By Ray Flowers
October 5, 2008 2:03pm CDT

Throughout the 2008 season, we have touched on the idea of paying attention to a reliever's Left on Base Percentage (henceforth LOB%), as it is more likely to tell you how successful a reliever has been than merely glancing at his ERA. We once provided the following example that bears repeating here.

“For a relief pitcher, ERA is even a worse measurement of a hurler’s success than for a starting pitcher. Take the case of Jonathan Broxton, who owns a 3.62 ERA in 37.1 IP. If you remove the one outing where he was apparently telling the batters what he was throwing, his ERA would be 2.17 (the Astros scored six runs off him on May 11th). Therefore, if you looked only at the ERA column on his bubble gum card, you would be mistaken when trying to estimate his effectiveness.�

Secondarily, ERA is also ineffective at measure a pitcher's effectiveness in the following example. Let’s say that Takashi Saito put a runner on base, and then was removed from the game in favor of Broxton. If that runner then comes around to score off of Broxton, the run is charged to Saito, since he is the one who put the runner on base. We’ll leave it to you to decide if that is fair, but to us this situation points out how ineffective ERA can be as a tool to judge any pitcher's effectiveness.

As a result, we wanted to review the LOB% numbers of those relief pitchers who hurled at least 40 innings in 2008. It also bears mentioning that the major league average for LOB% is usually right around 70%, so you can factor that in to your understanding of how effective these hurlers have been.

In Part I we discussed which hurlers excelled, and in Part II we will discuss those that failed to produce at a level that would make fantasy owners take notice.


PART II

Minimum 40 Innings Pitched

57.0 – Blaine Boyer
57.6 – Bryan Casey
59.4 – Craig Hansen
60.2 – Luis Ayala
60.4 – Robinson Tejada
61.2 – Jamey Wright
63.7 – Sean Green

63.9 – Julian Tavarez
64.4 – C.J. Wilson
64.6 – Todd Jones
Since the majority of these names meant nothing in terms of fantasy production other than Luis Ayala, who racked up nine late-season saves with the Mets, C.J. Wilson, who had 24 saves for the Rangers, and Todd Jones, who had 18 saves before entering retirement, we thought we would skip going into detail on these hurlers and instead highlight some of the bigger names that might have struggled to strand runners on base.

Keep in mind that we are talking about LOB% here. Some of the names you will read about here are highly effective at limiting runners from ever reaching base, so even though their LOB% might be on the low side, the following LOB% numbers are not necessarily intended to steer you away from selecting these arms in the future.


The Closer Angle

67.7% - Jonathan Broxton Broxton improved his performance in the second half with a 2.76 ERA, 1.13 WHP and a 12.89 K/9 mark. It’s unknown if he will open ’09 as the Dodgers' closer or if the team will bring back Takashi Saito to fill the role.

68.7% - Billy Wagner Likely to miss most of next season due to elbow surgery, Wagner was solid this season for the most part, though his LOB% mark was the worst of his career and amazingly low when compared to his career mark (81.7%).

69.1% - Brandon Lyon With a 1.48 WHIP and a K/9 mark of just 6.67, far too many runners reached base off Lyon this season, meaning that his LOB% mark was a fairly accurate representation of his efforts on the hill.

69.5% - Jonathan Papelbon
Across the board this was the worst season of Papelbon's three-year run as the Sox closer, though a 2.34 ERA, 0.95 WHIP and 10.00 K/9 mark are still great numbers. Like Wagner, he massively undershot his career LOB% mark (83.7%).

69.8% - Troy Percival
He walked far too many batters this season (5.32 BB/9 -his worst total since 2000), resulting in his worst LOB% mark since 1998.

70.6% - Kevin Gregg
Gregg lost the closer role late in the season when injury affected his production. His LOB% was only slightly below his 71.9% career mark. Simply put, he is a solid reliever, but he is a poor option at closer given his measurables.

72.3% - Matt Capps His K/9 rate dropped almost a full batter from 2007 down to 6.54, but he simply didn’t walk anyone with just five walks in 53.2 innings, leading to a stellar 7.80 K/BB mark, which was just below his career 75.9 LOB% mark.

73.0% - Brian Fuentes, George Sherrill These two closers racked up 61 saves, with Sherrill recording 31. However, Sherrill wasn’t particularly effective with an awful 5.57 BB/9 mark and a 1.50 WHIP. Fuentes had more success with an impressive 11.78 K/9 mark while limiting batters to a .210 average.

73.3% - Brian Wilson
Wilson racked up 41 saves in 47 chances for the Giants, but with a 1.44 WHIP, thanks in part to a 4.04 BB/9 mark, his ERA was an unacceptable 4.62.

73.5% - Kerry Wood Though his LOB% was barely above the major league average, it was still his best number since 2005, though it was below his career-long mark of 76.1%.


The Middle Relievers

66.7% - Tony Pena We see a lot of struggles in the D’Backs pen when we check LOB%, and Pena certainly wasn’t immune. Unfortunately, his career-long mark of 68.4% is also below the traditional break-even point for the majors.

67.0% - Chad Gaudin
He really struggled for the Cubs with a 6.26 ERA and 1.43 WHIP in 27.1 innings, which certainly contributed to his below average LOB%, despite solid K/BB (2.70) and BABIP (.307) marks.

69.4% - Chad Qualls Qualls is the third D’Back we have discussed. It’s becoming pretty obvious why the club didn’t advance to the playoffs. Qualls hadn’t been below 74.8% in each of his first four seasons.

70.4% - Jon Rauch Rauch posted his worst ERA in four seasons (4.14), though his WHIP remained solid (1.19). His LOB% was just 68.5% in 2007, so despite all his success, he has been merely average the past two seasons at leaving runners on base.

71.2% - Manny Corpas
Corpas lowered his ERA in the second half (from 5.24 to 3.51), though his WHIP was still 1.35, and his K/9 mark was just 4.86 after the All-Star break.

72.4% - Taylor Buchholz Only marginally better than teammate Corpas in LOB%, Taylor had an ERA that was almost half of Corpas’ mark at 2.17, and a WHIP that was 50% better at 0.95.

73.3% - Heath Bell
His LOB% mark regressed from 80.9% in 2007, which obviously contributed to the big-time increase in his ERA from 2.02 to 3.58.