MLB Bullpen Red Flags
Tired Arms Alert: LAA Lead the 3-Day Bullpen Usage Board
Published
Bullpens do not announce when they are tired; the box scores announce it for them. Counted straight from the last three days of pitching lines, every arm after the starter, this is who has been leaning hardest on the pen.
Heavy lifting
No pen has worked harder than LAA: twelve reliever outings across three games, 4.0 a night. Tired arms give up runs, and they usually give them up in the innings that decide things.
BAL have been nearly as busy: 10 appearances across 3 games.
ATH (10 outings in 3 games) are not far off that pace either.
The rested arms
The freshest arms belong to CHW, only four relief appearances in two games, which is the quiet kind of advantage that shows up in the eighth inning.
CHC (5 appearances in 2 games) have kept their powder nearly as dry.
Put the two ends side by side and the gap is eight relief appearances in an identical window, which is enormous in bullpen terms.
At a glance
The full usage board from the window:
| Team | Relief outings | Games |
|---|---|---|
| LAA | 12 | 3 |
| BAL | 10 | 3 |
| ATH | 10 | 3 |
| SD | 10 | 3 |
| HOU | 10 | 3 |
The fine print
For method, we simply count arms after the starter in each game's pitching lines. It flattens out inning lengths, but it is the same yardstick for every club in the sample, which is what makes the comparison fair.
Usage is context, not destiny. But when the late innings arrive, yesterday's workload is very real, and it does not care about the matchup.
Next up on the slate: Los Angeles Angels against Texas Rangers. Check back after that one goes final.