SEATTLE -- After a three-week hiatus, the band is back together in the Mariners’ bullpen. Or, at least, as together as it’s been all year.
Now, Seattle is ready to take advantage of a healthy corps of high-leverage relievers.
“It is a huge lift to have everybody down there,” manager Dan Wilson said during the club’s series against the A’s in West Sacramento.
The last piece of the puzzle -- with the exception of Carlos Vargas, who has been on the injured list since the second day of the season -- landed when left-hander Gabe Speier returned on Tuesday, making his first appearance in nearly a month and working around a hit batter in a scoreless frame.
Speier said he received a cortisone injection after an MRI showed inflammation in his left shoulder following back-to-back outings in Minnesota on April 28-29, then took four days off from throwing. He began a rehab assignment on May 20 and made two appearances, one with High-A Everett and one with Triple-A Tacoma, before rejoining the club in Sacramento.
“The biggest thing is just feeling good,” Speier said. “When I went down, it was just this pinch in the front, and that's completely gone. So that was kind of like the main thing I wanted to see, is you know, step on it, get after it, and not feel that, and that happened. So that was good. It felt good and I feel good now.”
Speier’s return came six days after Matt Brash's; both of them had been out with inflammation in their throwing shoulder since April 29. For Brash’s part, the right-hander has picked up where he left off prior to his injury, logging two scoreless outings to keep his ERA a perfect 0.00 through 16 appearances.
In the three weeks of their absence, Seattle’s bullpen actually had one of the lighter loads in the league -- its 55 combined innings were second-fewest in that span -- and collectively posted a 2.78 ERA. Those two numbers are consistent with how the season as a whole has gone; the Mariners’ bullpen has the second-lowest ERA in the AL (316) in the fewest innings (182), a number that goes down even further when you remove Bryce Miller and Luis Castillo’s recent outings as the second half of Seattle’s much-discussed piggyback games.
It’s a stark contrast to last season, when 57 games into the slate, the Mariners’ bullpen had covered 216 2/3 innings, tied for ninth-most in baseball. This time last year, Seattle had five relievers with 22 appearances already under their belts. This year, that number is three: José A. Ferrer (27), Eduard Bazardo (26) and Andrés Muñoz (22).
But even if the load has been a lighter one, it’s far better to go at it with the full complement of arms. Brash and Speier’s return should especially impact Ferrer and Bazardo, both of whom were at or near the top of the appearances leaderboard on the day Brash returned but were only utilized twice on the road trip since.
The game that Brash returned coincided with the last time any of the Mariners’ high-leverage relievers threw back-to-back days. A couple of blowout wins -- and Miller and Castillo handling all nine innings Monday -- contributed, but the series against the A’s was just the second all season that no reliever was used more than once. Speier made his return following Ferrer after six scoreless innings from Emerson Hancock, to get the ball to Muñoz for the ninth.
In the finale Wednesday, six more scoreless frames from Logan Gilbert set things up similarly well for Bazardo in the seventh, until Julio Rodríguez sent the game into mop-up territory with a three-run home run.
They won’t all be that easy, and there will certainly be weeks the ‘pen gets leaned on harder. But for a club that had four pitchers eclipse 70 appearances -- and two eclipse 80 -- between the regular season and the playoffs last year, with intentions to go even further this time around, getting to spread out the load early will only have a positive impact down the line.
“There's been quite a few guys that have gotten hurt this year,” Speier said. “ ... But yeah, it's great to be back, and you the bullpen’s kind of at full-strength now, I guess you could say. That's a good feeling for sure.”
Daniel Kramer contributed reporting for this story.