ESPN MLB

As Crashburn Alley notes, sometimes a bullpen's ERA doesn't tell you what you want to know. Case in point: the Phillies. Alley's big finish:

Simply put, the bullpen isn't nor will be as bad as it has shown or seemed to be in the last week or so. Brad Lidge has been the only consistently poor performer. The success of the Phillies' bullpen in the post-season will largely rest on the successful comebacks of Myers, Eyre, and Romero as well as the remaining contributors staying with the status quo.

Teams have hiccups many times throughout the season. Sometimes the Phillies go through stretches where they don't hit, or where their starters are absolutely terrible. The bullpen, as enigmatic as it has been, is also prone to such hiccups. It is simply part of the game and not a true reflection of the 'pen's true talent level, which is somewhere around average (above-average if we remove Lidge from the equation) - not bad but not great either.

I've fallen into the trap, at least a few times, of simply looking at a team's bullpen ERA when evaluating its postseason chances. That's not an awful guide, roughly speaking. But we can do better and, considering all the tools at our disposal these days, we should do better.

Of course, part of the problem is that we don't actually know which relievers will pitch in the postseason, or how many innings they'll pitch. Sure, we can remove Lidge from the equation, but do we know he won't actually pitch an important inning, or part of an inning, here or there? At this point, I have no idea what Charlie Manuel might do.

Just looking at the Angels, though, we can reasonably assume that neither Scot Shields (6.62 ERA in 18 innings) nor Rafael Rodriguez (6.26 in 27) will pitch any postseason innings, and that Jose Arredondo (6.00 in 42) won't be asked to protect any late-inning leads. The Angels' 4.56 relief ERA is just 11th best in the American League, and it's hard to argue that they've got a good bullpen. But it's probably better than that ERA might suggest.