#bullpens

BURR: Bullpen Usage & Reliever Ratings - The best tool in the land to help you understand which bullpens are weak and which are strong thanks to our innovative tool. Which pens should you attack/avoid? fantasyguru.com/burr-bullpen... #mlb #baseball #fantasybaseball #Bullpens

NL Central 2026 Division Preview | InsidethePen 2026 bullpen preview and analysis for the NL Central. Team-by-team breakdown of relief pitching depth, closer situations, and bullpen outlook.

As the 2026 season opens, the National League Central presents one of the most varied bullpen landscapes in baseball. Check out our Bullpen Previews:
insidethepen.com/articles/nl-...
#mlb #bullpens

How Not To Run A Bullpen “It just uhh … didn’t go our way.” That was how Seattle Mariners manager Dan Wilson responded to a reporter asking if he regretted not bringing in Andrés Muñoz during the seventh inning of Game 7 of the ALCS. That’s certainly an unsatisfying explanation for a decision that will live long in the memories of Mariners fans, as high-leverage managerial decisions that go wrong in the postseason tend to. But what was Wilson supposed to say, exactly? More importantly, what should he have done differently, and why? The point of pitching management is to make the opponent’s best hitters look their worst when it matters most. Everyone knows this. I was not yet in kindergarten when this came out. But I do have some small disagreements with that _Baseball Prospectus Basics_ piece. As it states, before the invention of the closer, managers used "firemen" to try to get out of jams their other pitchers got into. _Basics_ refers to this as a better thing; coming into a clean inning and getting three outs with a cushion just is not that hard for a relief ace to do. But this misses something: Saving your best reliever until you have some kind of mess on the field is actually quite passive, and using a closer is comparatively aggressive, when you think about it—rather than waiting for a pitcher to get into a mess, you get ahead of things, predicting that the late innings will be high-stakes, and you put in your best reliever before the mess even shows up. This is correct! It is much better to be a little early than a little late.

How Not To Run A Bullpen “It just uhh … didn’t go our way.” That was how Seattle Mariners manager Dan Wilson responded to a reporter asking if he regretted not bringing in Andrés Muñoz during the seventh inning of Game 7 of the ALCS. That’s certainly an unsatisfying explanation for a decision that will live long in the memories of Mariners fans, as high-leverage managerial decisions that go wrong in the postseason tend to. But what was Wilson supposed to say, exactly? More importantly, what should he have done differently, and why? The point of pitching management is to make the opponent’s best hitters look their worst when it matters most. Everyone knows this. I was not yet in kindergarten when this came out. But I do have some small disagreements with that _Baseball Prospectus Basics_ piece. As it states, before the invention of the closer, managers used "firemen" to try to get out of jams their other pitchers got into. _Basics_ refers to this as a better thing; coming into a clean inning and getting three outs with a cushion just is not that hard for a relief ace to do. But this misses something: Saving your best reliever until you have some kind of mess on the field is actually quite passive, and using a closer is comparatively aggressive, when you think about it—rather than waiting for a pitcher to get into a mess, you get ahead of things, predicting that the late innings will be high-stakes, and you put in your best reliever before the mess even shows up. This is correct! It is much better to be a little early than a little late.