KC Royals show Detroit how dangerous Bullpen Russian Roulette can be

The KC Royals’ 3-2 victory over Detroit at Comerica Park Sunday not only gave them a 3-1 series win, it also provided a perfect illustration of the unspoken perils of the so-called "opener" strategy.

That’s the increasingly popular strategy in which teams bypass a classic starting pitcher in favor of a reliever tasked with pitching at most one or two innings. That pitcher — the "opener" — is followed by a succession of bullpen arms or back-end of the rotation starters.

The idea is to avoid giving batters more than a single chance to get adapted to the offerings of an opposing pitcher on the premise that lack of familiarity breeds discomfort.

Whatever the validity of that notion, the often unspoken weakness of the "opener" strategy is its reliance on the shaky premise that every succeeding pitcher summoned from the bullpen will have his good or best stuff.

Since bullpens are notoriously the least predictable, least formulaic part of virtually every team, repeated trips to the pen virtually guarantee that at some point the manager employing the "opener" strategy will call on the reliever who doesn’t have "it" on that day or night.

You can think of it as Bullpen Russian Roulette. How many times are you willing to pull the trigger on the bullpen gate — and in the process pull a pitcher who’s been doing well — if the risk each time is calling on the guy who happens to stink that day?

For eight innings Sunday, the Royals waited vainly while Tiger manager A.J. Hinch pulled that trigger three different times without incident. Beginning with opener Alex Faedo and proceeding successively through Brenan Hanifee, Brant Hurter and Will Vest, with none of them working more than Hurter’s nine outs, Hinch avoided disaster.

His plan allowed just five hits and no runs.

It took a while, but the KC Royals finally beat the "opener" strategy

When the ninth inning rolled around with Detroit leading 2-0, Hinch pulled the trigger on his bullpen door one more time, and it came with fatal consequences after he summoned Shelby Miller.

It was not an utterly illogical move. In 10 of his last 11 appearances dating back to early July, Miller had allowed no runs. The only exception (cue the ominous music here) was Friday night when, on the way to their 9-2 win, the Royals lit him up for four runs without a batter being retired.

On Sunday, Miller did manage to retire two batters, but he also allowed two hits before offering pinch hitter MJ Melendez a letter-high fastball that Melendez sent into the Tiger bullpen a week after returning from the Injured List. Game, set, match.

Detroit’s sixth pitcher, Jason Foley, recorded the final out. It was a clear case of five quality pitching efforts going for naught because a sixth performance undermined the work of the other five. But that’s the risk of Bullpen Russian Roulette. The Tigers played that game Sunday and eventually the hot Royals won the game.

With the victory, their sixth of this now-concluded seven-game road trip, the Royals are five games behind first-place Cleveland and 4.5 behind second-place Minnesota in the American League Central. And Kansas City now leads the Red Sox, who begin a three-game Kauffman Stadium series tonight, by 2.5 games in the race for the third Al Wild Card.

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