Bullpen combined:
296 IP, 265 H, 254 K, 118 BB, 3.83 ERA, 1.294 WHIP, 2.15 K:BB

That’s not too bad considering the sorry state the bullpen was last year. GM Doug Melvin did a good job over the offseason of signing and keeping the bullpen parts he needed and to jettison the parts he didn’t. Compared with the rest of the NL, he has essentially a league-average bullpen at his disposal.
But has the bullpen been utilized to its best extent? Is Ken Macha doing the right job?

To figure this out I used baseball-reference’s relief database to look at what pitchers have pitched the highest leverage innings and how their stats match up with what they’ve done so far. Here’s a listing of each Brewer reliever by ERA+ this season, from highest to lowest:

Mark DiFelice – 251
Trevor Hoffman – 220
Mitch Stettier (tied) – 159
Todd Coffey (tied) – 159
Chris Smith – 148
Seth McClung – 88
Carlos Villanueva – 69
Jorge Julio – 54
Chris Narveson – 50
R.J. Swindle – 31
David Riske – 23

Look at the dropoff between “Chris Smith” and “Seth McClung.” There are a few good parts and a few bad parts (How good has Mark DiFelice been?) in the pen, but let’s see how that compares with who’s being used where:

LevHi in the chart means the pitcher was entered into a ‘high leverage situation.’ LevMed and LevLo should be self-explanatory. For more information on Leverage, click here.

One of the really nice things about having a bullpen with either very good or very bad parts is it’s almost impossible to completely mismanage it. After this amount of time any person with a ticking clock behind their eyes can realize that Hoffman or Coffey is in fact a pretty good pitcher and Jorge Julio is just plain old awful.

Looking at this graph, there’s nothing really out of the ordinary here. Hoffman doesn’t get appearances unless the game is on the line. Chris Smith and Chris Narveson don’t get put in when the game is on the line. The only real outliers that come from this is that the high-ERA+ Chris Smith is put into low-leverage situations while the low-ERA+ Carlos Villanueva is thrown all over the place, because he was trusted early on and has since lost his job.

Two things that are a little bit concerning to me here though:

Todd Coffey is getting a little bit too much work. Coffey leads the bullpen in innings pitched outside of Seth McClung, who has started a few games and has been the long reliever all season long, with the exception of a few Chris Smith appearances. He’s on pace to throw 82-83 innings all year, which is really quite a bit of work for a big, lumbering man as Coffey. He could use an extended break here or there and he won’t if he’s getting so many low-leverage innings. For a guy that has as many low-leverage appearances as he has, and also threw two innings a couple nights ago separated by a rain delay he can easily find a few breaks.

Carlos Villanueva is a weird pitcher. Between this, his high ERA, his good strikeout numbers, I don’t understand where the dude is ever. One game he’ll strike out the side on 12 pitches, and other innings he’ll give up 6 runs without doing anything substantial. I really suspect that ERA will start to fall, as he’s starting to have some Manny Parra-like unlucky numbers up there. In terms of things he controls, he’s pitched better this year than in any other year.

I remember hearing an analyst, I think it was Jim Powell, explain Villanueva was probably going to be a guy who is capable of throwing either an entire season with a 3.25 ERA or he could have a 6.00 ERA. I didn’t think he’d ever be that bad, but perhaps he was right. He also said Will Inman (now with San Diego) is going to be a very good pitcher someday. Remember that Scott Linebrink trade?

(oh, and one random and funny note: This bullpen has been only slightly better than 2008′s, believe it or now. Take a look at just how good they were in comparison with the rest of the league last year. Hoo boy. The Brewers had the third best bullpen in 2008 but a worse ERA than this year’s. The league average last year was like Jeff Suppan. Think about that for a minute. How bad of a year was it for the NL?)

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milwaukee brewers by Cody