Our award for the top rookie was a heated race. Five possibly contenders with 2 serious rookie campaigns made that one fun to write about. Our top reliever on the other hand.... Well, that's a bag full of dog shit. If you're curious just how bad the bullpen was, well, it finished with a negative WAR as a unit, only 4 guys had a positive WAR for the season, and no one surpassed a 1.0 WAR on the year.
So what's a team to do that needs to name a top reliever for the season? Well, you just give it to the guy with the best WAR and move on I suppose.
And that was Kent Grange. We tried Grange as our closer to begin the season and that failed horrifically. He had a 10.80 ERA in April followed by a 5.27 mark in May so we moved him out of that role and just into the middle relievers spot. He turned it around some in June, but after seeing just 6.1 innings of actions, we felt the youngster needed more action so we moved him to the stoppers spot, where he spent all of 2057. And it was there he found a groove again. He thre 46.1 innings of relieve in July and August with ERAs of 2.61 and 3.86 respectively before hitting a wall in September. But the two solid months gave him the lead in this race among piles of doggie dung.
In the end, he finished the year with a 4-8 record and 5 saves. He led the bullpen in innings with 97 while posting a not-so-good 4.82 ERA and a slightly more respectable 1.34 WHIP. He struck out 90 on the season and led the bullpen with a modest 0.8 WAR on the season.
Grange becomes the 4th reliever to claim the award for a second time and the first to do so back to back since Lorenzo de' Medici did so 3 straight times from 2048-2050.
