Reiner: Dodgers Scheduled Bullpen Days Need To End

As the Dodgers are set to send David Price out to the mound to start another bullpen game Tuesday night, I don’t have a problem saying scheduled bullpen games are the worst thing to come out of the Sabermetrics-era ever. This especially applies to larger market teams.

The Dodgers have the highest payroll in the majors by a mile and, yet, this year they are resorting to bullpen games instead of finding a fifth starter to fill the gaping void in their starting rotation. They’ve found a ton of position players and relievers off the scrapheap before, they can surely locate a starter out there looking for a job.

My gripe with these “reliever relay days” is not so much about the success rate in terms of wins and losses, but the unnecessary domino effect it creates. Bullpen days can severely handcuff your relievers and the rest of your starters over the course of a long season.

Before Dustin May went down with a season-ending injury resulting in Tommy John surgery, he was dealing. In his five starts this season, May was 1-1 with a 2.74 ERA, 0.957 WHIP, and an unreal 13.7 K/9. Prior to his final start on May 1 in Milwaukee, the Dodgers had five healthy elite starting pitchers, so it was a little confusing as to why they scheduled a bullpen day for April 30. They might say it was because they wanted to give their starters an extra day of rest, but I say they tried to get cute and it failed miserably.

Facing the Brewers, May went down in the third inning and had to leave the game. So a day after a scheduled bullpen game, the Dodgers had to deploy an emergency bullpen game. Not only do days like these tax the bullpen, but it puts undue stress on the following day’s starter. In this case, it was Julio Urías, and if you’ve followed his career up until this point, the Dodgers have been very careful limiting his innings. Fortunately, the Dodgers scored 16 runs that day and Uriás was able to go seven innings while striking out 10, but just because it worked out well doesn’t mean it was a good idea.

Fast-forward to Friday, May 21 vs. the Giants. Trevor Bauer took the mound the night after a bullpen game. He was essentially forced to throw 126 pitches (the most pitches in any of his outings this season) into the seventh inning because the Dodgers used seven relievers in a game the day before. Now, if there’s any starter I’d trust to eat some innings on this team it would be Bauer, but why put him in that position if you don’t have to? We’re gonna need this dude shoving in October, we don’t need him throwing 126 pitches in May.

Furthermore, over the course of 162 games you’re going to need your bullpen, so why would you schedule a day to use all of them in one game where most of them become unavailable for the next game or even the game after that? The term “reliever” comes from the word “relief” after all. They need to be ready for when a starter doesn’t have it that night, gets injured early on, and/or to shut the door in the later innings, not relieving absolutely no one in the first frame.

The Dodgers entered the season with a full deck of starters, but injuries to May, Price, Tony Gonsolin, Jimmy Nelson, and Josiah Gray (to name a few) have hamstrung them so far in 2021. Regardless, they still managed to pick up relievers like Phil Bickford and Nate Jones. My question is: what are Cole Hamels and Rick Porcello up to these days? Can’t they eat some innings while everyone gets healthy? The point is, they can and the Dodgers should at least be kicking the tires on dudes like that because this bullpen day strategy isn’t sustainable. If not, I’m praying Gonsolin can get healthy enough to ride it out as their fifth starter the rest of the way or find a way to stretch Price out to go more than two innings.

Photo Credit: David Zalubowski / AP

Jake Reiner is a writer & editor for Dodgers Tailgate. He’s also the host of the Meeting on the Mound with Jake Reiner podcast and co-host of The Incline: Dodgers podcast. You can follow him on Twitter here @Reiner_Jake.