Love Them Or Hate Them, Bullpen Games In The Postseason Are Working

Image credit: Ryan Brasier (Photo by Michael Owens/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

With the World Series set to begin Friday, the Yankees have Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon, Clarke Schmidt and Luis Gil ready to start on the mound. The Dodgers will respond with Jack Flaherty, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Walker Buehler and… Johnny Wholestaff.

We don’t know who will start the bullpen game for the Dodgers this World Series, but in either Game 3 or Game 4, a reliever will be asked to open the game and then quickly hand the ball to a never-ending conveyor belt of relievers.

The bullpen game has been a feature of the Dodgers’ pitching plans this postseason, and that is not expected to change in the World Series. But if you think that means that the Yankees have a clear pitching advantage, the results of teams bullpenning in the recent postseason argues otherwise.

There are plenty of reasons to think that a bullpen game is the equivalent of admitting defeat—or at least dire weakness—before a game even begins. After all, the rise of the bullpen game has come about because teams have decided they don’t have enough quality starting pitchers to get through a playoff series.

And then there’s the theory you’ll likely hear in any TV broadcast of a bullpen game that states the team is running a risk of sending an overmatched reliever to the mound who just doesn’t have it. Keep rolling the dice and eventually you’ll crap out. Or that’s the theory, at least.

However, that doesn’t seem to happen as often as you might expect. Since the first postseason bullpen games started popping up in 2019, teams are 14-14 when they turn to the pen to start. They are 12-11 in series where they used a bullpen game.

Those are small samples, but to be .500 in the games and above .500 in series in which a bullpen game is used seems surprising. Again, the bullpen game is generally viewed as an act of desperation in which a team is trying to make up for a lack of starting pitching.

Turning to the bullpen to fill starts hasn’t kept the Dodgers from the World Series. It also hasn’t kept them from winning the games in which they don’t use a starting pitcher. In the three games the Dodgers started relievers Ryan Brasier and Michael Kopech this postseason, the Dodgers are 2-1.

Those positive results seem to be an ever-increasing trend.

Bullpen games didn’t slow the Tigers down, as Detroit also went 2-1 this October in games it threw the whole pen at its opponent. The Mets, meanwhile, twice turned Kodai Senga into an opener. While Senga is normally a starter, he wasn’t physically ready yet to fill that role in return from injury. Instead, Senga opened a bullpen game that helped the Mets win their League Division Series against the Phillies. The Mets did lose the LCS game where they turned to a bullpen game, but that loss was against the Dodgers, who had two bullpen starts in that six-game series.

Overall, teams are 5-3 in bullpen games this postseason. The strategy hasn’t seemed to derail the teams by wearing out their bullpens over the course of a series either, as teams that have used a reliever to start at least once in a series have advanced four times and gone home only twice.

The Dodgers became the fourth different team to reach the World Series in the past five years while relying on a bullpen game:

• Last year, Arizona used two bullpen games en route to the World Series, going 1-1 in Joe Mantiply’s “starts.”

• In 2021, the Braves won the World Series with Jesse Chavez making a one-inning start in an Atlanta victory. Dylan Lee had a one-inning start, as well, but he was followed by 4.2 innings from Kyle Wright, so that isn’t included. An opener who hands off to a reliever handling a starting pitcher’s workload is not the same as a true “bullpen” game.

• The Dodgers went 1-1 in Dustin May’s two bullpen starts in 2020 on their way to a World Series title. May had a third brief start in that postseason, but since he was followed by Julio Urias throwing five innings out of the pen, that wasn’t counted. Tony Gonsolin, meanwhile, had two brief starts that I categorized as quick hooks, but could also be considered bullpen games with a slightly less strict definition. If you want to count those, add one win and one loss to the overall totals.

MLB has indicated that it wants to figure out a way to emphasize starting pitching more, as there is a concern that seeing “TBD” listed as the starting pitcher for a postseason game doesn’t have quite the same gravitas as seeing Gerrit Cole, Tarik Skubal or Max Fried take the ball.

Doing so will likely require some rules tweaks, as the reason teams keep turning to bullpen games is because they believe it is their best possible option. The results, clearly, are not discouraging them from going back to the pen.

To study this, I went through every postseason game of the past decade and logged whether or not a team chose to conduct a bullpen game. There is a certain level of judgment needed for this. For example, a starter pitcher getting shelled and exiting after less than an inning isn’t a bullpen game. A less-heralded starting pitcher operating with a very quick hook hasn’t been judged as a bullpen game for these purposes, either. Instead, we’re defining bullpen games as those in which a reliever is asked to start the game before giving way to a parade of further relievers. In a bullpen game, the starter could set down the first three or six batters in order and, by design, he’s still getting the hook.

From 2015-2018, there were no bullpen games in the postseason by that definition. The A’s use of Liam Hendriks for a one-inning start in a wild card loss in 2019 was the first postseason example we found.

After that, bullpenning quickly became a common feature of the postseason. Three other teams—the Yankees, Rays and Astros—had bullpen games in the 2019 playoffs. Six different teams had bullpen games in the expanded 2020 postseason.

Bullpenning Teams	Bullpen Game(s)	Series	Bullpenning Starters
2024 DET ALWC	W	W	Tyler Holton
2024 DET ALDS	L, W	L	Tyler Holton, Keider Montero
2024 LAD NLDS	W	W	Ryan Brasier
2024 NYM NLDS	W	W	Kodai Senga
2024 NYM NLCS	L	L	Kodai Senga
2024 LAD NLCS	L, W	W	Ryan Brasier, Michael Kopech
2023 ARI NLCS	W	W	Joe Mantiply
2023 ARI WS	L	L	Joe Mantiply
2021 TB ALDS	L, L	L	Drew Rasmussen, Collin McHugh
2021 LAD NLDS	W	W	Corey Knebel
2021 LAD NLCS	L, W	L	Corey Knebel, Joe Kelly
2021 ATL NLCS	W	W	Jesse Chavez
2020 CWS WC	L	L	Dane Dunning
2020 MIL WC	L	L	Brent Suter
2020 SD NLDS	W	W	Craig Stammen
2020 TB ALDS	L	W	Ryan Thompson
2020 TB ALCS	L	L	John Curtiss
2020 ATL NLCS	W	L	A.J. Minter
2020 LAD NLCS	L, W	W	Dustin May, Dustin May
2019 TB ALDS	W	L	Diego Castillo
2019 HOU ALDS	W	W	Brad Peacock
2019 NYY ALDS	L	L	Chad Green
2019 OAK WC	L	L	Liam Hendricks

For the longest time, a team that had a starter fail to get four outs in a postseason game was asking for a massive comeback. From 1900-2009, there were only 14 times that a team won a postseason game in which their starting pitcher recorded fewer than four outs. Since 2010, with the rise of the bullpen game, it’s happened 15 times.

Decade	Wins	Losses
1900	0	2
1910	1	3
1920	3	3
1930	2	2
1940	1	3
1950	0	6
1960	1	5
1970	1	8
1980	2	5
1990	2	8
2000	1	7
2010	3	11
2020	12	13

This year has seen the trend expand further, and with the success of the Tigers and Dodgers, it’s unlikely to disappear any time soon without rules tweaks.