Diamondbacks 5th Starter, Bullpen Roles Still in Flux

Torey Lovullo is still non committal about looming decisions the team must make regarding the pitching staff

With only 11 days remaining before the Diamondbacks break spring training camp at Salt River Fields, the team's pitching staff is still in flux.  Pitching staff decisions still to be made include the fifth starter's role, and the makeup of the bullpen beyond the five or six pitchers with guaranteed roles. Torey Lovullo indicated the team will likely use all of the time they have up until March 25th to make their final opening day roster decisions, preferring to head back to Chase Field knowing where they stand. 

Fifth Starter

Tommy Henry entered camp as the presumptive leader on the depth chart for the fifth starter's role, with Ryne Nelson close behind. Other pitchers in the mix include Slade Cecconi, Bryce Jarvis, and non-roster invitee Logan Allen. While the latter three are perceived as long shots to grab the spot, Lovullo has stated on multiple occasions that anyone still in camp and being stretched out as a starter is considered a candidate.

Lovullo spoke last week about the things they are looking at beyond Spring Training ERA.  They're evaluating what types of lineups the pitchers are facing, the quality of the contact against, and of course the "stuff."  The strength of competition is an important point.  Henry, with a 8.7 quality of opponents rating,  has faced mostly Major League quality hitters while Nelson, (7.0 rating) has faced mostly AA & AAA quality competition.  This is based on a metric produced by baseball-reference. 

baseball-reference.com

That said, among this group, Nelson's performance numbers are clearly the best and getting hard to ignore, especially the strikeout to walk numbers. Henry got off to a good start in his first two outings, but since then has had a couple of very rough starts, getting hit hard. He starts Tuesday against Kansas City and probably needs a good outing to regain his grip on the fifth spot. 

D-backs 5th Starter 

Bullpen Roles

Adjacent to the 5th starter competition is the question of whether the team will require a long reliever to begin the season. Right now there are six relievers that are locks for an opening day roster spot, barring any health issues: Closer Paul Sewald, Kevin Ginkel, Ryan Thompson, Miguel Castro, Scott McGough and lefty Joe Mantiply. That leaves two spots open in the bullpen.  One of those spots will go to one of two left-handers,  Kyle Nelson or Andrew Saalfrank.  The options then for the final spot come down to:

• carry a third lefty, i.e. both Nelson and Saalfrank. 
• carry a short right hand reliever, either Luis Frías or Corbin Martin
• carry a long reliever

Analyzing the situation, and listening to Torey Lovullo yesterday, we think the D-backs are most likely to open the season with a long reliever in the pen. The D-backs play seven games in seven days to open the season, four against the Rockies and three against the Yankees. Due to the fact that Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly have intentionally been built up slowly this spring, it's very unlikely either of them could go more than six innings their first time through the rotation. If either of them encounter any setbacks in the run up to opening day, or have high pitch count innings in their initial starts, then it will be less than six. 

The odds therefore are quite high that the team will require a long man at some point over those first seven games.  Lovullo hinted at that last night.  "That's been in our conversation. Early on, depending on how your starters are and how they get there, are they able to carry that load, what happens if you have somebody knocked around and you need some length, so we're going to finalize that. But it's been in our discussions."

The long reliever candidates are the starters in the table above that have been getting stretched out, but don't ultimately win the 5th starter's role. It's even possible the team might need two long men, in which case they might use one for a multi inning stint, then option him and call up another for a period of time. 

A key aspect in utilizing a long man is the D-backs want to avoid taking a stretched out starter and ask him to do short relief work, and then have him try to get stretched out again. They've tried that in the past with pitchers such as Randall Delgado, Jon Duplantier, and most recently Drey Jameson. All three of them got hurt, most recently Jameson, who required Tommy John surgery that will cause him to miss all of 2024. 

Lovullo was unusually candid about the team's potential role in the Jameson injury. "We feel like the way we used Drey, we might have been responsible for that injury, so we're going to be very careful about those particular back and forths."

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