MLB Bullpen Report: Bullpens to Target or Avoid in Week 17 (2022)

August is upon us and we are not hitting the home stretch of fantasy baseball season! If you play season-long fantasy, then you're making some important decisions about who to add, drop, or start this week. And if you're a DFS or betting degenerate like myself, then you're grinding out lineups and bets daily all month long. Either way, you should know the state of all 30 teams' bullpens, how they're trending lately, and what the schedule looks like for each team this week.

Earlier this year, I started tweeting out some charts that I had created with team bullpen statistics and got such a solid reception from the public, that I thought "this could be an article!" I think there is a practical application of this data for fantasy baseball players, DFS grinders, and daily MLB bettors.

The data has been compiled and some observations made, so I proudly present to you the official "Thunder Dan" Bullpen Report for Week 17 of the 2022 MLB season!

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The Big Picture

Here's the latest set of bullpen data. I have my five favorite stats for bullpens and both the season-long and last-30-day numbers for each.

Remember the color-coding is from the opposing team's perspective so green means go (for hitters) and represents a bad metric for the bullpen. Red represents a good bullpen that is a poor matchup for opposing hitters.

I'm using xFIP as my ERA indicator here, but I think SIERA is pretty good too, if you prefer it. Either way, I want a stat that we can use as an overall indicator of the bullpen's performance. WHIP does something similar and points us towards which bullpens are allowing the most baserunners.

If you're hunting homers, then HR/9 is better than total home runs allowed since these bullpens have all seen very amounts of action in terms of innings pitched.

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The GOOD

1. New York Yankees
2. Houston Astros
3. L.A. Dodgers
4. New York Mets
5. Detroit Tigers
6. Baltimore Orioles
7. Atlanta Braves

I am very comfortable moving the Tigers into the top-five here. Their season might be a disappointment overall from where expectations were set, but they've suffered so many injuries in their rotation and in their lineup that it's hard to know what could have been. Their bullpen has been a bright spot for this team, and while DFS players in the past loved picking on Tiger pitching, it's not as simple as stacking against some of these young starters as you might think as they are backed by a top-five bullpen.

Seattle got bumped out of the top-seven in order to make room for the Tigers. They are still in the top-10 and adding Luis Castillo to their rotation will likely go a long way to helping take some burden off the pen as he's been able to pitch pretty deep into games this year.

The BAD

1. Cincinnati Reds
2. Washington Nationals
3. Kansas City Royals
4. Pittsburgh Pirates
5. Los Angeles Angels
6. Arizona Diamondbacks
7. Texas Rangers

Not too much change here, other than the addition of the Rangers to the list as they replace the Rockies. Colorado's pen having to pitch half their innings at home has to be factored into the equation here as that park factor is so significant.

We have some shuffling around in the middle there, but these bullpens all stand out as being considerably worse than the rest of the league. Not listed here is the San Francisco Giants, who actually have the worst xFIP (4.70) over the most recent 30-day sample. The Giants are trending in the wrong direction on offense and with their bullpen, and it looks like they're going to struggle to contend down the stretch.

The Last 14 Days

I had been mainly looking at full-season and a last-30 day rolling sample up until now. I wanted to zoom in a little closer and consider each bullpen's performance over the last two weeks too.

The season-long numbers don't move much one way or the other even with a good or bad week and a recent 30-day sample isn't likely to capture when a bullpen is really starting to trend up or down compared to their baseline performance.

Remember that this 14-day sample still includes the 4-day All-Star break for most teams, so our sample size is a little smaller than usual.

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Seattle had a rough couple of weeks with a 5.18 xFIP and got bumped out of my top-seven for the season as a result. Texas and the Giants also struggled and I touched on them already in the last section. Miami and Detroit logged the most innings from their relievers, but both teams put up solid numbers so fatigue didn't factor in there.

The Mets bullpen pitched the least number of innings and was very effective. Their starters are giving them quality innings, limiting the number of innings they have to use middle relievers and it's paying off for them in a big way.

Looking Ahead

This is the pay-off for all my season-long fantasy baseball peeps (DFS guys can benefit by looking ahead here, too). I pulled the schedule for every MLB team and ranked their match-ups for the upcoming week.

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Once again, green means GO for hitters and lower ranks are better. Each bullpen was ranked from 1-30 with a ranking of 1 representing the best possible match-up for opposing hitters.

1. Fatigue rank - this is simply calculated using the total amount of innings thrown by a bullpen over the most recent 14-day sample.
2. Last 30 Day xFIP - every team ranked from 1-30 based on their xFIP over the last month.
3. Overall xFIP - every team ranked from 1-30 based on their xFIP for the entire season.

Some takeaways here...

1. I have to give a big bump to the Oakland Athletics here as they get the Angels and Giants, two pens who have been sub-par. If you haven't seen what Seth Brown or Sean Murphy are doing this year, then you're not paying close enough attention. Even Ramon Laureano is now up to 11 home runs and we shouldn't just ignore the Oakland bats this week.
2. The Orioles are another offense with an appealing draw here with Texas and Pittsburgh. Baltimore can really run hot and cold, but they are going to have some solid matchups against Texas (after Gray goes today) and Pittsburgh (all their starters are very hittable).
3. Speaking of Texas, they have a really tough draw with Baltimore (underrated bullpen, we've talked about this before) and Chicago (AL). I have to knock them down a bit as a result and you should lower expectations a bit.
4. The Mets and Phillies both play Atlanta and Washington this week as the NL East teams are all playing each other it seems. The Atlanta bullpen is solid, but we can boost the Phillies and Mets hitters a little just a bit on the match-up with Washington alone as they continue to be one of the worst bullpens in the league.

Well, that's all I think I want to say about bullpens today. If you have any feedback or suggestions, I'd love to hear them and I hope this information can help you in some way, regardless of what format of gambling on baseball suits you!

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