Sabermetrics, The Blue Jays' Closer Conundrum, and the Tragedy That Was Francisco Cordero

The walk of shame

I consider myself somewhat of a young, up and coming sabermetrician. I am a regular lurker at fangraphs.com and over time I've found myself coming to grips with advanced metrics such as FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching), WAR (Wins Above Replacement) and wOBA (weighted On Base Average). If you are not familiar with these stats and how they work, fangraphs offers a great glossary of definitions of these advanced metrics and I highly suggest you check it out if you're a baseball fan and the above abbreviations mean nothing to you. 

In 2011, the Toronto Blue Jays bullpen, to put it mildly, was a steaming pile of you-know-what. They had no true closer. Of the 10 relievers with at least 20 innings pitched, only Octavio Dotel (!!!) managed to not blow a save. One of the only bright spots, Mark Rzepczynski (WAR of 0.6 in 39.1 IP), was shipped to St. Louis with Dotel mid-season, and they ended up with World Series rings.... Altogether, good old Johnny Farrell kept trotting out the likes of John Rauch and Frank Francisco, and the Jays as a bullpen pitched to a tune of 23 blown saves in 56 chances.... That's a save percentage of 58%!!!

Something had to change, so Alex Anthopolous made changes. He made big changes. Out were Rauch (ugh), Francisco (ugh x2), Shawn Camp and Rzepczynski. The fresh faces to start the 2012 season were former White Sox closer Sergio Santos, proven major league closer Francisco Cordero, and veteran old-timer Darren Oliver. Well, 2012 was more of a gongshow than 2011, and it felt like every one who stepped on the mound got hurt. 34 players pitched at least 0.1 innings for the Jays in 2012! 

Good old Cordero though, well he sure didn't get hurt, all he did was pitch possibly the worst 34.1 innings I've ever seen in my 20 years on this earth, and I'm pretty sure no Jays fan would've complained if he fell down some stairs or something and wound up on the 60 day DL. The line: 5.77 ERA, 5.54 FIP, 6.82 K/9, 3.67 BB/9, 2/5 SV/OPP, for a WAR of -0.4. He was mercifully booted out of town with the quickness. 

Anyways, with all the injuries and whatnot, AA was forced to acquire some bullpen pieces (Steve Delabar, Brad Lincoln, Brandon Lyon). Brandon Loup was a pleasant surprise (0.9 WAR, 1.92 FIP in 3 less innings than Cordero), and Oliver was fantastic (1.1 WAR). Casey Janssen made the closer's role his and performed admirably with 22 saves in 25 chances, over a strikeout an inning, and under 2 walks per 9 innings. The 2012 bullpen was really pretty good for everything that went wrong. 

Now, we all know about the rotation and lineup upgrades the Jays have made during the 2012 offseason, but what is the bullpen, and more specifically the closer's roll going to look like for the Jays in 2013? I believe it's Casey Janssen's job to lose, but with Santos coming back, and the ridiculous strikeout numbers Delabar put up in his short time with the jays last year, who's coming out in the 9th inning come September (October even?) is anyone's call.

There are a few things about Janssen that scare me. His K/9 is lower than that of a typical closer, and the lowest up the 3 aforementioned pitchers. He doesn't get many swinging strikes, and he has a high HR/FB rate. His peripheral stats say he could take a step back from his dominant 2012 given a full season at closer next year. Santos on the other hand, had a ridiculous K/9 rate of 13.07 in a full season as the White Sox closer in 2011. His FIP was better than Janssen's and he gave up less home runs, but he walked a lot more batters. Santos's stats really look more like those of a closer, but his health is definately an issue. Delabar, another strikeout machine, would be an intriguing option should Janssen falter and Santos get hurt, but he is also prone to the longball, along with the highest walk rate of the 3 in a relatively small sample size. 

The Jays are primed to have a fantastic season, and with their bullpen revamped and ready to go for the third season in a row, the Jays have what appears to be a good closer conundrum and are poised to make a deep postseason run