Two different bullpens, same results: Royal relief and Giant success
Not all bullpens are created equal. This postseason, the Kansas City Royals are putting on a show with their backend arms, blowing the doors off any and all competition with their unsubtle charms. What they lack in nuance they make up for in pure, unadulterated filth.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the Giants feature a bullpen that couldn't be more different than the high-powered Royals relief corps. Where the Royals are young, the Giants are old. Where Kansas City is cheap, San Francisco's relievers are lavishly paid.
It's a study in contrasts, right up until the moment when you get around to studying their results. Because this October, the way the Giants 'pen racks up outs is second to none. Consider the postseason results of these two groups, both forced to run the full wild-card gauntlet.
Giants in relief
| IP | K-BB% | AVG | ERA |
| 35.1 | 14.3% | .164 | 1.78 |
The manner in which they conduct their business might be different, but they are getting spotless results. The Giants benefit from their wizened manager deploying them expertly, eschewing set inning roles and instead using whichever of his four main guys is better suited to the situation at hand.
And the home run difference between the two groups -- Royals relievers have allowed one homer, Giants relievers have allowed seven -- reflects the razor-thin margin for error for San Francisco, even with its spacious ballpark and heavy ocean air. The lone hard-thrower in the Giants' mix, out-of-favor fireballer Hunter Strickland, is responsible for four of those seven home runs. After giving Bochy some good innings during the Division Series, Strickland saw action only once against the Cardinals in the NLCS (and he gave up a long ball then, too.)
The importance of velocity is more than just an aesthetic preference. Every extra mph makes a pitcher tougher to hit, providing precious wriggle room to miss a spot without paying the ultimate prize. The Royals aren't the only hard-throwing relief corps in baseball; they're just getting their due on the biggest stage.
Rather than overwhelm the opposition with power, the Giants come at batters from a variety of angles, mixing up their release points as a staff and ensuring batters rarely see the same look. While it might not factor in during a single game, the forced confinement of a short series and Bochy's ability to mix and match makes comfort in the batters' box a rare treat.
Using release point data collected by the Pitchf/x system (via Baseball Savant), we can visualize the release point of each pitcher. Plotting them together demonstrates the discrete groups associated with each pitcher. Below is a graphic representing the release points for the Giants' main high-leverage reliever options:
Two lefties and three righties, all coming from unique points. Sergio Romo, the sidearm slinger with the lowest and widest release; Santiago Casilla from a traditional three-quarters release; and Jean Machi coming more over the top. On the left side, Javier Lopez slings while Jeremy Affeldt features a tested-and-true three-quarters slot. Now the Royals. Three overpowering right-handers as well as lefty Brandon Finnegan, all coming from similar release points.
It takes more than just an unusual arm slot to retire big-league hitters. The Giants' pitchers are adept at working to their strengths, commanding their pitches to the part of strike zone that best serves their particular approach. According to Bill Petti's Edge% figures (explained here at The Hardball Times), Lopez uses his lower arm slot to pound the bottom of the zone like few pitchers in the game can. It also keeps his slow-moving pitches (his fastball averages a whopping 85.6 mph) out of the heart of the plate. Romo works down in the zone as well, but he excels at keeping his pitches on the outside corner to both lefties and righties.
Affeldt, all but untouchable this October, works the ball around the plate like a former starter. The big lefty isn't afraid to come inside to right-handed batters, dropping his curveball onto their toes while working on the outside corner. Not unlike during the Giants' run to the 2012 title, Affeldt is unscored upon through two rounds of the 2014 playoffs.
The Royals' relief aces can afford to stay in the heart of the plate, missing bats as often as they do. Hard throwers like Kelvin Herrera and Wade Davis can work up in the zone, a place most Giants' pitchers cannot stray. There is no need for deception when high-end velocity loom and devastating breaking balls lurk.
But the fact of the matter remains simple: The Giants get outs. And nobody, not Davis nor Holland nor anybody, gets more outs than Giants closer Santiago Casilla. And how he does it might surprise you.
As mentioned above, the Royals' relievers are exciting. They light up the radar gun with triple digits and throw unfair pitches that seem to move independent of Earth's prevailing gravity. Yet it is Casilla who hasn't allowed a single run this postseason, with only two hits surrendered. While the Royals operate under the "here it is, hit it" mentality and fill the strike zone accordingly, Casilla is actually more likely to keep his pitches closer to the middle of the plate, ranking below-average by ratio of pitches thrown near the edges of the zone.
His is an attack of deception, changing speeds and disguising his pitches well, earning enough weak contact to keep runs off the board. Ironically, he's the poster boy for this mostly faceless bunch: He simply goes out and does his job with minimal fuss and muss.
The Giants' bullpen is a unit, a group of experienced pitchers who might not blow anybody away individually but are ever so close to their third World Series ring as a collective, the sum of which is probably greater than the parts. Especially in the postseason, they don't ask how, they ask how many. Four wins short of another World Series triumph suggests the "how" is effective, underwhelming as it may seem on the surface.
