The bullpen was a mess last year http://www.nationalsfanproshop.com/authentic-matt-adams-jersey , do you feel better about this group?"To use a football metaphor, this year’s Royals bullpen is the backup quarterback of the club. It looks good, promising even on some level, becauser, we don’t have enough data to make an informed judgment about its effectiveness. It looks fine on paper, but a recipe for haggis would look better than the 2018 Royals bullpen. Last year’s Royals bullpen was dreadful. That’s being kind. Royals relievers punched out 7.3 batters-per-nine innings last summer, worst among all Major League bullpens. They posted a 4.2 walks-per-nine innings, the sixth-worst rate in baseball. Their collective ERA was 5.04 and their ERA- was 116. None of these numbers are good. None of these numbers inspire confidence. An overhaul was absolutely in order. Thus, the lone holdover from last year’s Opening Day bullpen at this point appears to be Tim Hill. (Brad Keller, of course, is the Opening Day starter.)Of course it’s not a complete overhaul. Last year’s second half closer, Wily Peralta, returns and appears primed to at least share ninth inning duties. Kevin McCarthy, who pitched the second-most innings of any Royals reliever last year, is also likely back. Last year’s innings leader out of the bullpen, Brian Flynn, is still around but he last pitched on March 1 http://www.nationalsfanproshop.com/authentic-matt-adams-jersey , was shelled in two spring outings and is out of options. He’s a lock to open the year on the injured list. One of the themes of camp has been the openness of Ned Yost to not having set roles for his bullpen. The sixth inning belongs to who? Forget about it. Mix and match is the way to go, baby. It’s a new dawn. Color me skeptical this freewheeling style of bullpenning lasts long. Meanwhile, the Royals will set their 25 man roster for the opener on Wednesday. As of right now, there are still several candidates for what figures to be eight spots in the Royals bullpen. They are listed here in descending order of my own personal interest. Kyle ZimmerHe exists! And he’s been really, really strong this spring. The dude touched 97 mph in his final exhibition outing. He gave up a single run in over 12 innings of work in the Cactus League. This Driveline stuff vibes legit. He has the stuff. Does he finally have the health? At this point, who would be surprised if he was the closer by May?Jake DiekmanLeft-handed? Check. Hard thrower? Check. Smells like an eighth inning guy to me.Brad BoxbergerHe gets the whiffs (11.7 K/9 for his career), but issues plenty of free passes (a lifetime 4.6 BB/9). Boxberger has lost a tick off his fastball and averaged just under 92 mph on his heater last year. He still manages to miss bats around a league average rate. He’s not truly closer material, but on a rebuilding team, give him a few ninth inning opportunities and spin him into a prospect at the trade deadline.Wily PeraltaThe Closer In Residence has a tenuous hold on the job. His 9.2 SO/9 from last year is good, not great, for a ninth inning guy. The real concern would be his 6 BB/9. That’s鈥?quite awful, no matter what inning eventually belongs to him. He fought the control in the Cactus League with five free passes in just under nine innings.Tim HillThe LOOGY may be dying, but don’t tell Hill that. The lone leftover from last year’s Opening Day bullpen returns and, if used to his strengths, can be a weapon. Last year, he limited lefties to .230/.288/.284. Right-handed batters added nearly 200 points to their OPS. If used properly, he qualifies as a legit relief weapon. Kevin McCarthyIf you need a double play Trea Turner Jersey , McCarthy is your guy. Nothing flashy. Just solid. That works.Michael YnoaHe’s faced soft spring training competition, with a 6.9 OppQual per Baseball-Reference, but he’s dominated. That’s something, particularly for a reliever who didn’t register a pitch in organized ball last year. The one time former top prospect from the Dominican could yet still have something in the tank. Could be worth it to find out.Ian KennedyMaybe the stuff plays up in relief. Maybe he can stay healthy coming out of the bullpen. The temptation will be to hang a Wade Davis comp on Kennedy. Don’t. Just don’t.Chris EllisWhen camp opened, the smart money was on fellow Rule 5 selection Sam McWilliams sticking with the club, while Ellis was probably the one who would be returned to his former team. Six weeks later, McWilliams is back in Tampa and Ellis is still around. Scott BarlowServiceable, but he’s always faced an uphill climb on the bullpen depth chart. I believe he’s still technically in camp. Although we never really hear about him, so who actually knows. We will see him at some point in Kansas City.Brian FlynnAs mentioned, he’s headed for the Injured List. He’s out of options, so the Royals will manage his return carefully.There aren’t a lot of power arms in the inventory and this lot comes with plenty of question marks. The upside exists for a solid, if unspectacular, back end. The downside is definitely in play, but we all know how bullpens are fungible creatures in their own right. At least on the surface this year’s version should be an improvement over last year. Every little bit helps. The 23-year-old became a staple of the starting rotation in the summer"At the beginning of the season, Let’s Go Tribe prospect guru Brian Hemminger claimed that Shane Beiber possessed enough talent to start with the Cleveland Indians immediately. Bieber did not break camp with the Indians but wasted no time in making a strong case that he belonged at the Major league level.Bieber tossed 31 innings in Double-A Akron to begin the season with an ERA of 1.16. He walked one batter and struck out thirty. Efficient, you might say. The organization promoted him to Columbus, where he stymied opponents with a 1.66 ERA in 48.2 innings. Elite command continued to be his strength http://www.nationalsfanproshop.com/authentic-matt-adams-jersey , striking out 8.69 per nine and walking 1.11. With nothing left to prove at the minor league level the Cleveland Indians brought up Shane Bieber for his first start on May 31, 2018. He replaced Josh Tomlin in the rotation and pitched far better than the average fifth starter. The Indians went 13-6 in games that Bieber started, with Bieber earning credit for eleven of those wins. It seems Brian was right all along, and the Indians might have squeezed a few more wins out of 2018 had they used him all season instead of Josh Tomlin.While Bieber’s overall performance is impressive for any rookie pitcher, it’s interesting to look more closely at how he managed to be effective, and what he might do to improve. Bieber finished just outside the top 30 among all Major League pitchers in fWAR with 2.8, while his bWAR tallied up to 1.1. This begins to hint at the main area of the game in which Bieber needs to improve: quality of contact.Bieber’s most valuable asset right now is his ability to throw strikes. That probably sounds a little obvious when discussing a pitcher, but contrast his command of the strike zone with that of Danny Salazar, Trevor Bauer, and Mike Clevinger’s in their first seasons with Cleveland. While the latter players all touted elite “stuff”, they needed to work on command in order to unlock the full effectiveness of their arsenals.In order for Bieber to do the same, he needs to start throwing more balls. He threw 48% of his pitches in the strike zone this season, the ninth-highest rate in baseball among starters with more than 100 innings pitched. If we lower that to 50 innings pitched, he still sits high on the list at 17th (Adam Cimber is in 1st, perhaps hinting at one of his shortcomings). I’m not talking about bouncing his curveball twenty times per game, but mixing his pitches effectively to confuse batters and not being afraid to walk a guy. I’ll use an example from our friend Corey Kluber as an example of effective pitch mixing. Like Bieber, Kluber rarely walks batters. He uses his command to mix his two-seamer and cutter at the edge of the strike zone on both sides of the plate to induce whiffs. Tunneling pitches like this is incredibly difficult Joe Blanton Jersey , but as Bieber’s “stuff” isn’t elite (yet), it’s how he managed to record a K/9 of 9.26 this season in the majors. Many of these came on called third strikes. I’m trying to construct a leaderboard of % strikeouts by pitchers that were on called third strikes; Bieber sits at 38%, and among starters I believe the only pitcher with a higher proportion of looking strikeouts is David Price.With Bieber, then, the key to continued effectiveness is less about whiffs but more about inducing weak contact. Hitters teed him up when they connected with his pitches; Bieber’s soft contact % in 2018 was the second lowest among pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched. We can point to Bieber’s BABIP of .356 and say that he had some bad luck this season — this is why is xFIP of 3.30 is so much lower than his ERA of 4.55 for 2018 — but I’m guessing at least half of the average above the .300 baseline is earned. Why were hitters able to mash when they made contact? I think it comes down to Bieber’s approach. When he earned an advantage in balls and strikes he dominated. Batters hit .193/.200/.326 in these situations. When he tried to avoid walking hitters is when trouble struck. They mashed .409/.522/.727 against him when he fell behind in the count. In other words, the average hitter turned into 1941 Ted Williams against Shane Bieber when there were more balls than strikes. When he refused to walk someone and attacked them in a hitter’s count, they made him pay. If Bieber continues to develop his changeup and breaking balls, then he very well might be able to generate a whiff rate that allows him to challenge hitters in the zone when he falls behind. Moving forward, though, he needs to trust the stuff he’s already developed and allow himself to better balance the risks and rewards of sticking to the effective approach he deploys when ahead in the count. It will be okay if he walks two batters per nineIn Bieber the Cleveland Indians have a fascinating pitching prospect who may very will blossom into an ace. He found trouble the third time through the order and after falling behind in the count, though these are issue many young pitchers face. If he can build upon his success in the offseason then 200 innings of excellence from Bieber in 2019 isn’t a crazy projection. After all, how often is a pitcher’s main problem that he doesn’t throw balls often enough?