Jerry Manuel's Bullpen Usage

However, wouldn’t you say right now that Nieve is his Setup Man? and that Igarashi was his Setup Man? And they have the highest gmLIs on the squad…

Obviously Jerry thinks K-Rod is his best reliever, yet he didn’t bring him in to any of the super high leverage (5+ LI) situations in that game. Clearly he does not intuitively understand leverage.

What if he does, but the closer “save” status quo blocks this? Well, then we have to ask if the late-inning = high-leverage fallacy extends to the earlier innings— i.e., does Jerry think that Feliciano/Igarashi should pitch the eighth because they are better than the other options but not as good as K-Rod? I think this is what he thinks. From this we can infer that he uses Nieve primarily in the 7th inning because he thinks that he is the best of the remaining options (Nieve, Takahashi, Acosta, Mejia).

If we didn’t know so much about managers’ predilections for inning-specific “roles” (and Jerry in particular), we might be able to assume that Jerry understands leverage intuitively and that he thinks Nieve and Takahashi are his best relievers. Or perhaps he understands leverage intuitively and doesn’t think Nieve and Takahashi are best, but that they somehow have inning-specific skills (as absurd as that is). But I think we know that he thinks K-Rod is the best, and he just doesn’t realize that a lot of the highest leverage situations come in the 7th, when his “7th inning guys” pitch.

Sorry if that was long-winded and repetitive.

Comparing to last year, what changed in 2010 were components accounted for in tRA but not in xFIP. His GB% went to 45% and his IFF shoot up to 13.5% or Johan-like level.

And yet again, I never said anything about his true talent level, but that he has performed well so far. Thus reinforcing the idea of the managing the pen using the hot hand.

tRAr: This is tRA, but regressed using the player’s past results as a baseline and the league averages when a large enough sample is unavailable.

Again, I’m not saying his true talent level is a 3.03 tRA, but that he has performed well so far.

is of course a huge qualifier.

1.Park Factors: we don’t have 3 years of Citi Field to use yet but here are 2009 park factors:

Even if you dismiss that information. Let’s say Citi Field supress HR’s. If his abnormal HR rate is the sole factor to explain his past performance, why weren’t the other RP benefited from the park too? Feliciano hasn’t given up any HR either, but his numbers are ugly. That’s why I mentioned his GB% and IFF%.

2. He performed well in SSS, and Jerry kept using his “hot hand”. That was my point. I was talking purely about his past performance. If you want to do an analysis about his projected future performance, feel free to do it. It wasn’t my objective here.

 because it’s silly. But still, seems like Manuel has one in his head. He talks about it enough.

Especially considering he hasn’t put together what he needs to put together in order to be super effective against hitting.

there are no “Mejia rules” apparently. I fanshotted a Brian Costa article a while back and in it,

According to a team official, the Mets are content with manager Jerry Manuel using Mejia in a limited role and don’t have any kind of "Mejia Rules." Manuel is free to use him as he sees fit.

The team decided coming out of spring training that Mejia belonged in the majors, and as long as he pitches on a regular basis, they don’t believe pitching in a middle relief role will slow his development.

My main problem with Jerry’s BP usage is that he campaigned in the press for Mejia to be in the bullpen and he’s only mopping up? It defeats Jerry’s reasoning for having him up to begin with.