2025 Rotation & Bullpen

Premise 1: Having a strong bullpen is extremely important.
Premise 2: Bullpens are totally unpredictable.
Conclusion: They should do what they can to improve the bullpen, but building a powerhouse bullpen should never be the centerpiece of an offseason strategy.

Just look at how things have gone the last two years. Not only did they invest big in the bullpen, to the tune of $25 million/year for Jansen and Martin; those investments actually worked. Jansen was very good, and Martin was great to phenomenal. Yet their bullpen ERA was 24th in the majors this season and 20th last season. It was great for long stretches (6th in the majors through June this season, in fact), but injuries and bouts of ineffectiveness did them in both years.

It depends on what a teams weakness is. With it becoming a trend starters often don't go more than five innings a robust bullpen is absolutely needed. Ian and Chris discussed on the recent pitching podcast the idea of having mop up types occupying a spot in the bullpen is a bad idea. A team carries a "long reliever"  who is not very good or really not good at all to fill the role of going 5+ innings in a game where the starter blew up and the team is almost throwing in the towel and then the long reliever is taking up a spot but not available again for five days. 
These days we see teams in the post season employing bullpen games on a regular basis.

I think replacing Wong with a defensive minded catcher who can frame and steal strikes could help the bullpen a lot. Patrick Bailey obviously would be ideal but who knows if the Giants would give him up and this thread is about the rotation and bullpen haha.

I know the feeling is that we are going to go big this offseason and sign top guys, but in the past few years we've also made a lot of shrewd moves to identify players that have been injured or need to rebuild their value (Giolito, Hendriks, Paxton, maybe also could count Slaten and Whitlock who went unprotected because of injuries before their debut). I don't these sort of deals should stop any time soon just because we may be are spending more going forward and going for a division title. Shane Bieber would make a lot of sense on a 1+1 contract. Would like that to be in addition to a top of the rotation addition. Also Jonathan Loaisiga from the Yankees would be an awesome signing that would have the potential to boost our pen quite a bit. I also think we need another lefty in the pen so AJ Minter could work if a Tanner Scott deal doesn't seem likely.

I'm starting to feel like one of my more ideal outcomes of this offseason is something like this:

1: Fried
2: Houck
3: Bieber
4: Bello
5: Giolito

Bullpen:
- Weissert
- Whitlock
- Penrod
- Scott
- Guerrero
- Loaisiga
- Hendriks
- Slaten

It is kind of amazing the amount of talk concerning the starting rotation when the teams in the post season all have pretty "meh" rotations.

I am under the assumption the front office isn’t going to spend over the first threshold until they see a winner with World Series type aspirations, so given that constraint, my preference is to fill other holes, namely the bullpen, while continuing to trust the pitching dev to identify and set in place performance plans to get the most out of those players. Not having a #1 is not ideal, we are in agreement there, but they can’t possibly fill every hole unless they make a big dent in their farm system, or going over the first threshold. I’d rather not to do the first yet, while it seems Henry is quite against the second scenario. My priorities would be the bullpen, defense, and depth.

And my whole point is to not make any gaping holes in the roster for the big 4 to fill. They should have competent enough players in those spots that if any of them need the full year for development, it’s not a killer to the team like the Dalbec/Casas situation in ‘22. And even with that said, I don’t think any of them are blocked. Grissom/hamilton won’t stop Campbell, Rafaela/Yoshida aren’t blocking Anthony, and Wong/whatever defensive catcher they sign won’t be blocking Teel. Mayer is the most blocked, but the person blocking him has barely played a season full of games over the last 3 years, with Mayer having his own health concerns. And if those current MLB players over perform and any of the prospects do end up blocked, great! They have some good ammunition for the deadline. I would rather have too many competent players at a position than not enough. That, more than a lack of top of the rotation pitcher, has hurt the team these last few years. They have been plagued by a few positions over the last few years which has often led to the team’s downfall. Positions ranked 20th or lower by bWAR:

2022: RP, 1B, LF, CF, RF
2023: 2B, SS
2024: RP, C, 1B, 2B

SP bWAR rank the last three years: 19th, 8th, 11th.

Minimize those low spots and they likely make the playoffs a couple of those years even without a bonafide ace.

Would be kinda weird to sign him to that deal, have year one of the recovery go well, and then not plan for him to make the 2025 opening day roster.

Watching the game last night and I'm still all for signing Walker Buehler. With the way his last few years have gone I have no idea what sort of contract he'll get but I can't imagine it will be too outrageous.

Walk off HR tonight aside, maybe I'm crazy but I wouldn't be upset at the sox adding Holmes to the BP this offseason.