Revamping the Red Sox Bullpen to match rotation’s growth

The Fall Guys

I hold no personal grudges and merely report the findings of my data-driven research; Fernando Abad and Junichi Tazawa have performed about as poorly as any relievers that I have ever witnessed throughout my entire history of following this great game of baseball.

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One similarity between Abad and Tazawa is their proclivity to allow inherited runners to cross home plate with an alarming frequency. This is, arguably, the greatest sin of any reliever; after all, a reliever is frequently transported into the contest with men on base and assigned the task of preventing or minimizing the damage.

Tazawa and Abad combined have allowed 27 of 53 inherited runners to score. That is entirely unacceptable and places both of them among the worst in Major League Baseball at stranding inherited runners. The two of them combine to allow 51% of all inherited runners to score. It should be noted that this is almost double the league average rate of inherited runners scoring, which is 31%.

Next: Junichi Tazawa