Mets360 - Justin Wilson, Chasen Shreve and Mets’ lefty relievers with and without the 3-batter rule

 

By Brian Joura November 22, 2020

One of the rule changes that we saw in 2020 was the introduction of the 3-batter minimum. Unlike other rule changes, this one was planned before the pandemic hit, meaning that we will see it again for sure in 2021. Jayson Stark of The Athletic had an article on this rule change and he quoted several managers who were unified against the change. These managers felt that the rule not only handcuffed them in what they had to do but also kept them from having the chance to run a better bullpen than their counterparts. 

Let’s for the moment accept on faith that the latter is true. But let’s take a look at the former. If managers were truly handcuffed by this new rule, we would expect the numbers to reflect that – with offense going up because managers either had to leave guys in the game longer they wanted or because fear of the rule kept them from bringing in a reliever in the first place. In order to check this out, we’ll need to do a preliminary look at the overall numbers, all coming from Baseball-Reference.

In 2019, the overall ERA in MLB was 4.49 and for relievers it was 4.46
In 2020, the overall ERA in MLB was 4.44 and for relievers it was 4.44

That’s pretty remarkable year-to-year consistency and at first glance it’s hard to say that the new rule was a detriment to teams or a boon to offense.

My hope was to show the numbers for all lefty relievers in both seasons but a split off of a split is not so easy to achieve. What was somewhat easy to get was all lefty relievers who did not start a game. And given that it’s not exactly what we want, it’s not awful. What we’re looking to see is if the elimination of the LOOGY guys resulted in a worse bullpen performance. And if you have a lefty reliever that you want to shield from RHB, you’re not likely to give him a start. So, here are the numbers for lefty relievers with zero starts:

2019: 4.34 ERA
2020: 4.02 ERA

The results of the full-time lefty relievers improved with the new rule.

Now let’s shift our focus away from MLB and zero in on the Mets. We know the Mets were absolute zealots when it came to chasing the platoon advantage with their lefty relievers under Terry Collins and it didn’t improve all that much under Mickey Callaway. And we know that all of that jumping through hoops did not make the Mets’ bullpen a good one. Hopefully everyone recognizes that the one year they didn’t have an established LOOGY all season like Jerry Blevins or Scott Rice is the year they went to the World Series.

Anyway, in 2019 the Mets used seven lefty relievers and they combined to allow 38 ER in 84 IP for a 4.07 ERA. In 2020, the Mets used four lefty relievers and they combined to allow 23 ER in 53.2 IP for a 3.86 ERA.

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