FTW

Cleveland Bullpen: Perez and Betancourt

In 2007, no team had a better lefty/righty one-two punch than Cleveland and their two Rafaels.

The left-handed portion of the equation was Rafael Perez, who dominated in his first full big league season. In just over 60 IP, Perez compiled 1.78 ERA and 0.92 WHIP to go along with his 9.2 K/9 and 4.13 K/BB rate.

From the other side of the mound, Rafael Betancourt was equally as dominant at age 32. Betancourt posted a 1.47 ERA, 0.76 WHIP in nearly 80 IP. Betancourt posted guady strike-out numbers as well, striking out 9.08 batters per 9 while only walking just over 1 batter per 9.

Perez and Betancourt were simply dominant as set-up men for the Tribe and their dominance would continue into 2008, even if their luck drastically changed. Perez, who had posted a .248 BABIP and 84% Strand Rate in 2007;  found his numbers at .313 BABIP and 74% Strand Rate by the time 2008 came to a close. Betancourt regressed in a similiar manner, seeing his .246 BABIP in 2007 translate into a .323 BABIP in 2008. Betancourt’s 2007 Strand Rate of 86.4% also took a mighty hit, as he ended 2008 with a strand rate of a measely 70%.

While both players had great luck in 2007 and terrible luck in 2008, Perez’s skill level remained consistent.  Perez posted a 3.01 FIP in 2007 which only moderately increased to 3.22 in 2008. Betancourt, on the other hand, saw his FIP nearly double from 2007 (2.22 FIP) to 2008 (4.40.)

Thus, one would expert Betancourt to continue a slow age-induced decline while Perez, age 26, to continue his dominant ways. In 2009, this has been half true as it appears as though Betancourt is declining but Perez has been down-right awful.

Other than awful ERA’s, Perez (15.19 ERA / 6.27 FIP) and Betancourt (5.14 ERA / 4.40 FIP) share one devastating trait.  The stuff is still there, but neither one can avoiding walking batters.

Betancourt who owns a career average of 2.29 BB/9 is currently walking twice that number, at 4.50 BB/9.  Perez who’s career average sits just shy of three batters per nine, is currently walking an astonishing 7.59batters per nine.

Betancourt, whose strength has always been pounding the zone with his 92mph fastball, threw less than 60% of his pitches in the strike-zone last year for the first time since entering the league. In 2009, Betancourt’s continued to miss the zone, now throwing less than 50% of pitches inside the strike zone.

Although he doesn’t rely on location nearly as much as Betancourt, Perez has suffered the same fate. Perez has only been able to locate 45% of his pitches inside the zone thus far and needs to be much closer to 50% to be effective.

The PFX Data reveals that Betancourt and Perez both still have their downright nasty stuff.  The sample size is still relatively small, but both pitchers have eclipsed the 200 pitch mark, so it’s not completely useless. Both Betancourt and Perez have actually increased their average velocities, which could well be a result of overthrowing:  Perez is up one full mph across the board, while Betancourt is about half an mph faster than his career averages.

As you can see, Betancourt generally increases velocity as the season progresses. Below is a fastball velocity chart for the last two years, and is courtesy of fangraphs.com. I’d highly recommend checking out all of their graphs and trend-stats.

Rafael Perez’s velocity chart echos the same sentiments:  a slow and steady velocity increase over the course of the season.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to label both Perez and Betancourt as warm-weather pitchers, or second half pitchers.

In addition to the consistent velocity, the movement on both Betancourt’s and Perez’s pitches seems close enough to the mean that drawing any conclusion would be premature.   If you’re interested in this kind of stuff, feel free to scoot over to Perez’s fangraph page or to Rafael Betancourt’s fangraph page. They’ve both lost about half an inch of horizontal movement off their sliders, and you can take from that what you will.

The final piece to this puzzle of ineffectiveness is the hitters that they’re facing, obviously.  Perez has seen his overall Swing-Percentage drop almost 9 pts, from 49 percent to 40 percent. The main component of this decline is Perez’s O-Swing Percentage.  Perez’s swing percentage on pitches outside the zone has dropped from a 2007/2008 average of 35 percent, down to an awful 22.6 percent in 2009. In turn, hitters are making unbelievable contact on the pitches that they do make contact with, both inside (96% Z-Contact / up 10%) and outside of the zone (52% O-Contact / up 12%).

Betancourt is actually inducing more swings, and has returned his  Overall Swing Percentage (57%) to the level of his most dominant years.  Batters are making slightly better contact with all of Betancourt’s pitches, but the percentage falls well within the margin of error at this point.

At this point, Betancourt seems much improved from 2008 although his current ERA of 5.14 and WHIP of 1.64, don’t show it.  With Betancourt’s BABIP sitting at an ugly .364 and his strand-rate at a god-awful 60% — It’s a safe bet to invest in Betancourt to regain his form.  A Strike Out Per Inning, an ERA around 2.90, a 1.20 WHIP. Hopefully his BB / 9 will regress, but many of pitchers have been effective with a 2.00 K:BB ratio.

Rafael Perez on the other hand is a mess.  Perez has a higher ceiling and the potential to be lights out, racking up K’s, HLD’s and great ratios. Until Perez starts finding the strike-zone however, he’ll be useless. Perez’s BABIP is .418 and LOB% is 39.9% but that’s almost expected given that batters are either walking, or crushing a Perez mistake (27% of hits off him are LD.)

I’d venture to guess that Perez is either injured, or out of shape.  Either way, his mechanics are off and it’s going to take a while for him to get back on track.  I’d definitely keep an eye on Perez though, as his ERA is going to take forever to come down and all he has to do is start locating.  If you see Perez go a couple of games without a free pass or you’ve noticed him exhibit better control, snap him up.

The problems unfortunately do not end with Perez and Betancourt, as Kerry Wood (4.50 BB/9, 7.20 ERA, 4.08 FIP) and Jensen Lewis (3.95 BB/9, 5.93 ERA, 8.30 FIP) are both having the same issues. The Indians bullpen has infinite potential, and the back-end of it contains 4 players that are all capable of notching a strike-out per inning.

Until the relievers get their control issues sorted out, I’d be quite worried if I was expecting W’s from any of the Cleveland Indians starting pitchers. With such a small sample size, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the Weather was the prominent factor in the bullpen’s control issues. It realistically could be anything, but it’s definitely an organizational issue.

At the very least, keep in mind that Cleveland has managed to run into all of their opponents at the wrong time. They opened the season in Texas, and went on to play two over-achievers in Toronto and KC. From there, they played New York, KC, MIN, BOS, Detroit and then Toronto again.  The schedule definitely doesn’t get easier with a series against Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Tampa, KC, Cinci, TB, and then NY.  While it’ll be tough for things to get worse for Betancourt, Perez, Lewis and Wood, it’ll probably be just as tough to improve upon their number with their upcoming schedule.

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