Bullpen Management: Jeurys Familia

I've been kicking around the idea that bullpen management evaluation is simply an exercise in hindsight. At the moment, managers are simply rolling the dice they have. The dice are determined by the FO, injuries, pitch count and recent usage. Sometimes those dice are really bad. I wanted to examine if perhaps Mickey was misusing pitchers in spite of the data. The first place I wanted to look was Jeurys Familia.

 

The most recent blown lead occurred when Familia was asked to finish the 7th and continue in the 8th with a 3-run lead, which was extended to a 4-run lead in the top of the 8th. Ideally, a 4-out appearance with a cushion lead. Familia got out of the 7th by SO the first batter. In the 8th, he hit the 1st batter, gave up two singles and a sacrifice fly before being replaced and Adam Jones hit a game-tying HR.

 

The most common thing said after the game was that Familia cannot be used for two innings (due to not being able to stay loose in the dugout). I wanted to examine whether this was the case this season and historically. I will preface this with the fact that 2019 isn't halfway over and we have an exceedingly small sample size.

 

So, this was not as simple as loading baseball reference or fangraphs for me. Unless I'm mistaken, there is no easy split tool to compare multiple innings and single inning appearances. Anyway, I took the game log data from baseball reference, which records inning entered and exits making for some simple calculations. This allows us to properly classify those games where Familia goes less than 1 IP across two innings, which is important as the working theory at the moment is that Familia is adverse to sitting on the bench.

 

Either way here are the numbers:

	APP	AV_DR	IP	BBP9	SOP9	HRP9	ERA	WHIP	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2015 - Single IP	66	1.45	62	2.468	10.161	0.726	1.887	1.016	0.207	0.269	0.308	0.577
2015 - Multi IP	10	1.3	16	2.812	9	0.562	1.688	0.938	0.207	0.27	0.31	0.58
	APP	AV_DR	IP	BBP9	SOP9	HRP9	ERA	WHIP	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2016 - Single IP	73	1.36	69.1	4.284	10.125	0.13	2.466	1.111	0.212	0.337	0.271	0.608
2016 - Multi IP	5	1.2	8.1	5.4	6.48	0	3.24	1.8	0.29	0.444	0.323	0.767
	APP	AV_DR	IP	BBP9	SOP9	HRP9	ERA	WHIP	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2017 - Single IP	23	1.48	20	7.65	9.45	0.45	4.95	1.65	0.247	0.436	0.325	0.761
2017 - Multi IP	3	2.33	4.9	3.857	7.714	0	1.929	0.857	0.143	0.294	0.143	0.437
	APP	AV_DR	IP	BBP9	SOP9	HRP9	ERA	WHIP	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2018 - Single IP	61	1.61	57	4.421	10.737	0.474	3.632	1.368	0.237	0.336	0.329	0.665
2018 - Multi IP	9	1.67	15	1.8	9	0	1.2	0.667	0.154	0.2	0.192	0.392
	APP	AV_DR	IP	BBP9	SOP9	HRP9	ERA	WHIP	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2019 - Single IP	19	1.58	17	10.588	7.941	0.529	4.235	1.529	0.224	0.481	0.362	0.843
2019 - Multi IP	5	1.6	6.1	4.263	9.947	2.842	12.789	3.474	0.429	0.469	0.714	1.183

 

Wow, Familia has consistently been just as good or not better in multiple inning appearances over his career. The most recent is 2018 and Familia was lights out in his 9 appearances where he took a bench rest, .392 OPS. He had not allowed a homerun in a multiple inning appearance since 2015 before this season. He's been terrible in 2019 though. However, he's been terrible in all situations this season. He has been walking 6.6 batters per 9 and just generally bad.

 

My conclusion is that you cannot really blame Mickey for depending on Familia in these situations as he has been consistently great in multiple inning appearances over the last 4 years. Maybe you can fault Mickey for doing it too much (double the normal rate Familia has done in past seasons). Unfortunately, the issue with Familia stems from somewhere else rather than misusage. It's also not something that can easily be predicted. Despite what many fans believe, Familia has been consistently solid from 2016-2018. He did lose his 2015 dominance after being hurt in 2017, but 2018 appeared to be a step in the right direction. However, 2019 has been his worst season by far.

 

It's difficult for me to give any blame to Mickey. I'm sure he's going to react to this recent outing and only use Familia in 1-inning appearances. However, I'm not sure it's a relevant issue. The Mets likely want to evaluate Familia's health and possibly mechanics. Something has changed, but that's outside the scope of this reddit post for now.

 

TLDR: Familia used to be good (as recently as 2018), including in multiple inning appearances. Now, he has very little control in all situations. He gets hit much harder in multiple inning appearances in a limited sample size this season.

 

If anyone has any other theories on how bullpen management can be handled besides hindsight, I'd love to hear them. The next place I wanted to look was into inherited runners and overall bullpen performance of the team.