I got this idea at the SBG Nation web site and thought I’d take a look into it with the Tigers. At the time, one of their commenters had added up all the VORPs for their hitters and it came up to .1. VORP, you may recall, stands for value over replacement player. So their hitting staff’s success had equaled that of a bunch of no-name minor league call-ups, more or less. That sounded bad.

So I calculated the cumulative VORP for the Tigers pitching staff.

-17.5

Yes. -17.5

Not that we needed a stat.

Maybe that explains why we thought Armando Galarraga was so good. His expected VORP of 0 is way better than Justin Verlander (-8.9). Maybe when Dontrelle Willis (-.9) gets back, Galarraga can replace Zach Miner (-10). The only guys in the positive in the bullpen, you can probably guess. Aquilino Lopzez, Denny Bautista, Todd Jones, Galarraga and Clay Rapada.

Rest of the pitching staff? Awful.

Which brings up the question: are the guys in Toledo actually even worse? Because right now, a pitching staff with a VORP of 0 sounds like a nice improvement. That’s a scary thought.

As a related note for you Jason Grilli haters out there, he’s actually no worse than half the bullpen. Heck, his numbers are better than all the starters. And with Miner’s awful, awful, awful showing this year, get used to seeing a lot of Grilli until some guys get healthy. Which is fine by me. He may be a lightning rod for fan hate due to his poor pitching in front of the home fans, but a fair appraisal of this bullpen shows, he’s not half bad if Jim Leyland just learns to use him properly.

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