this is September, the time of expanded rosters. You have something like 39 pitchers down in the bullpen, so you never have to worry about pulling a pitcher too early because it might exhaust your bullpen. You especially never need to worry about pushing your luck with a veteran pitcher who had given you more than you probably had a right to expect.

Beckett stayed in, of course, and in what may have been the most predictable outcome ever, Marco Scutaro popped a single to right field, scoring two and basically putting the game away. It’d be sad if it weren’t so clearly apparent that this was going to happen. Scratch that: it was still sad.

While that’s obviously more of a Mattingly concern, it really does go to show how much confidence we had in League by that point, and he was really outstanding, even staying in the ninth inning when Jansen returned, which only served to strengthen the rest of the bullpen.

Now he’s back for three years, and while I’m trying not to focus too much on his controversial contract in what is supposed to be a review of his 2012, it’s difficult to ignore entirely. I’ll say this about it — I’ll never like three-year deals for non-elite relievers, but the way the market has gone since he’s signed it has made the dollar figure look a little less absurd, and there’s the non-zero chance that the mechanical change has allowed him to bring out his true talent level.

If not? This is going to get ugly, quickly.

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Next up! Scott Elbert!