Relievers are a different then starters so judging a reliever by just his ERA doesn’t tell the whole story. So lets look at Theilbar and see if he has been successful for the season or not so far. We are going to start by going through game logs and comparing to a reliever with a similar ERA and another who is getting the job done and make notes.
As of the All-Star break Theilbar has pitched in 31 games with 22.1 innings and given up 14 earned runs for a 5.64 ERA. In his 31 games he has 8 games where he has given up runs. Or just in 25.8% of his games. He has the following breakdown of Earned Runs given up in his appearances.
1 game with 4 earned runs
1 game with 3 earned runs
1 game with 2 earned runs
5 games with 1 earned run
I wanted to point out that half of his earned runs came in two appearances spanning 1/3 of an inning. He gave up 3 runs in his first game of the season coming off of the disabled list. And 4 runs in another appearance. Without those two appearances his ERA is under 3.00 which is almost in half.
Lets compare with Funderburk who has appeared in 26 games with 33.2 innings and a 5.61 ERA. Funderburk has given up runs in 13 or half of his appearances. Now to be fair he is averaging over 40% more innings per appearance than Theilbar. But at the end of the day. Theilbar has a significantly better rate of pitching a scoreless appearance.
Funderburk has the following distribution of runs given up.
1 game of 4 earned runs
1 game of 3 earned runs
3 games of 2 earned runs
8 games of 1 earned run
for comparisons sake, if you take out Funderburk's two worst appearances his ERA is still over 4. which is a reduction in ERA of around 1.5 ERA vs Theilbar's almost 3 ERA improvement from taking out his 2 worst appearances.
Now lets look at a reliever who is deemed to be having a great year in Jax.
Jax has pitched in 44 games and given up earned runs in 8 of them. 18.2% of his appearances he has given up earned runs.
His distribution is
1 game with 2 earned runs
7 games with 1 earned run.
The difference between these two is 2 appearances with an earned run by Theilbar more that Jax and that two of his appearances he was blown out with 3 and 4 runs during his appearance. So that is those 2 appearances with 7 combined earned runs out of his 31 appearances makeup the difference between Theilbar and Jax level effectiveness in terms of % of appearances without giving up an Earned Run. also pointing out that taking out Jax's 2 worst appearances amounts to 3 earned runs in 1 inning, so his ERA drops from 1.91 to 1.31 which is only .6 earned runs per 9 innings compared to the almost 3.ERA drop from Theilbar's two worst appearances. Thus, making Theilbar's 2 worst appearances more costly to his overall numbers.
And lastly let's look at Theilbar vs previous Theilbar and see how he fares against last year's record. Last year Theilbar gave up earned runs in 8 of his 36 appearances or in 22.2% of his appearances. He had the distribution of
3 games with 2 earned runs
5 games with 1 earned run
The difference between this year's Theilbar and last year's Theilbar is 5 more scoreless appearances, and in two of them he gave up more runs. With a few more scoreless appearances he could be just as successful at run prevention per appearance as last year.
Why then do we feel like Theilbar should be on the chopping block. Here is an observation. By June 12th he had 3 out of 6 appearances where he gave up runs including one where he gave up 4 earned runs in an appearance. At that point he had given up runs in 8 of his 23 appearances, which is in 34.8% of them. He was looking like a candidate to be reassigned. He only had 3 more appearances in June. And he has 5 more in July where he has not given up an earned run. Also, his two worst appearances skew his ERA more than the other 2 examples by a long shot which also makes it seem his season is worse than it is. It seems like he has turned a corner and being more effective overall. I think it says that Thielbar is having more of an OK season that a bad one. He was having a borderline bad one and then it seems he has turned a corner.
I do not think this method of evaluation is the only way to look at a reliever’s success, but it does help to remove or minimize the view of the damage 2 bad appearances do for a reliever. How does this view affect your view of his season so far? Is his season more just OK then awful?
