Blue Jays squeezing remarkable production from cheap bullpen pieces

When the Kansas City Royals made consecutive runs to the World Series in 2014 and 2015, the way the baseball world saw relievers changed.

In the years immediately prior, analytics-savvy folks threw the word ‘fungible’ around to describe them constantly, despite its inelegance and obscurity as an adjective. Relievers were thought to depreciate in value like cars and investing heavily in them was a chump’s game.

Then the three-headed monster of Greg Holland, Kelvin Harrera and Wade Davis put a Royals team on their backs in two straight years and the narrative changed. Relievers are sexy again. This offseason, Mark Melancon broke the record for biggest contract for a reliever by $12 million. Three days later, Aroldis Chapman broke that record by $24 million. Paying big money for bullpen arms is considered good business again.

Despite the shift in the baseball world’s mindset, the Toronto Blue Jays spent almost nothing on their 2017 bullpen. Jason Grilli’s $3-million option was picked up. Both Joe Smith and J.P. Howell got themselves $3-million pacts. Other than deciding not to non-tender Aaron Loup, that’s all the team did.

Despite that relative inactivity and thriftiness, the Blue Jays’ bullpen has been the best thing the team has going for it in 2017. Toronto’s position players are near the bottom of the pack in WAR, and their starters are right in the middle, but their bullpen is fifth – thanks to a solid 3.73 ERA and 3.68 FIP over 270.1 innings.

A few years ago the decision to go with a mix-and-match Tampa Bay Rays-style bullpen would have been praised. This year, not so much — although both the Howell and Smith deals had their fans. With Grilli getting designated for assignment Tuesday and the Howell-Smith combo sitting on the disabled list, Loup is the only man in the bullpen making meaningfully more than the minimum — and his $1.125-million price tag is plenty reasonable.

If you can forgive Spotrac.com’s mistake of labelling Joe Biagini as a reliever (sub in Chris Smith in your mind if you must), the situation looks like this:

Put another way, the Blue Jays have the cheapest active bullpen in the game.

That hasn’t been a problem thanks to a quarter of minimum-salary guys that form the foundation of this relief core: Roberto Osuna, Ryan Tepera, Danny Barnes and Dominic Leone. Because Osuna has been a known commodity for a while, of particular interest is the trio of Tepera, Barnes and Leone. The three right-handers were hard to project as staples of a bullpen prior to 2017 — but that’s exactly what they’ve been so far. The numbers they’ve put up together have been truly impressive.

These three have combined for 40.1 per cent of the Blue Jays’ relief innings and 51.3 percent of their relief WAR. That’s a tidy bit of production for just over two-thirds what the team is paying for Howell. Going into the year it would have been hard to see them doing anything remotely like this, considering the threesome’s 2016 production looked like this:

You could argue it was unwise for a team with playoff aspirations to put themselves in a position where so many of their relief innings would be eaten by these types of players. On the flip side, the Blue Jays could be commended for developing and finding cheap and effective arms.

Whatever your interpretation of the situation, the strong but cheap labour in their bullpen has been a big break for the Blue Jays. In a year that’s been short on those, it’s more than welcome.