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17 blown saves!?!

If we even had the MLB average we could be some where around 60-40. That'scrazy!!

I knew it was bad but didn't realize it was 17 blown saves. That's ridiculous.

We need a good closer and a decent setup man next season.

The bullpen is pathetic. That's a crazy stat...4th in the majors.

and it was supposed to be our greatest strenght this season

I don't know about greatest strength, but certainly a strength. Unfortunately Purcey couldn't follow up on last season, Frankie forgot how to pitch, and Farrell took half a season to learn how to use a bullpen (he still has some lessons to take here).

60-40 is stretching it, but I've said for a while now that this could easily have an extra 5 wins at this point, which would put them at 56-46 which is within striking distance of the wildcard.

Blown Saves is a horrible way to judge a bullpen. What if they have a large proportion of 1-run games? What if a lot of those blown saves occurred in the 7th or 8th innings, and weren't actually blown saves, but blown holds? What if they also lead the league in save opportunities? When you're dealing with numbers that are that volatile, misrepresentative, and in such small sample size, it's pretty pointless to come to conclusions from looking at it. I'm not saying the Jays bullpen has been admirable, because they've done a good job of keeping my blood-pressure up where Kevin Gregg left it last season. But lets at least try to take a meaningful look at the underlying numbers.

EDIT: A quick look shows that the bullpen is 3rd in the league in K/BB, and also 3rd in xFIP (expected ERA, based on underlying factors). So... pretty good. And I know the term "unlucky" bothers a lot of people, but really, that's what it boils down to. In high leverage situations, they have by far the highest bullpen K/BB (3.33) but also are dead last in LOB% (it's ridiculous, really) and the second-worst HR/FB. So don't fret too much... they're good.

The Jays bullpen isn't that bad, they're about middle of the pack with an opponent's OBP of .317. Atlanta has one of the league's best bullpens and they have 15 blown saves.

PeterPetr wrote:17 blown saves!?!

If we even had the MLB average we could be some where around 60-40. That'scrazy!!

You do realize that teams win games that they blew saves in, right?

Mike Wilner was doing some analysis on it, and they lost 9 (I guess 10 now) games in which they've blown saves.

Also, the Blue Jays have won 7 games when the other team has blown a save.

As Skin Blues noted, blown saves is a terrible stat, because it includes any situation in which the bullpen surrenders a lead in a "potential save opportunity", which means any point from the seventh inning on (as you can collect a save by getting the final nine outs).

The primary thing that the stat details is that we've played a tonne of close games (35 decided by one run; that's quite high), and our bullpen isn't great.

Sorry if this is slightly off topic.

So it wouldn't count as a save if a reliever pitches 4 innings to end a game?

Parthenon wrote:Sorry if this is slightly off topic.

So it wouldn't count as a save if a reliever pitches 4 innings to end a game?

It would; anything more than 3+ innings to complete a game will earn a save. Oddly, the blown save stat only kicks in with one out in the seventh, which makes no sense whatsoever, but nothing about saves ever has.

Dave Stieb says 'pfft'.