Earlier last week I wrote about a few things that I thought the Giants should be doing for next year’s team. Among them were fixing the bullpen and finding free — or very cheap — talent to plug in to the team. Over the weekend the Giants made an early signing that could satisfy both of those requirements. The Giants signed 31-year-old RHP Justin Miller to a minor league contract with an invitation to Spring Training.
Miller, who broke into baseball with the Blue Jays in 2002, has been with the Marlins since 2007 as a reliever. Like most relievers, he started his professional career as a starter but made the move to the bullpen somewhere around the 2005 season. The last pitching crop of non-roster invites brought in players like Keichii Yabu, Bartolome Fortunato, and Victor Santos. Fortunato and Santos didn’t impact the major league roster but Yabu pitched better than I or anyone else probably expected.
Miller is a two-pitch pitcher when he’s working out of the bullpen. He’s your classic fastball-slider reliever. According to his FanGraphs page, he throws a fastball right around 90mph (91mph in ’07 and 89mph in ’08) and a slider at 80mph. Miller really favors his slider, throwing it 48.7% of the time in ’08. He’s been a flyball pitcher over the last two years with GB/FB rates of 0.99 and 0.72. His slider heavy workload could have had something to do with his trip to the DL with elbow inflammation in July. He was then DFA’d on August 15th.
Miller’s best season came during his first year with the Marlins in ’07. He posted a tRA* of 3.30 and in 61 IP he struck out 74 hitters. That’s good for a K% of 28.57%. The last Giants reliever to come close to a K% of 28% was Joe Nathan’s K% of 26% in ’03. In ’08 Miller saw his K% drop down to 20.90%. Over the past two years Miller has posted average walk rates — 9.2% and 9.9% in ’07 and ’08 — for a reliever in the National League. In 2008, the average reliever in the NL posted a BB% of 9.7% and a K% of 19.3%. If Miller is healthy and able to get his K% at 25% or above while maintaining an average BB% he could be a very nice pickup for the Giants.
I think one of the more appealing aspects about Miller is his control. He doesn’t have pinpoint control but in the Giants bullpen, he could look like Greg Maddux. One of the weaknesses in the Giants pen in ’08 was the base on balls. Giants relievers ranked 6th in the NL by BB% for team bullpens. The Giants have a variety of relievers with potential — Salder, Hinshaw, and Wilson — but they tend to come with control problems.
NL bullpens ranked by BB% (high to low) for ’08:
| Team | PA | BB | BB% |
| PIT | 2512 | 277 | 11.03% |
| FLA | 2278 | 251 | 11.02% |
| WSN | 2411 | 255 | 10.58% |
| MIL | 2044 | 214 | 10.47% |
| STL | 2200 | 230 | 10.45% |
| SFG | 2181 | 228 | 10.45% |
| ATL | 2410 | 247 | 10.25% |
| PHI | 2072 | 211 | 10.18% |
| SDP | 2372 | 236 | 9.95% |
| ARI | 1962 | 194 | 9.89% |
| NYM | 2157 | 202 | 9.36% |
| CIN | 2308 | 214 | 9.27% |
| COL | 2320 | 209 | 9.01% |
| HOU | 2197 | 194 | 8.83% |
| CHC | 2147 | 186 | 8.66% |
| LAD | 2198 | 186 | 8.46% |
Individual Giants relievers ranked by BB% for ’08:
| Name | BB% |
| Hinshaw | 16.2 |
| Sadler | 13.71 |
| Yabu | 10.6 |
| Wilson | 10.29 |
| Taschner | 10.18 |
| Walker | 9.29 |
| Romo | 6.15 |
Sergio Romo’s control is fantastic and now that Walker is off the team, Miller could potentially be the 2nd best reliever on the team in regards to BB%. Hinshaw and Salder both have electric arms but their control could be a very real stumbling point for them in the future. Yabu, Wilson, and Taschner were just slightly worse than your league average reliever in the NL when it comes to BB%.
Overall, I like the pickup of Miller and if he could return to his ’07 numbers — presuming that he’s healthy now — he should have a good shot making the bullpen out of Spring Training. Let’s hope he’s more Yabu — with better underlying peripherals — than he is Santos or Fortunato. Miller’s upside is a repeat, or something close to, his ’07 performance but a more realistic expectation is simply a league average relief performance for the Giants in ’09. And for a bullpen that lacked any sort of consistency, league average is a step in the right direction to a better bullpen.
For those wondering if our bullpen could be balancing out some of the walks by striking out more hitters than average, here’s the ranking by K% for bullpens in the NL.
Nice analysis, as always.
What would be interesting is if you can cut all the above tables by pitchers we expect to make the bullpen in 2009, i.e. minus all the pitchers who shouldn’t be in the rotation or now probably not since they are now free agents. Fans often forget that the overall numbers are skewed by players who might not belong in the bullpen, like a few years back when Eyre was out with an injury and the bullpen had pitchers pitching outside their capabilities until Eyre returned to the bullpen. People moaned about the bullpen but once Eyre returned, the bullpen was fine.
I like Miller too, low risk for possible big gain. Surprised he signed so fast for just minor league contract, he wasn’t born in the SF area (Torrance, CA) have nothing concrete on upbringing, but he entered draft from an LA area CC, so probably a SoCal upbringing. I’m surprised the A’s never gave him a chance, nice minors stats, though not outstanding, but the Blue Jays did as they got him in Hinske/Koch trade.
Looks like he might have had an injury in 2003. Then he had another injury of some sort in 2006, costing him time again. Then this elbow problem in 2008. Don’t look good long term but he could be OK for short stints. If the Giants can fix his mechanics without reducing his effectiveness, that would be good.
Oh, found a tenuous link: Giants first drafted him out of high school (Torrance High , so yeah, SoCal upbringing) but he didn’t sign (34th round; good move, Rockies signed 5th round).
I would put this up there with all the reclaimation projects Sabean has done before that worked out for a season or more, Johnstone, F-Rod, Embree, Chad Zerbe, Eyre, Dustin Hermanson, Jim Brower, Tyler Walker. Sabean has been active in selecting player like this in the past, so it should continue into the future.
@OGC
I could bend the bullpen numbers some but for a couple of reasons I’m a little hesitant to do some.
1. If you’ve got a player stinking it up in the bullpen (ex: Hennessey) he probably won’t be allowed to stink it up for too long. He’ll eventually get pulled, which he did. The counterpoint to this example is Jack Taschner who was in the bullpen for most of the year and didn’t pitch well when you look at his total year.
2. The Giants bullpen just wasn’t very good in ’08. It was easily one of the three worst pens in the NL and no amount of fidgeting with the overall numbers will change it that much. I think the inability to replace struggling players like Taschner is very representative of how good the bullpen is; if you’ve got a better pitcher, you’ll use him, call him up, etc. If you don’t, you won’t be able to.
3. If I removed bad performances for the Giants, I would also have to do it for other teams.
I will say that it’s amazing just how bad Brad Hennessey was in his 17.1 IP from the bullpen. In just 13 games he was worth -1.4 wins, making him the worst reliever in all of baseball by FanGraphs WPA/LI metric.
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=10&type=3&season=2008&month=0
I was surprised to see him sign this quickly, too. If I remember right, NRI’s didn’t sign until Jan. last year. November seems pretty early to sign a deal. His agent probably helped him realize that if he wants to get a major league gig, the Giants bullpen is a good place to start.
I liked the pickup and your analysis is even more encouraging. Nice work.
(OT: how’d the brew turn out?)
Thanks, Mark!
(OT: I had to put it off to this weekend, hopefully, I’ll be starting the brew on Saturday! I still need to pick up a few more bottles for future bottling)
My point was not to strike all the bad performances but to focus on who we can reasonably expect to see in 2009: Wilson, Taschner, Hinshaw, Romo, Yabu, and I would throw in Sadler and Misch to round out the bullpen. I thought I had made that clear, sorry. That’s nothing like what we had in 2008 and thus worth examining what the change might look like.
And I think a comparison is valid with other teams in general because most teams should have the same mix of guys in their bullpen, some up, some down in 2009, gives a general idea where the other teams will be, in general, in 2009.
Meanwhile, I think the Giants will be changing greatly, really, only three who was there all year, two others who was there half a year. So to get an idea how changed they might be, I thought a split with just the players we expect to be around, good, bad, ugly, would give us an idea how different the bullpen could be in 2009 vs. 2008.
That would give a good indication of how high a priority getting bullpen help should be for the Giants. If you prefer, perhaps we could take the Bill James projections that MCC for just the bullpen we expect and see what that looks like.
I think a separate comparison is good for telling us where the Giants bullpen is right now and what the gap is between the Giants and the better teams. Obviously it’s not written in stone, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to compare what we got versus what was good for other teams last season, as that is relatively representative of what teams will do in 2009, only I would not say that, say, the Giants need to do X to reach the Dodgers, but rather to reach the best, as another team probably will be there, not necessarily the Dodgers in 2009, there will always be a juggling of the positions, but as noted, for those who go up, there are those who go down, and everything will be relatively the same, it’s not like everyone suddenly sign a $10M closer to add to their rotation, some will lose (like Dodgers and Beimel possibly) and some will gain (Mets might want K-Rod).
I believe that this is a better way to analyze where the Giants bullpen is right now – and give guidance on where it should go going forward – than to look at the mishmash that experimentation did to the overall stats in 2008. Sure they stunk, but many of those players won’t be around.
Plus, I’m still treating 2009 as a transition year, I don’t really care that lousy guys will be in the bullpen and stink up the joint, I’m more interested in who might be sticking for 2010 and seeing how that particular combination might look like based on their 2008 stats.
@OGC
I get you but I disagree that, as of now, the ’09 bullpen is “nothing like” the ’08 bullpen. Consider this: the Giants bullpen threw a combined 487.1 innings in 2008. Here’s a list of bullpen relievers who could be on the team next year.
That’s a total of 354.7 innings for relievers that stand a good chance to be in the next years bullpen. That works out to 73% of the same relievers could be back for ’09. The bullpen could look very similar and with the concerns about Hinshaw and Sadler, things could be worse. I’m hoping more innings from Romo — if he can remain a plus reliever like he was in ’08 — will help things. Losing Walker and replacing him with Miller/FA Reliever might also help things.
I generally don’t care for James’ projections because they usually seem overly optimistic to me. I’d rather wait for Marcel, PECOTA, or ZiPS to try and project players.
That’s fine because 2009 will be a transition year, I’m not expecting anything else.