Can bullpen again hoist franchise out of a rut?
History says the 2020 Padres will finish with a losing record, the club’s 10th in a row.
But history also provides hope.
Improved Padres bullpens have taken the franchise out of other ruts, notably in 1996, 2005 and 2010.
Those bullpens ended up first, second and first in league ERA, and fueled two West champions plus a 90-game winner.
While bullpens are famously volatile, the Padres’ crew now limbering up in Arizona seems deep and talented enough to cope with injury and downturns.
So, a sunny forecast: With a little bit of luck, the 2020 bullpen should lead the franchise to more than 77 victories, the highest total yet in the seven-season tenure of the Peter Seidlerron Fowler ownership group.
It seems A.J. Preller has heeded the work of previous Padres general managers such as Randy Smith and Kevin Towers by giving extra attention to the bullpen.
In fairness, Preller assembled a robust bullpen a few years ago, the 2018 crew that finished first in innings pitched and fourth in ERA, despite a late-july trade that sent All-star closer Brad Hand and useful reliever Adam Cimber to the Indians.
Preller’s other four bullpens?
Not good. Each one landed in the league’s bottom-5 in adjusted ERA. The 2019 bullpen was 10th of 15 in ERA and ninth in win-probability added.
Let’s look at three franchise-lifting bullpens, starting in 1996.
Got it right
The relief corps led the Padres to their first West title in 12 years, finishing first in ERA, third in innings and tied for first — with the Cardinals, who swept the Padres in the divisional playoffs — in adjusted ERA.
Here was the stylistic twist: Manager Bruce Bochy’s top eight relievers in innings pitched were right-handed.
Trevor Hoffman did clutch work, closing out the final three victories in Dodger Stadium and posting the second-best winshare total (3.8) of his Hall of Fame career.
Padres draftee Tim Worrell went 6-1 with a 1.54 ERA (and allowed only a .439 OPS) in 581⁄3 relief innings, and helped as a spot starter.
Fellow draftee Bryce Florie returned value on the mound and in trade.
Florie allowed only one home run while shouldering a heavy workload before Towers dealt him and two others to the Brewers in late July. To the Padres came slugger Greg Vaughn. Two years later, he hit 50 homers.
Pleasant surprises are often part of big seasons from bullpens, and the ’96 Padres enjoyed a few.
Winning pitcher of the West clincher was Dario Veras, a 1993 Rule 5 draftee from the Dodgers who that day tossed three scoreless innings of relief. Promoted when Florie was dealt, Veras logged a 2.79 ERA, easily the highlight of his brief MLB career.
Doug Bochtler had a wonky delivery, a factor in his high walk rates.
But in ’96, he held batters to a .170/.331/.280 slash line with men on base.
Smith got Bochtler in a trade. He also played a role in acquiring Hoffman, Worrell and Willie Blair, who piled up 88 innings in relief for the ’96 squad. Bochy, a Smith hire in his second season as manager, proved adept at bullpen management
Bad team, strong ’pen
The Padres went from reaching the 1998 World Series and getting a massive ballpark subsidy to posting five losing seasons and no playoff berths in the next six years when 2005 arrived.
The ’05 team was flawed, but so was the West, and 82 victories allowed Bochy, Hoffman and Co. to celebrate the franchise’s fourth West title.
Along with the bench, the bullpen did much heavy lifting, finishing first in innings pitched, second in both ERA and win probability added and fourth in adjusted ERA.
Hoffman was reliable, but Scott Linebrink had perhaps the bullpen’s best season. The righty, whom Towers claimed off waivers in 2003 from the Astros, logged 732⁄3 innings and posted the most win shares (1.8) of his 12-year career.
True to form, Bochy found a surprising reliever and rode him hard early in the season so as not to overwork Hoffman and other expected standouts.
He was Chris Hammond, a lefty who threw fastballs only a third of the time and managed to throw curves and change-ups nearly 20 miles slower than his low-80s “heat.”
Before fading, Hammond took a 1.91 ERA into early July.
Other surprises included Rudy Seanez, a Brawley High alum with a hot fastball, logging the second-highest inning total (601⁄3) of his 17-year career; and rookie Clay Hensley allowing no home runs and recording a 1.70 ERA in 472⁄3 innings.
(In the same season, Hensley, a Towers trade acquisition from the Giants, was suspended 15 games in the minor leagues for use of a performance-enhancing drug.)
Gold standard
Led by Heath Bell, Mike Adams and Luke Gregerson, the 2010 bullpen carried the franchise to its one winning season in the past 12 years.
The Bub Black-managed relief corps, which finished first in ERA, adjusted ERA and win probability added, put intense heat on opponents to score early in the game and provided daily confidence to the rest of an undermanned Padres team.
“That was definitely the best bullpen I’ve been around — both in terms of late game (Gregerson to Adams to Bell) and also in terms of depth,” said Cubs GM Jed Hoyer, who has won World Series with the Cubs and the Red Sox and was Padres GM in 2010.
Bell, a Towers trade acquisition from the Mets who’d taken over the previous year after Hoffman joined the Brewers, had the best season of his 11-year career en route to 47 saves and a 1.93 ERA in 70 innings. He commanded both his fastball and curveball.
Adams dominated with a cut fastball, recording a 1.76 ERA.
Hitters knew Gregerson would feed them sliders but seldom could make him pay.
For return on the dollar, the bullpen rivaled Qualcomm stock as it soared.
The trio of Bell, Adams and Gregerson drew less than $5.5 million in total salary, while delivering returns that the Fangraphs analytics site valued at $13.5 million, $10.7 million and $7.8 million, respectively.
Other cheap relievers provided outlier returns, such as groundball artist Ryan Webb logging a career-best 2.90 ERA; Edward Mujica working 692⁄3 innings while compiling his best walk rate, at nearly half of his career norm; and Joe Thatcher leading the bullpen in strand rate.
Rookie Ernesto Frieri, a crossfire righty the Padres signed out of Colombia, pitched to a 1.71 ERA in 33 games.
“If you look back,” Hoyer said, “Mujica and Frieri were the middle innings relievers on that team, and they ended up being really successful closers. Thatcher was an outstanding LOOGY (lefty specialist). Webb and (Tim) Stauffer had terrific seasons in 2010. Really all but about 50 mopup appearances all season were of exceptionally high quality.”
The Padres pushed Bochy’s Giants to the final day of the season. San Francisco went on to win the World Series.
With their relievers on a roll for the better part of the season, the Padres were Rays-like in their efficiency.
The 2010 Padres, who got a big year from Adrian Gonzalez before trading him for financial reasons, outperformed a $38.5 million payroll that ranked 29th out of 30 teams. Forbes estimates had the ’10 Padres first in MLB in operating income ($37.2 million).
But the success wasn’t sustainable.
The next nine Padres teams posted losing records on the field, matching the franchise-worst streak of the expansion Padres.
Now, with Preller in search of his first winning season, let’s see what All-star closer Kirby Yates and several other high-octane relievers can do with the 2020 Padres — on the mound and, perhaps this summer, on the trade market.
If nothing else, Preller has given his rookie manager, Jayce Tingler, a realistic chance to win the bullpen-chess matches at a good rate.
tom.krasovic@sduniontribune.com