2007 Bullpen.

The bullpen is one of the more overrated aspects of a modern baseball team. Even though starting pitching and defense are for more important to the success of a club, due to its usage in high-leverage situations and also its supposed necessity for "clutch" performance, the bullpen is one of the more argued-over aspects of any team. On a team in a large media market like the Red Sox, the scrutiny is magnified, leading to even more undeserved importance being placed on the 6 or 7 men sitting out in right field.

Though its value is overrated (and the volatility due to small sample size and other factors underplayed) by most of the media, the 'pen is still important. In fact, if there is any sort of measurable psychological aspects to baseball, having a "shut-down" pen would seem to be even more important. Over the last few years, in the Theo Epstein era, the Red Sox have tried different strategies in building their pen, with varying degrees of success. Let's examine these briefly.

In 2003, the team began the year trying the "closer-by-committee" approach. After blowing a few early leads, "proven" closer Byung-Hyun Kim was put in the closer role, but was then removed as the team tried other options. By the time they made the playoffs they had figured out a formula that worked in Scott Williamson, Mike Timlin and Alan Embree. Unfortunately, as we know, Grady Little did something stupid.

Fresh off the embarassing loss in 2003, Theo doled out the big bucks for Keith Foulke and the 2004 bullpen was far more successful. Foulke pitched a dominating 80 innings with a 2.17 ERA, and combined with Timlin's 4.17 ERA in 72 innings, not much more was needed from anyone else. As we know, Foulke was on the mound when the team won its first WS in 86 years.

In 2005, the bullpen was a disaster. Foulke wasn't right all year and neither were Embree, Halama, Gonzalez or basically anyone the Sox tried to patch the holes with. Timlin had a very strong year, but a solid performance from anyone else likely would have won the Sox the division and perhaps got them deeper into the playoffs.

It's still difficult to talk about 2006, with the exception of Papelbon, who I've given a whole post to earlier in this blog, and likely will give more to later.

So, who do we have in the 2007 bullpen?

LHP:
Hideki Okajima
J.C. Romero
Craig Breslow
Javier Lopez
Jon Lester

RHP:
Mike Timlin
Joel Pineiro
Julian Tavarez
Brendan Donelly
Manny DelCarmen
Craig Hansen
Kyle Snyder
Lenny Dinardo

These are the guys on the tem right now that could play some role in the 2007 bullpen. Likely, Snyder, Dinardo, Breslow and Lopez will spend most of the year in AAA, barring stellar performance or injuries on the big-league team.

So sure, it's relatively deep, but what's here? First of all, none of these players have very much upside. Donnelly and Romero have turned in good seasons, but that was far in the past. Pineiro was once a solid young pitcher, and has a bit of chance at dominance, but I would certainly bet against it. Hansen needs to rediscover what made us draft him so highly, because he didn't have it last year. Okajima, Timlin and Tavarez have never been dominant and aren't good bets to begin now.

Second, we have many of these players signed for quite a bit of money or to too-long of contracts. Pineiro's making $4 mil. Tavarez $3.35 mil. Donnelly, Timlin and Romero are making at least $1.5 mil. Okajima is a bargain at $1.25 mil but is signed to a three-year contract. Sure, the team can afford this, and sure, there is unprecedented inflation in the market, but when the Rangers sign Eric Gagne to a one-year deal only guaranteeing him $6 mil, you'd think we could have gotten either a little more certainty or a little more promise in our deals. We really have neither. Guaranteeing money to the array of washed-up veterans we have blocks rookies (like Breslow, Hansen) and handcuffs us in other ways, such as putting us further and further over the luxury tax threshold.

With the (probably misguided) disproportionate attention given to the bullpen's performance by the vultures in the Boston sports media, isn't it perhaps more important to have a strong bullpen than to wishcast one from various retreads?