Call to The Pen

Last season, the Orioles shocked the Baseball world by turning the tables on the usual suspects in the AL East by winning 93 games, nabbing second place in the AL East, and one of the two wild card spots. The O's made the playoffs in 2013, making their way back to the post season for the first time in 1997. After making quick work of the Texas Rangers in the wild card play-in game, the Orioles ran into the Bronx Bombers in the ALDS. The Yankees outlasted the O's, beating them in a decisive game 5 to move on to the League Championship Series.

Since then, the AL East has undergone a make over. The Red Sox ridded themselves of big contracts like Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez, as well as distractions like Josh Beckett. The Sox have since replaced that trio with a group of veterans like Shane Victorino, David Ross, Ryan Dempster, Jonny Gomes, Mike Napoli, and Stephen Drew. General Manager Ben Cherington prudently signed no players tied to draft pick compensation, and predominantly went after players considered "sure things" as opposed to big names and thus big risks.

Across the border, Blue Jays made the deal of the offseason, acquiring Jose Reyes, Emilio Bonifacio, Josh Johnson, and Mark Buehrle from the Miami Marlins in exchange for a bus load of prospects. After  years of prospect cultivation and development, the Blue Jays decided to use some young talent as currency in order to make a run at the playoffs. The Jays added the cherry on top of the sundae by making a second deal, this one for the reigning NL Cy Young award winner, knuckleballer R.A. Dickey. With this infusion of talent and experience, especially in the rotation, the Blue Jays are prime to make the playoffs for the first time since 1993.

The Rays, that scrappy young club from St. Petersburg, continued to rake in the young, talented, cheap, and team controlled players by trading veteran pitchers James Shields and Wade Davis to Kansas City. In Return the Rays received stud prospect Wil Myers along with pitcher Jake Odorizzi. While this deal didn't compare in size or impact to the dealings of the Blue Jays, the Rays secured one of the top MLB-ready talents in the minors without trading AL Cy Young award winner David Price, who's expensive arbitration years just kicked in. While this move might set the Rays back at first, with prospects like Chris Archer and youngsters like Jeremy Hellickson and Alex Cobb vying for places in the Rays rotation, Tampa looks to remain relevant in 2013 as well as the foreseeable future.

The Yankees offseason involved signing a number of older veteran players to short-term contracts, plugging holes, in order to stay under the luxury tax, but also not fall into the cellar of the AL East. The Yanks brought back Ichiro, Andy Pettitte, and Hiroki Kuroda, while adding veteran Kevin Youkilis to man the hot corner at 3rd. While these moves seem a bit desperate on the surface, the Yankees made shrewd moves that should keep them germane in the AL East in 2013. The only hole in the Yankees roster seems to be behind the plate, but the team has all spring training to figure out their backstop issues.

So, with every team in the AL East realistically eyeing the playoffs for the first time in years, what aspect might separate one from the rest of the pack? Last season, the Orioles used their brilliant bullpen to push them just past the Rays into the playoffs, and it seems as though the relief core may be the key to the east once again. In 2013, the O's bullpen put up a combined 6.4 fWAR, which ranked 3rd in the American League behind only the Royals and the Rays. Orioles relievers made quick work of the final innings of a game not by utilizing the strikeout, but instead by inducing more ground balls than any other AL East pen. In addition, the O's gave out few free passes, ranking second, behind only the Rangers, in BB/9.

Team	K/9	BB/9	LOB%	GB%	FIP	WAR
Rays	9.33	2.88	77.10%	46.40%	3.19	6.7
Orioles	7.49	2.87	78.50%	49.10%	3.68	6.4
Yankees	8.92	3.2	77.60%	44.90%	3.62	5.5
Red Sox	8.31	3.38	74.80%	45.10%	3.91	4.6
Blue Jays	8.58	3.51	74.10%	43.10%	4.21	2.5

The Orioles didn't have the best offense, nor stellar starting pitching, but Buck Showalter's bullpen kept the team in every game, making the Orioles a deadly foe in close games. Unfortunately for Baltimore, their incredible winning percentage in 1-run games and extra inning games came halted in the ALDS in which 4 out of the 5 games played ended with a margin of victory of just 1 run. Given that the Orioles bullpen became their key to success, and the growing parity in the AL East, what have Baltimore's rivals been up to?

David Robertson

The Yankees lost a key part of their 2012 bullpen, righty Raphael Soriano, but they were able to parlay his success into an additional draft pick by offering him a qualifying offer that he didn't accept. Instead, once Soriano signed with his new club, the Washington Nationals, the Yankees picked up a compensatory pick, which turns out to be the 32nd pick in this summers upcoming draft. The Yankees willingly parted with their 2012 bullpen anchor given Soriano's desire for a lucrative multi-year contract, the ability to obtain a draft pick in return, and most importantly knowing that future Hall-Of-Famer Mariano Rivera would return in 2013 to fill the hole left by Soriano. In addition to Rivera's return, the Yankees still have Nate Robertson, the strikeout machine, who has posted a 12.20 K/9, 2.70 FIP, and accumulated 6.0 fWAR since 2009. Between Robertson, Rivera, and a mix of Boone Logan from the left side, the Yankees bullpen should hold up late in games.

Roberto Hernandez

The Rays made some minor changes to their bullpen, but given their recent success, these changes should prove fruitful. Tampa traded ground ball specialist Burk Badenhop to the Brewers, replacing him with Roberto Hernandez, the pitcher formerly known as Fausto Carmona. Carmona, like Badenhop throws from the right side, and more importantly throws a hard sinker that induces a great number of ground balls. Since becoming a regular in the Majors, Hernandez has posted a ridiculous 58.4 ground ball percentage, good enough for a 2.26 GB/FB ratio. Hernandez did most of his previous work from the starting rotation, and while the Rays may ask him to spot start in a pinch, his role will be out of the bullpen where Joe Madden expects him to induce ground ball after ground ball. The Rays also resigned Joel Peralta while retaining the services of All-Star closer Fernando Rodney by picking up the 2013 team option attached to his contract. Add those names to lefty fire baller Jake McGee, and the Rays bullpen looks ready to buttress their young starting pitching for another season.

Koji Uehara

The Red Sox made headlines by signing lots of free agents this offseason, including a few in the bullpen. The Sox signed southpaw, and well traveled, Craig Breslow, now onto his 7th MLB franchise, to a conservative 2-year $6.25 million contract, added former Ranger's righty Koji Uehara for 1-year and $4.25 million, and traded for former Pirates closer Joel Hanrahan. In addition, the Sox will benefit from the return of Andrew Bailey from an injury marred 2012 campaign, especially since Bailey's 2013 will determine how much money the reliever will get paid in his 3rd year of arbitration. Oliver, a projection system created by Hardball Times' Brian Cartwright, projects good numbers from the Red Sox bullpen, especially from Uehara, who I think represents the keystone to success for this relief core. Also, don't forget about Daniel Bard, who many at spring training say is progressing nicely and might fit into the Sox pen around after All-Star break if the team moves a pitcher a the trade deadline.

Name	ERA	K/9	BB/9	FIP
Koji Uehara	2.99	10.15	1.39	2.74
Joel Hanrahan	3.64	9.90	3.93	3.08
Andrew Bailey	3.99	8.25	3.20	3.12
Junichi Tazawa	3.77	8.67	2.89	3.28
Craig Breslow	3.75	7.93	3.32	3.51
Alfredo Aceves	4.35	7.10	3.44	3.86
Andrew Miller	5.17	8.58	6.34	4.10
Total	3.95	8.65	3.50	3.38

The 2013 Blue Jays bullpen looks eerily similar to the 2012 pen that ranked middle of the road in some statistical categories and poor in others amongst AL teams. They coaxed lefty Darren Oliver to return, and remain hopeful that Sergio Santos can overcome shoulder surgery to return to his level of nastiness by June. The Jays put a lot of faith in their starting rotation, stocking it with work horses like R.A. Dickey and Mark Buehrle, as well as possible ace Josh Johnson. These three starters should lessen the load on the Blue Jays pen, but given Johnson's injury history and Buehrle's age, the Jays may need to call on their relievers in 2013 more often than they expect.

Darren O'Day

How about those Orioles? Did the organization with the golden bullpen do anything to improve on 2012? Instead of adding or subtracting, the Orioles did their best to keep their 2012 bullpen in tact for 2013. The O's avoided arbitration with Jim Johnson and Darren O'Day, two of the most utilized and important parts of their 2012 relief prosperity. The team returns Luis Ayala, Tommy Hunter, lefty Brian Matusz, and Troy Patton, all of whom they hope will continue to perform at a high level. While the O's may not have "upgraded" their bullpen, the team expects to add one if not two highly touted starting pitching prospects in mid-season, Dylan Bundy and Kevin Gausman. With the addition of these young stars to an already solid starting pitching staff, the Orioles have no need to tinker with a bullpen that already promises to keep men off base, and to induce lots of double plays late in games.

The AL East is a free for all in 2013, with no one team looking like the current favorite. Given that fact, each team has done their best to ensure that their bullpen won't be the one to falter in 2013. Most of a team's success derives from hitting and starting pitching, but with 5 teams so close to each other in talent and projected wins, it may come down to which relief core can hold the lead in the latter third of the game. While we can only attempt to predict which bullpen will be the most valuable in 2013, it is safe to say that the competition for the, most-likely, 2 playoff spots in the AL East should be fierce.

Knuckle Sandwich

R.A. Dickey should win the National League Cy Young award. That's what I thought about a week ago. Nothing since then should have changed my mind. All Dickey has done in the last two weeks was throw 15.2 innings of 5-run ball against the Miami Marlins and Pittsburgh Pirates, giving up 14 hits, 4 walks, 1 home run, and striking out 17. Essentially, he did what he's done all season. Here lies the problem: In the words of Jed Bartlett (A character on The West Wing), "Show me numbers." I can look at the Mets knucklballer and say "Wow, he has been dominant this entire season, he should win the Cy Young." I needed to prove it, and not just with any old evidence, I needed to prove it with numbers.

So, here are some numbers for you. Dickey is 20-6 with an NL leading 2.69 earned run average, 222 strikeouts, and 1.041 WHIP. These are standard statistics that baseball folk have used for years in order to evaluate pitchers. Due to the recent statistical revolution in baseball, I've learned to discount some of these statistics, substituting more accurate and descriptive ones in their place. For example, wins and losses mean very little when evaluating a pitcher alone because a lot of what determines whether a pitcher gets a win or a loss has little to do with the pitcher. Earned run average, can still tell us something about a pitcher in a grand sense, but such a statistics combines the play of a pitcher and his defense, instead of the isolating solely the contributions of the pitcher.

Alright, all of this is interesting, but sabermetricians have found a way to show how many wins a given player has contributed above a replacement level (similar to league average) player. These statistics combine most to all of a player's contributions and uses some math in order to normalize other variables like league, environment, etc... The problem is that different websites calculate WAR in different ways. The two main types are rWAR and fWAR. According to rWAR, calculated and used by Baseball-Reference, R.A. Dickey is the 3rd highest WAR amongst pitcher in the National League, trailing only the Cincinnati Reds Johnny Cueto and Los Angeles Dodgers Clayton Kershaw. On the other hand, fWAR, created by Fangraphs, has Dickey as the pitcher with the 6th highest WAR in the NL. Why the discrepancy?

I've read a number of articles about WAR, and they have told me that the major difference in the calculations of WAR is the specific defensive metric used. fWAR uses UZR, rWAR uses DRS, and WARP uses FRAA. Well that is for position players, not pitchers. So, I delved into how WAR is calculated for pitchers. Although rWAR and fWAR have some differences they are relatively minor, including the manner in which park factors are adjusted for, and whether the metric is adjusted for interleague play. Overall, the main difference is simple. The statistic each used to begin the calculation is different. Fangraphs uses FIP and Baseball-Reference uses Runs Allowed.

Let's begin with the easier of the two. Runs allowed is as simple as it sounds, it calculates the number of runs allowed by a pitcher, earned and unearned. FIP, fielding independent pitching, attempts to calculate everything a pitcher does during a game that he can control. They include, strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitches, and home runs. Fangraphs assumes that any ball put in play that isn't a home run is not the pitchers fault. While this is not always true, as we should assume that every MLB pitcher is subject to at least reasonable defense, when attempting to calculate how much a pitcher contributes to his team in order to compare him to other pitchers, using only those statistics that are solely attributed to a pitcher is reasonable. FIP is scaled to look and act just like ERA. So, in the end, rWAR includes a pitcher's team to some extent, while fWAR looks only at what a pitcher contribues while possibly leaving out some minor contributions.

So, why then does rWAR rank R.A. Dickey higher than fWAR, to the point at which we might not consider Dickey for the Cy Young award through Fangraph's goggles, but might do so when considering the confines of Baseball-Reference's rWAR? If rWAR might consider a pitcher's team too much, than it would make sense for Baseball-Reference to consider the Mets as an above average defense, right? Interestingly, the Mets have a -33 DRS, ranking them 6th from the bottom in that category.  So, what explains the disparity between Dickey's fWAR and rWAR?

We said that fWAR uses FIP, which focuses on a pitchers strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitches, and home runs.

Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9
Gio Gonzalez	193.1	9.36	3.4	0.42
Clayton Kershaw	211.2	8.97	2.47	0.68
Cliff Lee	198	8.86	1.27	1.05
Johnny Cueto	210	7.03	2.06	0.6
Wade Miley	187	6.45	1.78	0.63
R.A. Dickey	220	8.55	2.13	0.86

	HR/FB	FIP	WAR
Gio Gonzalez	6.10%	2.84	5.2
Clayton Kershaw	8.70%	2.99	4.8
Cliff Lee	11.40%	3.07	4.8
Johnny Cueto	7.70%	3.27	4.7
Wade Miley	6.70%	3.2	4.5
R.A. Dickey	10.60%	3.28	4.5

When a ball is put in play in the air vs. Dickey, it is a home run 10.6% of the time. This ranks second to worst amongst these top pitchers. This makes sense due to Dickey being a knuckleball pitcher. When a pitch that averages between 75mph and 85mph floats into the strike zone with little movement, as a bad knuckle ball does, MLB hitters will generally crush the ball. In addition, despite Dickey's high number of strikeouts, his BB/9 are not very good either. Gio Gonzalez overcomes a higher walk rate by allowing almost zero home runs and striking out hitters more often than Dickey, while Clayton Kershaw's more innings combined with his low HR/9 gives him the edge over R.A.

Here is something to consider. As a former pitcher, I can vouch for the fact that it is easier to pitch with a lead. Certainly, all pitchers should be able to perform just as well with or without a lead. On the other hand, the more a pitcher pitches with the lead, oftentimes the more chances he can take in order to get hitters out. The pitcher/batter battle is a chess game, with each player attempting to outthink his opponent. The pitcher, who pitches with the lead, can do more that a batter cannot predict, than the pitcher who pitches with a deficit. So, R.A. Dickey gets the 15th best run support from his team in the National League at 4.61 runs/game while Clayton Kershaw, who ranks second in fWAR and rWAR, has had the NL's 8th worst run support at 3.77 runs/game. Maybe, Dickey has it easier because the Mets give him a lead more often than the pitchers ahead of him. Whether this is true or not, it does not mean he is necessarily a worse pitcher than Kershaw.

So, should R.A. Dickey win the NL Cy Young award. Looking only at the statistics, I have to say I think Gio Gonzalez deserves the Cy Young award. Walks can get a pitcher into trouble quickly, and while Gonzalez has a 3.4 BB/9, his inability to give up homeruns means that those walks do not come back to bite him as much as other pitchers'. In addition, Gonzalez strikes hitters out. He does so to the tune of 9.36 K/9, second only to his teammate Steven Strasburg. Gonzalez even satisfies old school voters with 20 wins, 2.84 ERA, and 201 strikeouts.

Okay, Gio is good. In fact, he's been incredibly good, but what about my man R.A.? Well, Dickey has statistics fairly comparable to Gonzalez's and one thing that Gio doesn't. Dickey does it all throwing essentially one pitch. Everyone praises Yankees Closer Mariano Rivera for getting out three batters a game with one pitch, but R.A. performs a similar feat but multiplied by 7. Now, the knuckleball is different from the cutter. The cutter is merely a variation of a fastball, whereas the knuckleball is as similar to a fastball as a rocket ship. It is almost impossible to prepare for a knuckleball because event he pitcher doesn't know how the pitch will move and where it might go. While the knuckleball is difficult to hit, it is even more difficult to throw properly. When thrown improperly, a knuckleball is as straight as an arrow and looks as big as a beach ball to opposing hitters. This fact is seen by Dickey's homerun percentage.

Dickey throws the most difficult pitch known to man and does so incredibly well. Gio Gonzalez does the job a hair better than Dickey, but uses the typical pitcher's arsenal. Were Gonzalez above and beyond the better pitcher, I would award him the Cy Young without question, but due to the difficulty it takes to control a knuckleball, and the even greater difficulty it takes to dominate opposing hitter with said pitch, I think Dickey deserves the award. Phil Niekro is known as one of the best pitchers to ever throw a knuckleball, yet he never attained the success that Dickey has. The same is true of Tim Wakefield, the most recent pitcher to throw a knuckleball. Dickey's numbers show he is one of the best pitchers in the National League this year, and the way in which he has dominated NL hitters warrants him the Cy Young Award. So, here are my top 3 in the NL as of today:
1. R.A. Dickey
2. Gio Gonzalez
3. Cliff Lee