Hawks Nest, v27.2 - Checking the Locks: Bullpen

[trmmilwwi]

BULLPEN

SURE FIRE LOCKS: Wally Lopez, Jose Perucho, Bonaventure Habernas, Jesus “Uncle” Gonzalez, Fernando “Huck” Rivera, Bobby Guthrington

HOPEFULS: Jose Gutierrez , Tommy Gardner, Manuel Guerra, Alfredo Salazar

Analysis:

Lopez emerged on the scene 2 years ago as the Hawk’s closer and had an outstanding year. Last year he regressed a bit and had some ups and downs. The team will give the 25 year old closer every opportunity again this season. Perucho is another young pitcher that is starting his 4th year in Halifax. He had a career year last season and the team expects him to continue his dominance against both R’s and L’s. Habernas is the Rule 6 pickup with the awesome name. At 29 he is one of the vets of the pen but he has been a solid contributor. The team expects another 45 or so relief appearances from the german. “Uncle” Gonzalez was brought over via trade with Indy a few years back and is a shutdown specialist against lefties. He fits my eye and will be placed in that role this season. I love a full pen. “Huck” Rivera is the counterpart to Uncle. He is a shutdown guy against righties and will be my other specialist out of the pen. He had a horrible year in ’24 when he was thrown into the closer role but has been very, very consistent otherwise. He looks to be a lock as the vsR specialist. Guthrington is the old man of the pen and just signed a fairly hefty deal for another few seasons. He is a middle relief type guy that will help bridge the gap to the short relievers.

Gutierrez will be competing for a slot in the pen and has some competition in front of him. He is above average and has equal splits against r’s and l’s but has 2 above average pitches and decent speed on his ball. The fact that he is a GB pitcher helps his cause and he could be an inning a night guy in the 6th/7th innings. Gardner is another vsR specialist and is not quite as polished as Rivera. It’s possible I may toy with the idea of using 2 specialist vs righties but that depends on my lineup platoons. Gardner could start the season on the ML roster pending injuries elsewhere. Both Guerra and Salazar could be long relievers, innings eaters kind of guys. It just depends how many pitchers we can carry on the ML roster to open the season as to whether they are on the squad or not.

[bschr682]

Look at Wally's stat lines. Insane how close the numbers are with the difference being 12 more homeruns given up playing in Halifax versus Vancouver. Turn those 12 homeruns into flyball outs and the numbers between his 2 seasons are almost the same.

[RonCo]

Yep. He also struggled with BABIP a little in Halifax. Possibly fielder related, possibly ball park related, possibly pure luck.

[udlb58]

Yep. He also struggled with BABIP a little in Halifax. Possibly fielder related, possibly ball park related, possibly pure luck.

Seems that a lot of pitchers struggle with actual results falling short of expected ones in Halifax

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[RonCo]

Halifax's infield defense, with the exception of SS, was borderline poor relative to many last season.