No Relief in Houston for the Astros
Ed Wade, previously with the Phillies, is known to be a master at assembling a strong bullpen. Wade, presently GM for the Astros, has attempted to do the same in Houston. As soon as he took on the job, relievers like Brad Lidge and Chad Qualls were shipped out, and guys like Valverde, Brocail, LaTroy Hawkins and others came in.
Wade believes in keeping your friends close and your bullpen closer. Early on, you could see his strategy: Have more relief pitching than you need because you never know which guys are going to tank on you from year to year. In 2008, it was Villarreal who suddenly lost it. In 2009, it’s been a bad year for Geary and Brocail. Generally, the philosophy has served Ed well but, in 2009, it has been a bit pricey. According to ESPN.com, the Astros are ninth in major league payroll at just under $103 million. After deadline trades, they may have slid to 11th but that evades my point.
The Astros are paying over $18 million in salaries to their bullpen pitchers in 2009. The only team comparable to the Astros here are the defending champion Phillies. To the Phillies, this makes sense since they won a World Series with such a talented bullpen, but teams with more success than the Astros are paying considerably less than the Astros are. The Dodgers and Cardinals, for example, are paying $7.2 million and $6.2 million respectively. This is the difference between one or two exceptional players.
While I don’t believe that Wade came in with the intention to spend this much money, things kind of worked out this way due to troubles with trading Jose Valverde. In the face of the recession, it’s much harder for a suitor to take on the contract of Valverde, and Wade was left with the choice to hold onto him and pay his contract, or to release him and still pay his contract.
The Astros bullpen has been a failure by all standards in 2009. With the second highest number of blown saves (only second to the Nationals of all teams) and a team bullpen ERA of 4.28, the bullpen in Houston has hurt the team more than it’s helped it. Cecil Cooper may be to blame for at least part of the woes in Houston’s bullpen.
Cooper has put way too much strain on some of his pitchers, most notably Sampson and LaTroy Hawkins, giving them little rest when they needed it. To no surprise, both Sampson and Hawkins ended up missing time with injury in July.
From here, many critics are pointing out the extra money the Astros could have used toward a quality starter or hitter as opposed to all of these expensive relievers. It seems that the Astros’ bullpen experiment has failed in 2009, and the team will either need to choose to regroup by shuffling up its core of relievers, or to slim down the bullpen’s salaries, relying more on young pitchers and spending the extra proceeds on proven starters or hitters.
The Astros do have some talented young pitching in Bud Norris and Felipe Paulino, not to mention Wandy Rodriguez, whose contract expires after the season. Players like Hunter Pence and Michael Bourne have rising contracts, and Miguel Tejada will be an undertaking in its own class. With this all said, there seems to be no way the Astros can hold onto such an expensive bullpen without making sacrifices in other departments.
Then again, this is Ed Wade’s team and we know how much he loves bullpens.
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