Using Baseball-Reference's Play Index, I searched for seasons in the Expansion Era (since 1961) where pitchers have posted an ERA under 2 and a K/9 of 4 or below (minimum of 50 innings pitched). Here are the results (sorted by year):
| Rk | Player | SO | ERA | SO9 | IP | Year ▼ |
Age | Tm | G | FIP | ERA+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Richard Bleier | 26 | 1.99 | 3.69 | 63.1 | 2017 | 30 | BAL | 57 | 4.37 | 219 |
| 2 | Shigetoshi Hasegawa | 32 | 1.48 | 3.95 | 73.0 | 2003 | 34 | SEA | 63 | 3.78 | 292 |
| 3 | Terry Leach | 22 | 1.95 | 2.69 | 73.2 | 1992 | 38 | CHW | 51 | 3.52 | 199 |
| 4 | Dan Quisenberry | 48 | 1.94 | 3.11 | 139.0 | 1983 | 30 | KCR | 69 | 2.86 | 210 |
| 5 | Dan Quisenberry | 20 | 1.73 | 2.89 | 62.1 | 1981 | 28 | KCR | 40 | 2.94 | 209 |
| 6 | Rick Camp | 33 | 1.91 | 2.74 | 108.1 | 1980 | 27 | ATL | 77 | 3.42 | 195 |
| 7 | Greg Minton | 33 | 1.81 | 3.73 | 79.2 | 1979 | 27 | SFG | 46 | 3.00 | 196 |
| 8 | Tom Murphy | 47 | 1.90 | 3.44 | 123.0 | 1974 | 28 | MIL | 70 | 3.74 | 189 |
| 9 | Dale Murray | 31 | 1.03 | 4.00 | 69.2 | 1974 | 24 | MON | 32 | 2.87 | 374 |
| 10 | Jerry Bell | 20 | 1.66 | 2.55 | 70.2 | 1972 | 24 | MIL | 25 | 3.55 | 183 |
| 11 | Mudcat Grant | 58 | 1.86 | 3.86 | 135.1 | 1970 | 34 | TOT | 80 | 3.52 | 193 |
| 12 | Ron Kline | 48 | 1.68 | 3.83 | 112.2 | 1968 | 36 | PIT | 56 | 2.76 | 173 |
| 13 | Frank Linzy | 38 | 1.51 | 3.57 | 95.2 | 1967 | 26 | SFG | 57 | 3.35 | 223 |
| 14 | Hal Woodeshick | 30 | 1.92 | 3.84 | 70.1 | 1966 | 33 | STL | 59 | 3.65 | 189 |
| 15 | Frank Linzy | 35 | 1.43 | 3.86 | 81.2 | 1965 | 24 | SFG | 57 | 2.93 | 253 |
| 16 | Terry Fox | 23 | 1.71 | 3.57 | 58.0 | 1962 | 26 | DET | 44 | 3.15 | 241 |
No one accomplished what Bleier did for 14 seasons. Since 1983, it's only happened three times!
Unless you think Bleier is the next Dan Quisenberry, a large portion of Bleier's success was due to good fortune. That doesn't mean he pitched poorly, of course. It'll just be extremely difficult to repeat his effectiveness to that level.
Bleier can still be useful, and the Orioles acquired him for basically nothing last February. But he probably won't post another ERA under 2. Nothing about that should be surprising.
7 comments:
Bleier had a 68.8% ground ball rate. That's really good, and makes up for not many Ks.
Do you think that won't repeat?
The Yankees didn't give him up without good reason.
No, I would guess that he doesn't post another GB rate that high.
Matt, I was looking up Bleier's stats at Fangraphs, and noticed that he only had a .2 WAR.
Does fan graphs compensate for the limited number of innings thrown by a reliever, or was he just not that good, despite what we might have thought?
FanGraphs uses a pitcher WAR based on fielding independent pitching numbers. Since Bleier put up a FIP of 4.37, they don't give him all that much credit.
Fangraphs also considers replacement level on a next man up kind of replacement perspective, so it generally is more difficult to accrue WAR in that metric. bWAR does not do that.
In most respects - pitch repertoire, approach, and PA results - Bleier looks very similar to T.J. McFarland. I would think going forward we would expect similar run-prevention results. With a reliever's workload they may wind up looking very good or very bad for a season, but in the long run they're probably fairly average pitchers who may be able to play up to a little above average if they're deployed primarily against lefties. That's fine, especially while he's under team control and cheap, but doesn't sound like a late-inning guy (except maybe as a LOOGY).
Yes, I wrote about some of the qualities he shares with McFarland here: http://camdendepot.blogspot.com/2017/10/can-orioles-rely-on-richard-bleier.html
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