Building A Team Efficiently Part Four: The Bullpen

This is part four of the series. Here are links to parts one, part two, and part three.

“Mr. Mozeliak, here is the second email, containing the bullpen I’d use in 2015.

I tried to keep the bullpen relatively inexpensive, as I figured the market for cheap relievers would be plentiful if I searched hard enough. I was right, as I didn’t spend more than 2.4 million on a player, though I admittedly did use one of my pre-arbitration slots up, as you’ll see below.

Position Name Salary Status
Swingman Carlos Carrasco 1,400,000 1st Year Arb
Closer Dellin Betances 502,100 Pre-Arb
Reliever Jared Hughes 1,100,000 Projected 1st Year Arb
Reliever Tony Watson 2,000,000 Projected 1st Year Arb
Reliever Kelvin Herrera 1,500,000 Projected 1st Year Arb
Reliever Pedro Strop 2,400,000 Projected 1st Year Arb
Reliever Fernando Abad 900,000 Projected 1st Year Arb

Their Stats:

Name Games Innings Pitched ERA FIP WHIP
Carlos Carrasco 40 134 2.55 2.44 0.985
Dellin Betances 70 90 1.40 1.64 0.778
Jared Hughes 63 64.1 1.96 3.99 1.088
Tony Watson 78 77.1 1.63 2.69 1.022
Kelvin Herrera 70 70 1.41 2.69 1.143
Pedro Strop 65 61 2.21 2.66 1.066
Fernando Abad 69 57.1 1.57 3.25 0.855

Carrrasco is the swingman I mentioned in an earlier post. He pitched in 40 games, started 14 of them, and finished 12, and was a standard reliever in the rest. He’ll slot perfectly into that role, and give me some depth in case of an injury to one of the starters, or if they just need a day off.

Betances is the pre-arb guy. He performed brilliantly last year in his rookie season, and is expected to take over as closer this year for the Yankees. He does have some competition in the recently signed Andrew Miller, but given how well he did last year, I’d snatch him up to be my closer. If he falters, I’d probably turn the role over to either Kelvin Herrera or Fernando Abad. All in all, I think I have a solid bullpen. I even managed to find a pair of lefties for situational matchups.

The total spent on the bullpen: 9,802,100 dollars. Less than 10 million, not bad.

Now time for one last minute change. Since I have one pre-arb slot left, I’m replacing Jake Arrieta with Jacob deGrom. DeGrom was last year’s rookie of the year for the Mets. He’ll saved me roughly 3.5 million dollars, and make me feel better about including Ben Zobrist’s 7.5 million dollar slary. Here’s his stats.

Name ERA Innings Pitched FIP WHIP
Jacob deGrom 2.69 140.1 2.67 1.140

His innings count seems low, but that’s due in part that he was a rookie, and I’m sure they were managing his innings count. I expect his workload to increase this year. Arrieta’s never had a year like last year before, so I’m wary. Figured I’d go with someone who was nearly as good, and cost less.

Well Mr. Mozeliak, that’s it. Here’s the total I spent on my team and the amount I have left over.

Money Spent: 69,050, 800. Subtracted from 90 million, that leaves 20,949,200 dollars left over. Plenty of money to cover arbitration amounts that exceed the projections.

As you can see, it is possible to build a team under 90 Million dollars. Admittedly, you did give me those 5 pre-arbitration players, and without them, it would’ve been much harder, but I get the feeling I still would’ve made it work, though I probably would’ve come much closer to the 90 million dollar limit. Thank you for the challenge!”

Well that’s it. What do you guys think?

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