Tampa Bay Bullpen Showing Signs of Life

In the spirit of recognizing positives instead of only harping on failures, let's give it up to our bullpen who over the last 4 games has combined for 14.1 scoreless innings. With talk radio constantly focused on the Ray's lack of a traditional overpaid closer, the Rays have only surrendered a ninth inning lead once in 27 opportunities. While that does not account for nearly blowing games in the 9th, neither does the racking up of saves that the microphone managers seem to relish.

The FIP for the bullpen is down to 4.23, just slightly above last year's 4.18. If you adjust for the monstrosity that was the Cleveland collapse and the 21 bullpen runs surrendered to the Yankees, things haven't been half bad. K:B ratio is down from 1.95 to 1.92. The sky is not falling. The best news is we still have two very serviceable relief arms in Durham in Winston Abreu and Dale Thayer and Chad Bradford should be returning soon. After the jump you can view the team effort that has been the bullpen in the past 4 outings: