It is pretty clear that Mike Rizzo needs to build a better bullpen for 2016 than he did in 2015. Continuing our Rizzo for a Day series, who are your free agent reliever targets?
Left Handed Free Agent Relievers
To help you decide we’ve included the list of free agent relievers that are listed on the MLB Trade Rumors 2015-2016 Free Agent List. Using the downloaded GameDay data for 2015, we’ve calculated the WHIP for each of them. Calculating it was waaaaaay less work than looking up all these guys numbers. NOTE: Some of our numbers are slightly different than, for example, baseball-reference. But not enough to make much of a difference. Also note that three of the relievers listed by MLB Trade Rumors either did not pitch in 2015 or had too few innings to include.
The first table is just the left-handed relievers in name order. The columns are innings pitched, number of walks, number of hits, the calculated WHIP and their rank. You can click on any of the tables to get a full size/clearer display.
Of particular note is how well Matt Thornton ranks among lefties. Should Rizzo try to bring him back?
And here are the right-handed relievers (two side by side tables because the list is much longer).
Right Handed Relievers (1 of 2)
Right Handed Relievers (2 of 2)
Likewise, Casey Jansen ranks 10th (out of 36)among righties. How can that be?
Maybe we need different metrics for relievers. Stay tuned for updates on that topic.
