Finding top-notch relief the key to building a winner

	Scott Linebrink was a rock in San Diego's pen last year, going 8-1 with a 1.83 ERA. Robert Beck/SI

Your basic middle-grade major league bullpen consists of a decent closer -- no pen is worth its pitching rubbers without a good closer -- and a roster of characters ranging from up-and-coming wannabe starters to older guys with trick pitches or funky deliveries just trying to hang on.

Simply getting that far in building a bullpen is often a hair-pulling process of trial and error and just plain luck. But there may be no part of a team more critical at this part of the season.

"I think the biggest reason we won last year was our bullpen," said Kevin Towers, the general manager of the National League West-winning Padres. "I don't think there's ever an excuse for not putting together a good bullpen."

In these first few weeks of the season, bullpens play a huge role. Since most starters aren't yet ready to go more than six or seven innings, the teams with strong bullpens have a real edge right now. (Of the 23 games played through Tuesday, only 13 of the 46 starters went longer than six innings, and nobody threw a complete game.)

For many teams, though, building a decent bullpen seems to be little more than an afterthought. Lineups are taken care of long before the relief is. Rotations are molded while the bullpen gets the castoffs. Money is spent everywhere but for the pen -- closers being the notable exception.

And if a team doesn't have its bullpen ready early -- if a team, heaven forbid, doesn't have a reliable closer, a situation that at least a half-dozen teams find themselves in right now -- it's often a weeks-long or months-long process trying to get things straightened out. Sometimes it's longer than that.

All the while, starters are forced to go further into games. Innings pile up. Relievers are thrown into different, sometimes unaccustomed roles. The bullpen gets overworked, leads disappear, games are lost. Tensions mount. It can get ugly.

That's why the best teams build their bullpens this way: Find a closer as soon as possible. Get him a setup man, maybe two. Dig around for some balance, some situational guys -- say, a lefty to throw against left-handed hitters, or somebody who's especially good against righties. Sign someone who can induce a ground ball or get a strikeout. Then fill in with the starters who won't make the rotation (they often serve in long or middle relief). And do it all before the season starts.

It sounds so simple. Which means, of course, that it's not anywhere close to simple.

"Bullpen, I think, is the most unpredictable part of the game, for me," said Jon Daniels, the Rangers' new general manager. "You can build a quality bullpen so many ways. What I want is to slip a few pieces of it in and then bring in a lot of quality arms, then sort it out from there."

Towers' bullpen last season, for example, featured Trevor Hoffman, who had 43 saves. It had Scott Linebrink (who pitched in 73 games with a 1.83 ERA) and Akinori Otsuka (66 games, 3.59 ERA), both right-handers. Lefty Chris Hammond appeared in 55 games with a 3.84 ERA. Righty Rudy Seanez also pitched a lot.

"When we had leads," Towers said, "we didn't give them up."

Of course, it didn't hurt the Padres last season that their rival bullpens in the NL West all crumbled. Closers Eric Gagne of the Dodgers, Armando Benitez of the Giants and Brandon Lyon of the Diamondbacks all lost major time due to injury. (Gagne missed the whole year.)

The best planning in the game can't take care of that.