Bullpens are not as simple as you think they are

There’s a lot going on under the surface that you aren’t aware of

There’s a constant debate around every MLB manager as to whether he’s actually good at his job. This is as true of Royals’ manager Matt Quatraro as it was about Bobby Cox in Atlanta during their 90s dominance and as it was about Mike Matheny before Quatraro was hired in Kansas City. To be an MLB manager is to ensure that you are never universally approved.

When it comes to Quatraro, the questions primarily circle two different issues: bullpen usage, and team motivation. Today, we’re going to talk about that first one.

Managers know player health issues

A good rule of thumb when judging bullpen usage is whether you can imagine any kind of scenario in which it makes sense. One thing fans fail to realize is how much more a manager knows about his team than they do. One of the ways this primarily comes up is in terms of team health. For example, one game Quatraro was criticized for over-managing was on April 13 against the Cleveland Guardians.

In that game, Cole Ragans had pitched 7.2 dominant innings and had not yet reached 100 pitches. Royals fans were salivating at the idea of a complete game by their staff ace. But Q yanked him, and there weren’t even any runners on! As we learned later, Ragans was having difficulties with his left hamstring cramping up on him. He signalled to the dugout, and Q pulled him from the game for reliever Lucas Erceg. Naturally Royals fans wouldn’t have complained had there been some sort of injury delay, but there wasn’t because there was no need for it, because everyone who needed to know was already in the loop on the situation.

This can show up in more subtle ways, as well. Unlike football, baseball doesn’t require its managers to submit any sort of injury designation for their team or its players. This means that quite often, when a manager doesn’t use a reliever you think he should, it's because that reliever was hurting or otherwise not feeling well, and so the manager will avoid using him without ever mentioning it to the media or fans unless he’s directly questioned. And sometimes not even then. Why give away information your opponents can use against you if you don’t have to?

Sometimes there is no good choice

This is less true now than it was in 2023 and for large chunks of 2024, but he has at times taken a lot of fire for relievers blowing the game when he simply didn’t have any good options. If a choice is forced upon you, but every choice is bad, you can hardly be blamed for making a bad choice. There was literally nothing else you could do.

We can see an example that is something of a combination of these two issues from August 28 last season. Michael Wacha had pitched a good game against the Guardians and entered the seventh inning with the Royals leading 5-2. Unfortunately, he was nearly the end of his tank, and it took too long to get Lucas Erceg up and ready to save the game. The Royals ultimately lost 7-5.

Did Q mismanage his bullpen? Some would say yes. But they may not have all of the context. The Royals had played (and, incidentally, won) three games in the previous two days. Including the first game of a doubleheader which saw Michael Lorenzen exit after only 1.2 innings due to a pulled hamstring. Alec Marsh could only make it 4.2 innings in the nightcap. And Cole Ragans could only finish four innings in the game between the doubleheader and the one Wacha couldn’t hold. The bullpen was absolutely spent. So Q was doing everything he could, relying on a veteran pitcher to soak up some of that damage. It didn’t work out because Q only had bad choices and moved more slowly than he would have with a fresh bullpen.

Other factors, including matchups

There are also the less nebulous factors, including what kind of usage patterns some guys prefer. We’ll likely never get the confirmed details on such things, so it’s probably best to simply trust the manager has a handle on it. And, finally, there are matchups, but they can sometimes go deeper than you’d think.

One good example of lineup construction matchups comes from a discussion I had with fellow writer Jacob Milham over the weekend before Saturday’s match. He complained that Q had stacked the lineup with right-handers despite the fact that Valdez had had reverse splits on the season. I asked him how the Royals were hitting against lefties. Eventually, Jacob created a table that pretty conclusively showed that Valdez might struggle against lefties this year, but among the Royals hitters, their right-handers were likely to do much better.

One common complaint this year, including from yours truly, has been about how Q has insisted on bringing Angel Zerpa in to pitch in so many situations with runners on. He’s allowed five of six inherited runners to score - a measly 17% strand rate - this season! He should only be reserved for clean innings! But if you check his numbers from last year, you’d discover he was actually quite good coming into those situations, stranding 75% of the runners he inherited. And that includes a stretch where he was so bad in general that he was demoted for a few weeks. If you omitted that, the numbers would look even better. He maintained that strand rate into the playoffs, too, though, leaving three of the four runners her inherited on base.

None of this proves that Quatraro is a good manager, of course. What it does highlight is that it’s kind of impossible to prove that a manager is tactically good or bad with the level of information we have. There are simply too many unknowns. None of that will make you or I stop second-guessing his moves, of course, but I think it’s good to spend a few minutes to acknowledge even as we’re doing it that it’s a fun exercise but hardly conclusive.

At least until he pitches Chris Stratton again. I mean, come on!