Fredi's Bullpen Management A Problem

It was a tough meltdown to watch last night. The Marlins scored early and disappeared late, but games like that happen, and with a bullpen like the Marlins', no lead is safe.

The real problem, though, was Fredi's use of his rested bullpen. Monday was an off-day, the performances turned in by Nolasco and Robertson gave the bullpen basically a weekend off. Why then were the Marlins on the short end of a 7-4 decision having used only 2 pitchers: starter Chris Volstad and then Tim Wood for an ill-advised 2 innings of work.

The bigger problem, though is the way Fredi uses his bullpen; last night, other than Wood, the only other reliever Fredi got up was Renyel Pinto. This isn't anything new, Marlins fans know that Fredi has his favorites and sticks with them to a fault. The real problem goes deeper than playing favorites, the real problem is that the Marlins have a bad bullpen and Fredi is too hesitant to pull a struggling reliever out. Wood clearly didn't have it last night in the 7th, yet Fredi stuck with him for the fateful 8th, much the way he stuck with Kevin Gregg, Matt Lindstrom, Jorge Julio and the litany of relievers we've run through here the past several years.

Fredi's old school bullpen management is beneficial when a few alpha relievers rise above the rest of the bullpen, look at Joe Torre's successful Yankee teams or Bobby Cox's mid 90's Braves teams, but the Marlins don't have that luxury. The 7 arms in the bullpen, handedness excluded, are basically all of interchangeable quality, except for the recent emergence of Clay Hensley and what appears to be a more confident Leo Nunez. Fredi needs to learn to get away from a struggling reliever rather than allowing him to try to work it out on the mound. The team has been very fortunate with the performance of their rotation to this point, Fredi can't allow the bullpen to keep handing games away because he stuck with "his guy" too long.