The Blue Workhorse

For the past two seasons, there have been concerns about a couple of the most known and dominant closers in the game. Last season, it was New York Yankees’ stopper Mariano Rivera after he got off to a rough start. This season the troubles are in the other league, on the other coast as Trevor Hoffman, the man who enters to “Hell’s Bells,” has left without the lead, or a save, already twice in the early stages this season.

After week one of the MLB season, there have been several teams, including the Padres, that have already run into bullpen issues, particularly on Opening Day, so we decided to examine each of the 30 major league teams bullpen performances thus far and see which teams should really be concerned with their bullpen.

Thankfully for the Seattle Mariners, when they lost 15 of their last 17 games last season and ran themselves out of a possible playoff berth, they were overlooked because a team in New York was having an even more colossal collapse. After all was said and done, the M’s ended up 6 games behind the division champ Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, or whatever they want to call themselves.

This offseason Seattle made sure they had a pitching staff that wouldn’t be able to go through the rotation more than 3 times with only two wins. They traded for Erik Bedard and Carlos Silva to bolster their pitching staff. However, LAA of A also made significant moves in the off-season by signing free agent Torii Hunter and trading away Orlando Cabrera to strengthen their starting rotation with Jon Garland.