The Mop Up Awards
When constructing a bullpen, every General Manager keeps at least one guy around, not to come in and extinguish a fire or save the game at its most crucial point, but rather to prevent further damage and save the arms of others. These are known as mop up pitchers, because their job is, essentially, to help clean up, or not spread further, the mess created by others. These pitchers tend to be the equivalent to the 12th man in the NBA, and are only called upon in situations wherein using other, better relievers would result in the wasting of resources.
One such mop up pitcher is Clay Condrey of the Phillies, who actually put together a relatively solid season. In 56 games, he posted an ERA of 3.26 and an FIP of 4.19. Numbers not necessarily keeping his agent’s phone ringing off the hook, but he did a very effective job of mopping up; entering into blowouts or games out of reach and at least keeping the score where it stood. All told, Condrey’s pLI, average leverage index, was 0.45, which happened to be the lowest amongst all relievers with at least 50 innings pitched. Interestingly enough, his career has seen the pLI decrease every season, from 1.10 five years ago down to 1.02, to 0.96, to 0.60 last year, to this year’s 0.45.
Some of his low leverage index contemporaries this season were Aquilino Lopez, Brian Bass, Joel Peralta, and the recently-signed Jeremy Affeldt. Readers, I need your help. Unfortunately, I do not know the mop up men for every team, but if we can compile a good list of 30, we will be able to determine whomever was the most moppy-uppiest of them all, and declare a winner. Further, if we are able to name all 30 and officially declare a winner, I will make some sort of an award in Microsoft Publisher or some such program and mail it to his team.
So… let the names begin!
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If I recall correctly, the Cub’s mop-up men were Michael Wuertz(Lou needs to realize he’s better than that) and Bob Howry. Jon Lieber is also a candidate.
Miguel Batista when not starting for the M’s? Hah..
Maybe you can get some corporate sponsorship and establish the “American Sanitary Supply Mop-up “Pitcher of the Year”award.
Braves- Julian Tavarez or Vladimir Nunez would have been good options later in the year but Buddy Carlyle was mopping up for most of the season.
Yankees – Dan Giese and Chris Britton
RedSox – Mike Timlin
Tigers – entire bullpen
Twins – Uh, Boof Bonser?
Angels – Justin Speier
Mariners – RA Dickey?
Athletics – Alan Embree
These were just guesses. I’m not really sure.
For the Mets, I’d pick Scott Schoeneweis.
It not him, maybe Carlos Muniz or Claudio Vargas.
Interestingly, anyone pitching on the M’s with over 50 innings in relief was well over 1.00 LI it appears.
See I don’t know about Schoeneweis, because against the Phillies at least, he was used pretty regularly. If I had to pick a Mets reliever to be the mop-up guy, it would be some form of Muniz/Stokes, at least based on the games I watched. I think we’re going to find that many teams have a couple of guys who add up to 50 IP or so, but few like Condrey who were specifically designated into that role.
So far, we have:
Phillies: Condrey
Mets: Stokes/Muniz
Braves: Carlyle
Twins: Bonser
Angels: Darren O’ Day (I’d say him over Speier)
Cubs: Lieber (based on his IP/G, and pLI)
Eric, how do you define most moppy-uppiest? Affeldt and Aquilino Lopez are identical in inLI (0.42) and near-identical in IP and run prevention (36 runs in 78.1 IP for Affeldt, 33 runs in 78.2 IP for Lopez). For all intents and purposes they were the same pitcher, only while Affeldt logged his 78ish innings in 74 appearances, Lopez logged his in only 48. So, while Affeldt was deployed in low-leverage situations far more often, Lopez acted more like a traditional mop-up guy, recording four outs or more in 29 of his 48 games, six outs or more in 18 of them, and was even asked to go three-plus innings six times. Affeldt was never asked to go more than two. Also, Lopez missed a month which muddies this up a bit, as he would have pitched about 90 innings had he not.
I guess what I’m asking is if it came down to these two (which it might not; Condrey and Tallet and probably some others make good cases), which way do you lean?
Good point. Lopez would definitely get the nod. When I think of mop-up guys I think of those with low average leverage index marks who average over an inning per appearance, though that certainly isn’t concrete what with the way managers blatantly misuse bullpens.
Blue Jays mop-up early was Brandon League and Brian Wolfe, then mostly Brian ‘The Wolverine’ Tallet.
Brian Bass was definately the co-mop up man of the Twins before he headed to Baltimore.
Does it count if Silva mopped up his own messes?
Red Sox – definitely Timlin. AAAArdsma was in more close games but Timlin was bad all year and they knew it.
Oakland split duties between Lenny DiNardo and Kirk Saarloos for the most part.
From the teams I get to watch frequently:
Cubs- I agree with Wuertz/Lieber, with an edge to Lieber because he was more of a long mop-up man (Wuertz mysteriously spent a decent amount of time in the minors this year. My friends who are big Cubs fans are convinced that Wuertz must have done something to Lou’s daughter)
Sox- I’d go with David Aardsma over Mike Timlin, especially because for quite a while he had a great ERA (2.88 as of Aug 10) that was entirely the function of pitching in low leverage situations. If you knock off his awful September – he actually appeared in some higher leverage situations because we had clinched – he is right up there with Condrey.
Yankees – Latroy Hawkins takes it, although I should note the second half appearance of Dan Giese (he was called up in June) as a mop-up long man. His candidacy is hurt somewhat in that he became the de facto second starter in Joba games for a little while.
Mets- There really was no mop-up guy on the Mets this year. That’s largely a function of the fact that they tried EVERYBODY at the end of games, so the lowest pLI for a regular reliever is 0.98 for Schoenweis (and even he tried to close some games out).
No question that Timlin was worse that David “First name alphabetically in baseball history” Aardsma, but the query here is about the most used (and most effective) mop up men. Timlin’s use was largely a function of his health (or lack thereof). Aardsma regularly touched high 90s (94.5 average FB), but Francona never had any confidence in him. You might expect a guy with a 95 mph FB and a sub-3 ERA in August to earn himself a shot at high leverage situations, but it never happened.
I agree with Brian Tallet for the Jays
White Sox- Nick Masset
Can’t say I followed the White Sox much, but it looks like Nick Masset is the guy. He sports the lowest pLI of any White Sox reliever with at least 30 IP. Moreover, I recall that he frequently entered games in low leverage situations and pitched for several innings, which is confirmed by his game log.
What would happen if you generate a list of pitchers ranked by:
G*LI/IP (min 40 IP)? The lower the number, the more mopuppie he is.
The cardinals had a couple, but the one that sticks out in my mind was Kelvin Jimenez. He was characterized on VEB as “the bridge between Joel Pineiro and Aaron Miles”, snicker. And he meets Tango’s 40 IP critieria, just barely.
Besides Jimenez, brad thompson and a host of AAA guys filled the role for STL.
For the Orioles I’d have say it was Lance Cormier….but with starters we had, the whole bullpen spent time mopping up so there really wasn’t a go to guy per say.
The Yanks also used Ohlendorf as a mop-up guy for a good chunk of the year before they traded him to Pittsburgh.
Giants had Keichi Yabu, Billy Sadler and Osiris Matos on the mop and bucket brigade at various points of the year.
The first part of the year, Yabu was cleaning up so many Barry Zito messes that Barry Zito starts were known by the fans as Yabuzito starts.
Tango, sounds like a good idea, and I’ll generate that when I get home and post the results.
Eric,
I’m OK with picking Muniz as the Mets’ mop-up guy, although he didn’t pitch all that much and didn’t pitch an inning after August 10th.
You absolutely CANNOT pick Stokes as the mop-up guy – most of his appearances came late in the season in big spots. I watched probably 150 of the Mets’ 162 games this year – Stokes does not fit the description of mopup guy whatsoever. He pitched in 4 of the Mets final 5 games, which were all pretty nerve racking and important.
The 3-headed monster of Muniz/Vargas/Figueroa might work.
Jason Hammel for the Rays