Well, so much for having a rested bullpen. A day after Braden Looper gave his former relief mates the night off, four pitchers combined to lose the last three innings of Thursday’s game in Cincy, spoiling a decent start by the returning Joel Pineiro (58 FIGS).

Surrendering walks is generally not a proven method for winning, and the bullpen walked five of the 17 batters they faced. That’s a poor percentage, and one that is thankfully well off the team’s season rate. The Cardinal bullpen, despite (or is it because of?) not being terribly overworked, is about league average in BB/BF as well as ERA but one of the worst in K/BB:

Two of the main culprits responsible for that figure were behind the ‘pen’s implosion Thursday: Mark Worrell and LOOGy Randy Flores, with K/BB rates of .25 and 1.08, respectively (and that was before the game). Why Tony La Russa continues to put Flores in the game in high-leverage situations is beyond us.

Bringing Flores into a game against a lefty is one thing; bringing him into a game in which runners are already on base is another. That is, it’s a situation in which he does not excel: for his career, with runners in scoring position, opponents have a .405 OBP (.303 GPA) against him; with men on, it’s .385 (.288 GPA).

So that’s point one. Point two is this: Bringing Flores into a game against a lefty is one thing; bringing him into a game against a righty is another. Righties have hit Flores for a .382 OBP (.288 GPA). We’ve harped on this before, so we don’t want to sound like a scratched CD, but Flores needs to be strictly deployed against lefties only (and even then, judiciously) and should never see a righty with the game on the line.

But that’s what TLR let happen. First Flores walked the righty Paul Janish, then he walked Ken Griffey Jr. with the bases loaded, bringing up the righty Phillips. Prior to his at-bat in that seventh inning, Phillips had had what might be called some success in his career against Flores: a single, a triple and an intentional walk in six plate appearances. Perhaps TLR was swayed by the two strikeouts that Flores had on his side of the ledger, but with two outs in the inning, the Cardinals didn’t need a strikeout.

Conversely, against Russ Springer, Phillips was 0-for-6, with two strikeouts. Springer obviously was available since he came in to relieve Flores two batters later — in the eighth inning — two batters too late. Surely Tony La Russa has access to these same stats, and if he doesn’t, doesn’t common sense dictate bringing in Springer to face Phillips?

Bullpens are going to have off nights and walk people. It happens. But if TLR prides himself on putting people in situations in which they have the best chance to succeed, he needs to stay awake at the wheel when dealing with high-leverage situations and his relievers.

This entry was posted by Pip on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.