The Pen Is Mightier

Mike Muñoz has pitched 11 seasons in the big leagues and has never started a game, has never pitched as many as four innings in a game, has never won five games in a season and has never had four saves in one year. He has a 5.29 career ERA and a fastball that tops out around 85 mph. Yet he works often and briefly with no heavy lifting and for generous pay ($450,000 this year), which makes him Kathie Lee Gifford with a curveball.

Muñoz is, of course, lefthanded. Like day traders and independent counsels, he has been part of an occupational breakthrough this decade: the specialty reliever. He also is a vital reason why the playoff-bound Texas Rangers, despite a franchise-worst 5.69 ERA from its starters, are among several bullpen-rich teams turning conventional baseball wisdom on its ear. To win a championship, it once was thought, a pitching staff needed a strong starting rotation with an auxiliary corps of relievers. Now, with the majors so thin in talented starters, many teams look to their relievers to pitch nearly as many innings and get almost as many decisions as the starters.

Baseball has been hit by a bullpen boom, the echo to the home run explosion. More and more relievers are pitching more and more innings and deciding more and more games. Through Sunday they had accounted for 28.9% of this season's wins and losses, up from 20.6% in 1951 and 24-2% in 1971. This has guaranteed employment for situational relievers—especially lefties such as the 34-year-old Muñoz. "Sure, being lefthanded has helped keep me in the game," he says. "They say lefties have nine lives, and now every team needs somebody to come in and get one or two guys out."

Good thing for Muñoz that this is not 1971. If it were, says his manager, Johnny Oates, "he'd be Dave Leonhard." That season Leonhard, a righthander, was the ninth man on the nine-man pitching staff of the pennant-winning Baltimore Orioles. He appeared in 12 games all season. "He once told me he went 41 games without pitching," says Boston Red Sox pitching coach Joe Kerrigan, whom Leonhard coached in the minors. "That can't happen now. Now we have rotations for our relief pitchers."

Says New York Yankees pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, "The philosophy is to have as many pitchers available as you can for as many games as possible."

Exhibit A is the Sept. 7 matchup between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Milwaukee Brewers—the third game in history to feature a combined 15 pitchers, the major league record. All three such games have occurred since 1993. The Diamondbacks used seven pitchers to get the last 14 outs in their 11-9, nine-inning win. On the same night the New York Mets used a club-record eight pitchers in a 7-4 loss to the San Francisco Giants.

"Getting from two outs in the sixth inning to the ninth inning is the most important part of the game," Oates says. "That's where you'll win or lose the pennant. It's even more important in the playoffs, when every run is magnified."

The Mets, Rangers and Cincinnati Reds made themselves into strong contenders more on the depth and strength of their bullpens than on their starting rotations, an anomaly before this decade. At week's end, only the relievers of the American League East's last-place Tampa Bay Devil Rays had thrown more innings than the Texas bullpen. Cincinnati led the majors in relief wins (31), ERA (3.20) and batting average against (.220), while three of its pitchers—all righties—rank first (Scott Sullivan), second (Danny Graves) and sixth (Scott Williamson) in relief innings.

The Cleveland Indians expected to ride their relievers, but its bullpen now is easily the worst (4.53 ERA) of any team still among the contenders. The relievers' injuries and ineffectiveness
cloud Cleveland's postseason prospects. "All year we've basically been looking for a guy who can carry a lead from our starters to our late relievers," Indians manager Mike Hargrove says.

The bullpens of the Yankees and the Houston Astros might be the most playoff-ready, especially if Houston returns hard-throwing 23-year-old righthander Scott Elarton, who's been in the rotation since the end of June, to setup work. Both bullpens have dominating closers—righty Mariano Rivera for New York and lefty Billy Wagner (page 68) for Houston—and have carried the lightest workload of innings in their respective leagues. The Yankees' pen, moreover, is battle-tested. Rivera, and his setup men, lefty Mike Stanton and righties Jeff Nelson and Ramiro Mendoza, have a combined 1.45 ERA over 105⅔ innings of postseason experience. Rivera is particularly steely, having allowed two runs in 35 playoff innings (0.51 ERA). "He's as close to automatic as there is in the game," Stottlemyre says.