Tired Arms Alert: KC Lead the 3-Day Bullpen Usage Board

Relief pitching is a budget, and some teams have been spending like the bill never comes. From the last three days of captured box scores, here is the relief workload around the league, starters excluded.

Running on fumes

No pen has worked harder than KC: 14 reliever outings across four games, 3.5 a night. Tired arms give up runs, and they usually give them up in the innings that decide things.

HOU are right there with them at 14 relief outings in 4 games.

Keep an eye on PHI too, at 13 relief appearances over 4 games.

The other end of the phone

The freshest arms belong to SF, only six relief appearances in two games, which is the quiet kind of advantage that shows up in the eighth inning.

ARI (6 appearances in 2 games) have kept their powder nearly as dry.

From most-taxed to freshest, the difference is eight appearances over the same stretch of days, the kind of gap that quietly decides eighth innings.

By the numbers

The workload table, straight from the pitching lines:

Worth remembering

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.

A taxed pen shows up late, not early: fewer trusted arms, longer leashes, fatter late innings. Watch the eighth.