Building bullpens on the fly key to title

Today’s closer might not get call when October rolls around

WASHINGTON • Last Oct. 28, when the gate to the visitor’s bullpen at Dodger Stadium swung open before the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 5 of the World Series, the pitcher entering the game for the Boston Red Sox was not closer Craig Kimbrel — who had 48 saves that year, including playoffs — but lefty ace Chris Sale. Fifteen pitches and three strikeouts later, the Red Sox had beaten the Los Angeles Dodgers for the championship.

Sale’s closing effort — he wasn’t credited with a save because the Red Sox’s lead was more than three runs — kept alive one of the quirkiest streaks in baseball: It was the eighth- straight year in which the final out of the World Series was secured by someone other than the winning team’s opening day closer.

On the surface, it may be nothing more than an odd bit of trivia. But it is also a highly visible manifestation of an important truth: championship teams frequently rebuild their bullpens on the fly, adding critical pieces over the course of the season — usually via trade, but sometimes through other means, including waiver- wire pickups, big- league promotions, returns from major injuries or, as in the case of the 2018 Red Sox, 2017 Houston Astros and 2014 San Francisco Giants, pressing starting pitchers into high-pressure relief duty. Those three teams, respectively, used Sale, Charlie Morton and Madison Bumgarner — all of them full-time starters during the regular season — to close out their World Series clinchers, more out of necessity ( because of acute closer issues) than design.

Bullpen reconstruction is certain to be a major storyline again this summer, with the July 31 trade deadline drawing closer and a slew of contenders, from the Red Sox to the Washington Nationals to the Los Angeles Dodgers to the Philadelphia Phillies, dealing with serious bullpen deficiencies.

But this week saw the Chicago Cubs undertake an entirely new method of midstream bullpen reconstruction: a long- delayed freeagent signing.

On Wednesday, the Cubs agreed with Kimbrel on a three- year, US$ 43- million contract, as they seek to repair their leaky bullpen ahead of an expected race with the St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central.

Leaving Kimbrel aside — he still needs to prove he is game-ready after his long layoff — waiting to rebuild your bullpen in midseason has some built-in advantages.

Relievers are the most volatile commodity in baseball, their effectiveness reliant upon not only arm health, but also usage patterns and the whims of smaller sample sizes. Few are consistently great year after year. By waiting until June or July, teams can identify which relievers are pitching well that season for trade- deadline sellers, and snatch away one or more of them (they also might discover someone dominating in the minors who becomes a critical bullpen piece down the stretch and in October, as the 2018 Red Sox did with Ryan Brasier).

Bullpens, of course, take on added importance in October; in 2018, for example, relievers accounted for 40.1 per cent of all regular- season innings, but 49.7 per cent of postseason innings.

“You always add a reliever. That’s what you feel like you need to do (to) answer any questions that you have,” Astros manager A. J. Hinch said. “I just think you can never have too many pitchers. You can never have too many weapons ( against) dynamic lineups like the ones you face in October.”

The trade market for relievers, as always, will be robust, with the list of available arms including the likes of Detroit’s Shane Greene, Arizona’s Archie Bradley, Toronto’s Ken Giles, Cincinnati’s Raisel Iglesias, Baltimore’s Mychal Givens and San Francisco’s Will Smith. But the list of contenders in need of bullpen help is at least as long.

If recent history is any guide, some 4½ months from now, when the bullpen gate swings open for the last time in 2019, the pitcher likely won’t be the figure that same team expected in March.