Blue Jays' Bullpen Has Been Better than Advertised

This story originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

When the Blue Jays' 11-game win streak came crashing to a halt at Citi Field in the 11th inning Monday night, many fans were ready to look past the defensive miscues, the "no doubles" defence they were burned by, and straight back to where they were 12 days prior, rolling their eyes at another lead left unsecured by the club's mess of a bullpen.

There's some truth to that notion, of course. The Blue Jays lead the American League with eleven blown saves—though the fact the Royals, with their vaunted bullpen are just two behind them, and the Dodgers just one, often gets passed over in the griping. Maybe deservingly so, given the dearth of opportunities the Jays have had. They've converted only 42 percent of their save opportunities into actual saves, according to Baseball Reference. Since 2000, only three teams have finished a season with a rate below 50 percent.

On the individual level, Brett Cecil has four saves in six opportunities, and just ten in 16 opportunities over the past three seasons—a poor, if not historically bad, conversion rate in his own right. Examining each situation might give us ways to make that number sound less damning than it does absent context, but the bottom line is that the Jays' bullpen hasn't been good.

Except for the part where in a lot of ways it has, especially recently.

Prior to Cecil's streak-ending 11th inning (which Liam Hendriks also entered into, giving up the game-winning hit on his lone pitch), Jays relievers Steve Delabar, Roberto Osuna and Aaron Loup had each worked perfect innings with the game deadlocked at two runs apiece. The game before that, Ryan Tepera and Phil Coke each threw two scoreless innings. A day earlier, it was three hits and no walks over five high-pressure innings from Hendriks, Delabar, Loup and Cecil.

Three games doesn't tell the whole story, of course, but things have certainly gotten better for the Blue Jays' bullpen, despite too many of the sort of gut-punch moments that make fans understandably believe things are worse than the numbers show.

The bullpen added another four scoreless innings in Tuesday's 3-2 loss.

Jays relievers rank fifth in the majors and second in the AL in both ERA and Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) since the start of June. Expand the sample to include the last 30 days, and it looks just as good: eighth in ERA, second in FIP, and third in xFIP.

If that seems incongruous with the bullpen you think you've been watching, there are certainly reasons that may be so. Thirty days isn't a particularly large sample, for one. And in April and May the Jays were decidedly worse—in the bottom ten in bullpen ERA for both months, and the bottom 15 by FIP (though, interestingly, they were just outside the top ten in xFIP each month, which maybe should have been a sign of better things to come). There's also the fact that the club's high-powered offence hasn't given the relievers many opportunities to perform in pressure situations, with Jays pitchers having pitched just 45 2/3 high-leverage innings for the season—the second-lowest total in the game.

Then there's the matter of their opponents' batting average on balls in play. Jays relievers have a league-low .239 BABIP over the past 30 days, thanks to a well-below average mark of .171 in June.

This leads us to some of the most crucial questions faced by Alex Anthopoulos and his staff. For starters, is this a mirage?

To an extent, it seems fair to say yes. It might not be as terrible a bullpen as fans believe in the wake of a loss, but given the BABIP-driven nature of its success, the lack of high-leverage innings (and the team's struggles when they do have them, with some of the league's worst marks across the board in those situations), it could certainly use help.

How much help, and where it comes from, though, is a tough question. Anthopoulos needs to be judicious with his resources—both in terms of adding salary to a budget that, by all reports, is awfully close to its maximum, and in terms of giving away huge pieces of his prospect pipeline.

He's shown willingness in the past to simply promote from within to help the bullpen, with Marcus Stroman, Aaron Sanchez, Roberto Osuna, Daniel Norris, and Miguel Castro all spending time as relievers despite being long-term starters, and could do it again, calling on prospects like Jeff Hoffman, Matt Boyd, or using a recovering Stroman later on, too.

It's a trick that worked well for the 2013 St. Louis Cardinals, who leaned heavily in their run to the World Series on young starter Michael Wacha (21), and late-inning relievers Carlos Martinez (21), Trevor Rosenthal (23), Kevin Siegrist (23), Seth Maness (24). But can the Jays afford to try it? Can they afford to wait?

On the other hand, given that it seems they'll need whatever budget room they have left to improve elsewhere—the rotation, in particular—can they afford not to?

The fortunate thing for them, one supposes, is that the mess in the bullpen is at least maybe not as bad as it seems.