FanPost

Oh, This Bullpen

There has been lots of talk about what to do with our bullpen and what exactly everyone's roles are. Evidently everyone on TC knows, but Fredi does not, so I'd like to take this opportunity to try and organize things. This is, obviously, my opinion, but this is how I'd like to see our bullpen used:

Craig Kimbrel: Well, yeah, he's our closer.

Shae Simmons: I think Shae should be our permanent set up man. He's been groomed to be a relief pitcher and he's got a live fastball with a devastating slider and controls the strike zone fairly easily. And, oh yeah, he's NEVER allowed a home run in the Braves organization (in 114.1 IP), which I found to be remarkable.

David Carpenter: Unfortunately, due to his recent struggles, I think he's going to have to be relegated to mop up duty for a bit. He's still got great stuff, and unfortunately I think he's just been a bit unlucky this year. His peripherals are still relatively in line with last year (K%--28.9% vs. 25.4%; BB%--7.8% vs. 6.1%; 2013 vs. 2014 respectively) but his BABIP is in CJ stratosphere at .413 vs. his last year's BABIP of .260. Again, I think that eventually we can all regain faith in Carp (or "Crap" as many bloggers have decided to call him).

Luis Avilan: I think his role should be the second easiest to define (after CK, duh) and here are the stats to prove it:

Season Handedness IP ERA TBF H 2B 3B R ER HR BB IBB HBP SO AVG OBP SLG wOBA
2014 vs L 12.2 - - - 49 10 1 0 6 6 1 3 1 0 11 .217 .271 .311 .253
2014 vs R 7.0 - - - 40 13 0 1 4 4 0 7 3 0 4 .394 .513 .469

.419

LOOK AT THAT wOBA DIFFERENCE! C'mon Fredi, this one's easy. (although, I'd like to point out that righties against Avilan in his career have a wOBA of .275 so this year's .419 seems to be an anomaly)

Anthony Varvaro: Varvaro's role, on the other hand, is quite up in the air. I could see him as a seventh inning guy to bridge the gap to Simmons and Kimbrel, when needed, but otherwise, I think he's also in the same boat as Carp as mop up duty for the most part.

Alex Wood/David Hale: I'm going to group these two together because it doesn't matter about the handedness with these guys; they're two of the best arms we have in our bullpen and they should be used in high leverage situations. Clearly, they have the ability to go multiple innings if needed, as they were both starters this year. However, when it's not needed (or because of the fact that we have two of them, for crying out loud), one of them should be use as the third arm out of the bullpen.

This is my first FanPost and I tried to include all relevant research in the post. Let me know if you agree or if I'm just being ridiculous and Luis Avilan should actually be our closer.

This FanPost does not express the views or opinions of Battery Power.