Seattle Mariners’ bullpen has become a surprising strength

[MontanaHawk05]

Seattle Mariners bullpen has become a surprising strength

The Seattle Mariners have four members at the backend who have made their the bullpen one of MLB's best in tight games.

sports.mynorthwest.com

Seattle relievers have faced the 10th-most batters (1,045) in medium- and high-leverage situations this season, per FanGraphs, yet they’ve surrendered the ninth-least hits (189), sixth-least home runs (19) and fifth-least earned runs (94). The group ranks third in ERA (3.54), third in opponents’ slugging and seventh in opponents’ average (.221) in medium- and high-leverage scenarios this year.

The Four Horsemen​

Much of the bullpen’s success in close games falls on the shoulders of the quartet that makes up the backend. That group includes names that were expected to produce the results they have like closer Andrés Muñoz and right-hander Matt Brash. It also features some more unexpected names like left-hander Gabe Speier and right-hander Eduard Bazardo.


All four of those arms have an ERA of 2.82 or better while pitching at least 40 innings this season. No other bullpen in MLB has four pitchers who hit both benchmarks.

This article was posted three games ago and that bullpen still hasn't given up any more earned runs.

I'm starting to wonder if I've been harsh on the bullpen this year and let a couple bad games influence my impressions.