Much like Hererra's last 2 years wiped our memories of his previous where he was extremely hittable - even with the 100 mph fastball.

Tap out acknowledged - Greg Garcia is a golden god!!! ;)

The back end of that bullpen of HDH may never be duplicated.

Seems unlikely.

Gonna be hard to top 200+ innings of a 1.25ish ERA and about 12 strikeouts per 9.

Honestly, Herrera wasn't even in the same stratosphere as Davis and Holland in 2014 and he was still incredible. Didn't Davis do something insane like go the entire season without giving up an extra base hit? Davis's 2014 season may have been the best season by a reliever in baseball history (especially for modern era usage).

I'd say that right now the best relievers in baseball are some combination of Jansen (my choice), Chapman, Miller, Britton and Bettances. Davis lost a little velocity and so his stuff wasn't as sharp.

But you could take any combination of those 4/5 guys, put them in a single bullpen and the three you choose are extremely unlikely to be as dominant as the Royals big 3 was that year.

The Yankees had the parts for it last season and with Bettances, Miller and Chapman had as much talent as the Royals had at the back of their 'pen. But with reliever volatility, there's a big difference in having the 3 most talented relievers and having the 3 most effective ones in any given year. The Royals had them all locked in at the same time that season and that just never happens.

DJ, just curious if you're really that high on Chapman. My limited observation of the guy is that, yeah, he has a 100+ fastball, but it appears to be the only pitch he has with command. In the playoffs, it looked like the eventual approach to the guy was to simply sit on his fastball.

I have the same concern about Herrera although when he does command any pitch beyond the fastball, he's pretty much unhittable. He seemed to just get stuck on the fastball last year. Perhaps this was true of Chapman last year?

Anyway, your thoughts on Chapman?

He commands his slider well also. His issues with command come and go. When he's on, he's unhittable but he has some streaks (that seem to be associated with overuse) where he loses it a bit.

He was just worn slick in the WS so he was overthrowing to maintain his velocity. When that happens, you lose your command and your breaking ball loses its snap.

With less aggressive use, he's as good as anyone out there. But that's why I prefer Jansen - his cutter is such a low-stress pitch that he can throw more without putting as much strain on his arm and so his peak performance lasts a little longer. He's had some weird injuries that have kept his innings down at times (sprained ankle, heart malfunction) but without those, he's pretty rubber-armed as far as relievers go; very much like Mariano in that regard.

Chapman's never going to be a 'paint the black' guy, but he doesn't have to be. All he needs to do is get it in or near the strike zone and that fastball is so damn hard that hitters have to commit too early to do anything with the breaking ball if it leaves his hand anywhere near the strike zone. So in a sense he's like Adam Dunn. Dunn didn't know the strike terribly well, but pitchers were terrified of him so he drew a lot of walks. His one strength was just so damn strong that it papered over weaknesses (Stanton is a similar analogue).

Never

Thanks DJ. Appreciate your posts and observations!

Yeah DJ doing work in here.

Colorado Rockies.

Where careers go to die.

Thanks Greg for you ability but glad we passed on the resigning.

$7 million guaranteed? Wow.

Yea, that's way too much. Good of the Royals for staying away from that.

Britton doesn't have the strikeout numbers the other guys probably do, but he's a monster. Especially playing in that bandbox. He basically throws a heavy bowling ball up there. His season last year was incredible. Because of those other guys he's almost underrated.

It's easy to forget because this has been the decade of the power reliever, but early on, there was basically Kimbrel, Holland, and maybe another guy or two I'm forgetting. At the time, posting a 1.21 ERA with about 14 K/9 was insane. Even if the Royals get back to the playoffs... I don't think we'll see a back end of the bullpen like 2014, or a lineup clicking 1-9 like they did in 2015 again. We were lucky to see both.

Yeah.

I have a Yankee fan at work who thought I was crazy for saying the Yankees back end wouldn't be as effective as HDH in 2014.

Then he looked up their stats. And shut up.


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Yeah basically this


Just like 16 colored Wade a bit with his troubles, he dropped from a gawd to just really good


Matt Strahm is going to be godlike this year. Just like 2016. He gets 65 IP in high leverage if I'm managing. (Which as you know I'm not)