Ned Colletti was recently quoted in an interview as saying "I don't think we're that far away" re: the 2012 Dodgers roster. Strange as this statement may be, we thought we would take a look around at various parts of the team to add our ridiculously insightful opinions on what exactly he may mean, arbitrarily starting with the bullpen.
When this season started, Jonathan Broxton, Vicente Padilla, and Hong-Chi Kuo were expected to be the bedrocks of the bullpen, a trio of “proven veteran leaders” (see what we did there?) that would dominate the last two to three innings of a game. That plan worked out flawlessly.
Look, there is no getting around the fact that Broxton was a disappointment this year- though probably not because he lacked the balls to pitch. No matter how much people may say Broxton lacked the heart or guts or other cliches to close, his absence since May 5th shows that his ineffectiveness was due to SOMETHING being wrong with him physically. Still, he brought no value to the Dodgers this year and will certainly be gone next season. You can add Vicente Padilla to that list as well, for mostly the same reasons. We wish them both a healthy recovery and a chance from another team- hopefully one in the American League, so they can’t shut us out 15 times next season as a Giant. We’ll get to Kuo shortly.
Before we get to the Kuo question, though, let’s look at the good that came from the early season bullpen implosion:: the Dodgers brought up four young pitchers who have quietly (too quietly) been very good this year. Javy Guerra, Kenley Jansen, Scott Elbert and Josh Lindblom have all stepped up and provided Mattingly with some impressive weapons out of the bullpen. Guerra got the flashy job- saves are overrated, but 18 of them in 19 attempts is pretty darn good. But what really jumps out to us is the fact that he's only given up one homerun in 169 plate appearances against him while holding opponents to a .602 OPS. His strikeouts could stand to come up a little, but they're not terrible either. We already did an entire post on Kenley Jansen so we won't rehash just how great he is here, but needless to say he's still awesome and in fact gotten even better since our post. He and Guerra should be handling the closing duties from here on out in one fashion or another. Scott Elbert has long been an interesting case- the talent has never been questioned, but he's just never seemed to be able to put it all together, in particular, his control has always been an issue. This year, though he’s been used sparingly, it seems like he’s finally figured it out. His ERA sits at 2.64 in just over thirty innings with 30 strikeouts and, here's the part that has us optimistic about his future, just 11 walks. Josh Lindblom hasn't been quite as good as the previous three, at least in terms of his strikeout to walk numbers. His ERA is a shiny 2.88 and he's holding opponents to just a .591 OPS so he's clearly doing something right, but in 25 innings pitched he's struck out 18 and walked 9 (though 3 of them were intentional). These might not be dazzling stats, but they're good enough to go to battle with him next year.
That leaves us with four locks for the bullpen next year, all (here’s the great part) making the league minimum. Matt Guerrier and his $3.75MM salary can be added to that list as well- overpaid he might be, but he's still a veteran, rubber arm type of guy that can eat up middle innings and pitch back to back nights. Plus, there’s no way anyone else would take him off our hands at that salary, so there you go.
So we have one to two spots open in the bullpen next year, depending on whether they go with an 11 or 12 man pitching staff out of the gate. The current candidates include Hong-Chih Kuo, who has had all kinds of problems this year and stands to make a hefty chunk of change in arbitration next season, Blake Hawksworth, Mike MacDougal, Ramon Troncoso and John Ely. It's hard to tell which direction the Dodgers will go, but I suspect they won't be willing to pay Hong-Chih Kuo too much, and will continue to have zero faith (for good reason) in Ramon Troncoso. John Ely doesn't really seem suited to pitching out of the pen, but he has a shot to make the squad as a mop-up/swingman type. We honestly wouldn't be surprised if Hawksworth and MacDougal are both brought back, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Those two probably would not be pitching the highest leverage innings and neither one has been too bad this year either.
The bottom line is this: the Dodgers are in desperate need of offense and have little money to upgrade. Let's put aside our hopes of Fielder or Pujols- that just isn’t going to happen- but they're going to have to do something. Having a bullpen this good, and this cheap, is crucial to providing the payroll flexibility needed to sign a bat or two.
