Uncertainty abounds in bullpens

Closers come and go every year.

Each season, some lucky owner catches lightning in a bottle, while another wastes $15 in an auction or a middle-round pick in a draft.

Team changes mostly occur when a closer is injured (hard to predict) or his skills are underwhelming (also hard to predict but not as hard to predict as an injury). What follows are places to look when scraping for saves.

The Tampa Bay Rays have been bitten by the injury bug, replacing Brad Boxberger with Alex Colome and a few others (more on this later). Likewise, the Miami Marlins lost Carter Capps (competing with A.J. Ramos) for the year, and Will Smith’s injury left Jeremy Jeffress as the last Milwaukee Brewer standing.

With the New York Yankees’ Aroldis Chapman temporarily out because of a suspension, Andrew Miller took a comebacker off the wrist, though he’s going to play through the injury.

The Toronto Blue Jays (Roberto Osuna instead of Drew Storen), the Houston Astros (Luke Gregerson instead of Ken Giles) and the Atlanta Braves (Arodys Vizcaino over Jason Grilli) all have had to make hard calls to start the year. In the cases of Houston and Atlanta, there might be matchup decisions that spread out the save chances a bit more.

Vizcaino is the main closer in Atlanta, but in the season’s first save opportunity Vizcaino was the setup man; Grilli blew the save. It doesn’t take all that much to tilt the scales in a bullpen such as Atlanta’s.

Houston’s relief corps is even a weirder situation, as the team essentially gave up pitchers Vincent Velasquez, Mark Appel, Brett Oberholtzer and Thomas Eshelman in the trade for Giles, only to stick him in a setup role.

In 2015, Giles started slowly but ended the year with skills (including strikeout rate) almost identical to those of Wade Davis. Is that enough to create a change in Houston’s save chances down the road?

Only time will tell.

Ripe for speculation

There are also several situations in which incumbent closers have weaker skills than other relievers in the same bullpen.

Let’s start with the Philadelphia Phillies. They came into spring training with the intent of a wide-open competition among David Hernandez, Andrew Bailey, Ernesto Frieri and Edward Mujica.

When the season opened, Hernandez was their setup man and Dalier Hinojosa was the closer. In the first game, Hernandez imploded in spectacular fashion in a loss to the Cincinnati Reds. In Game 2, Hernandez preserved a lead but Hinojosa gave up four hits and two runs in the ninth and took the loss. By the end of the first week, Jeanmar Gomez had two saves and Bailey, Frieri and Mujica were not even on the active roster.

It would not be a surprise to see Hernandez take over from Gomez — sooner rather than later. Gomez is projected to have a lower strikeout rate and allow many more baserunners than Hernandez will.

Gomez’s spring training was OK, but nothing suggested a quantum leap in skills from a mediocre 2015. Hernandez is better, but he is prone to the home run ball and is not closer-worthy himself. In sum, Philadelphia doesn’t have a go-to closer. The one bet you can make is that this role will change — probably more than once — before the season is over.

The Reds have J.J. Hoover in the closer role, based primarily on a solid 2015 season.

Hoover’s actual ERA in 2015 (2.94) was fine — but his strikeout and walk rates were far worse, providing a smoke-and-mirrors worry for 2016. Hoover has a high fly-ball rate, which usually translates into home runs and will likely cost him the closer’s job at some point.

In the wings are Jumbo Diaz and Tony Cingrani, who will pitch in setup roles to start 2016. When the inevitable rough patch of home runs comes, whoever has the hot hand will likely replace Hoover.

The San Diego Padres signed free agent Fernando Rodney to be their closer in 2016. Rodney had a disastrous 2015 (4.74 ERA), but his one saving grace — a high ground-ball rate — does not fully compensate for his high walk rate (4.2 walks per nine innings in 2015).

Rodney could limp along as the Padres closer for a while; he could even have a late-career, Jose Mesa-type revival. But the smart bet is against this skill set, especially with Brandon Maurer and Kevin Quackenbush in the same bullpen. Much like the situation in Cincinnati, the hot hand will win out when Rodney falters.

The Seattle Mariners begin 2016 with Steve Cishek, who bombed in Miami and was run out of town in 2015. Cishek, however, was superb in 2014, so Seattle hopes he rediscovers that form. If not, the team will either pin its hopes on Joaquin Benoit, who is 38 and has 13 saves in the past two seasons, or Tony Zych, who had 181/3 innings pitched in the majors at the start of 2016.

That’s a lot of contingencies for someone as shaky as Cishek, who was 4-for-13 in save opportunities in 2015.

This brings us back to the Rays. They should get Boxberger back near mid-May. Colome and Danny Farquhar might job-share until then, and if one outpitches the other significantly, he will get the save chances. Colome might be a tick ahead of Farquhar, but as with all of these bullpen situations, don’t write that in ink.

Obviously, any team can suffer an in-season injury, make a trade, be hit with a suspension or encounter another unforeseen circumstance.

While one can’t predict which teams might suffer such a problem, one can defer to the best strikeout rate available or the key setup man in that bullpen. If it’s the same player, all the better.

Teams without an obvious Plan B must be more creative, so follow the player with a strong strikeout rate and at least enough command to get the job done.

And then you might be the one to catch lightning in a bottle for 2016.