It shouldn’t have been necessary for Bruce Bochy to engage his bullpen to start the sixth inning against the Cubs on Saturday. Martin Perez had the team in the game, trailing 3-1, but a combination of long at-bats and lackluster defense had forced him to throw his 90th pitch to finish the fifth. Plus, it would be hard to blame Bochy, and not just because of his track record as a bullpen whisperer. The Rangers’ relief crew, arguably as big a question mark as the team took into the 2023 season, had been nearly perfect through the season’s first seven games.
While Texas embarked on an aggressive, expensive offseason, spending more than $260 million on starting pitchers Perez, Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi, and Andrew Heaney, the virtual neglect of the bullpen was curious. The unit had the most losses among relievers in baseball in 2022, and converted only 55 percent of its save opportunities, tied for third worst. Plus, the Rangers had allowed one of their two best bullpen pitchers, veteran lefty Matt Moore, to leave in free agency without signing a single reliever to a major-league contract until bringing in Will Smith midway through camp for a mere $1.5 million.
But after Jonathan Hernandez allowed an RBI groundout with a five-run lead in the seventh inning on Opening Day, he and his bullpen mates went more than a week before being touched for another run. All told, the eight-headed hydra of Hernandez, Smith, Brock Burke, Dane Dunning, Taylor Hearn, Ian Kennedy, Jose Leclerc, and Cole Ragans racked up 23.2 innings of scoreless assignments–the fourth-longest streak in the last 50 Rangers seasons–before the defense betrayed Kennedy on Saturday.
And it wasn’t as if the bullpen was creating jams and escaping them during that stretch. Over those 23.2 innings, they scattered seven hits (.093 batting average) while walking eight and striking out 20. In the early going, the Rangers’ biggest unknown couldn’t have been more reliable.
Alas, on Saturday the streak detonated. After Kennedy extended the bullpen’s spotless run to 24 innings with a swinging strikeout of Ian Happ, Trey Mancini dumped a single into right-center that Robbie Grossman misjudged (and that Adolis Garcia dived for and trapped) and Corey Seager threw a Patrick Wisdom grounder past Marcus Semien into right field. Bochy summoned Burke, his most reliable arm, to try and wiggle out of the mess and keep the game close, but pinch-hitter Eric Hosmer bounced a ball through the drawn-in infield for a pair of runs that landed on Kennedy’s ledger. Only one, by the book, was earned–but if not for Grossman’s bad read, it’s entirely possible no runs would have scored. Regardless, the scoreless streak was over, and then the Cubs tacked on another five runs in the seventh and eighth, four of them credited to Hearn and the fifth (unearned) to Dunning.
The bullpen isn’t as good as it flashed for the season’s first week nor is it as bad as it looked on Saturday. In fact, the group was right back on track Sunday, throwing 3.1 scoreless innings (including one hit, one walk, and five strikeouts) to close out a win. It reinforced what we have learned: that the pitchers who staff the Texas pen are capable of getting the job done.
Two factors that weren’t present in 2022 that could help to maximize their effectiveness for longer stretches. First, there’s a veteran rotation in place that should tax the relief group less. Texas relievers threw the sixth-most innings in baseball last year; they’re in the bottom half in terms of usage this season. Second: Bochy. Among the hallmarks of the manager’s eventual Hall-of-Fame career has been the masterful management of his relievers. Having Mike Maddux around only widens the comfort zone.
But neither matters as much as having pitchers in those roles–regardless of how much rest they get and how well they’re deployed–if they can’t get batters out. They were really good at that for a span of 83 batters between Opening Day and the first game of the series against the Cubs. Not so much on Saturday, a helpful reminder not only that bullpens are fickle but also that this unit is short on track record and was hardly augmented in the offseason.
But if this group is mostly light on resume, it’s at least heavy on upside. What you see is what you get with the 33-year-old Smith, while there’s no telling how much staying power Kennedy has at age 38 coming off a brutal 2022. After that, though, you can dream on upside across the board. Burke was among the league’s most effective relievers in 2022 and offers length, as does Dunning, who has flashed major-league success as a starter and will probably make starts this year. Hearn and Ragans add two more power arms from the left side, with one scout calling Ragans “the best pitcher I’ve seen so far this spring” well into spring training. Leclerc’s slambio is one of the most lethal big-moment pitches in the game when he’s locating it. Hernandez may have the closer-i-est stuff of all of them.
Like the Mavericks missing free throws and the Cowboys committing personal fouls, a bullpen that spits up leads and torches tight games can ruin your week and lead to the wrong kind of streaks. Right now, the Rangers’ pen has done its job more often than it hasn’t. If the rotation shoulders more of a load than it did last year and the manager stays true to form, there are fewer reasons to expect that to fall off.
Author
