How did the Padres steal Heath Bell from the Mets? It's actually pretty obvious, even if Kevin Towers won't get into the details. Tim Sullivan:
PEORIA, Ariz. -- Heath Bell's stuff was too good for his stats. There was a disconnect somewhere, and not only when hitters flailed at his fastball.
He had too much velocity and too much variety to make sense of his numbers with the New York Mets. Following detailed analysis and diligent scouting, the Padres came to the unconventional conclusion that Bell was simply unlucky.
"I can't really get into details," Padres General Manager Kevin Towers said yesterday, "but we have guys who do stat analysis who look at lucky versus unlucky. Heath had horrible numbers in the big leagues, but (based on) hard-hit balls versus non-hard-hit balls and balls that should have been caught that weren't, he just had rough, rough luck."
If there is an art to assembling a bullpen, Towers has become its Renoir. He has shown a singular talent for taking one team's trash and transforming it into late-inning treasure. When he acquired Bell from the Mets on Nov. 15, 2006, the pitcher had finished consecutive seasons with earned-run averages in excess of 5.10. Then, as luck would have it, he joined the Padres, compiled a 2.02 ERA and led all major league relievers in both strikeouts and innings pitched.
--snip--
Because the deal cost the Padres only fringe outfielder Ben Johnson and pitcher Jon Adkins, the formerly hard-luck Bell now qualifies as a bonanza. He is another in a series of remarkable Padres bullpen reclamations that includes Cla Meredith, Kevin Cameron, Justin Hampson, Joe Thatcher and the departed Scott Linebrink, whose eighth-inning role Bell has inherited.
"KT definitely knows how to build a bullpen," said Padres closer Trevor Hoffman, baseball's career saves leader. "We have the good fortune of pitching in a pitcher's ballpark, but I'd put more emphasis on role definition. KT has been able to plug people in that he knows are going to be effective in certain roles ... There's a level of trust that's developed (too) that there isn't that knee-jerk reaction if things don't go real well."
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It's astute of Hoffman to mention his home ballpark, but Bell actually posted a 1.46 ERA on the road last season, 2.64 at home. It was just an awesome season. And yes, he'd been terribly unlucky in his previous action (with the Mets). In three seasons, Bell struck out 105 batters and walked 30 in 108 innings ... but his ERA was 4.92 because he gave up 129 hits. Now, when a pitcher gives up that many hits while striking out that many batters it's not
always unlucky. But almost always. I would take a long look at anybody with those numbers, just on principle.
But if you actually look at the batted balls
individually to see
exactly how unlucky he was -- as the Padres apparently did, and do -- well, then you're really ahead of the game. This gets back to something we talked about Monday: looking at events (home runs, for example) and drilling deeper for their fundamental qualities. Is every home run the same? In the box score, yes. But when doing qualitative analysis, there's a big difference between a home run that lands in the upper deck and a home run that just clears the fence in the corner. Similarly, when we're looking at pitchers, all hits allowed are not created equally. Even if they look that way in Heath Bell's stat lines.
Rob Neyer
