Grading the Bullpens: NL West

As we saw before, managers usually have a logical reason for using the bullpens the way that they did. However, sometimes logical reasons aren’t necessarily good enough reasons. We will take a look at how the NL West bullpens performed last season and whether the managers got the best utilization out of their bullpens. However, before we do that, let me introduce you to the numbers we will be using (for those that didn’t read the first two articles). Games= The number of games going to the team’s top five relievers LI= Leverage index rates the relative importance of each outing. One is average while a rating of two or more indicates heavy pressure. IRP= This stands for inherited runner percentage. This is the percentage of runners that score that were on base when a reliever entered the game. CLP= Clean outing percentage. A clean outing is an outing where the reliever retired their hitters in order. SV/H= This is the save/hold percentage. It measures the percentage of s...