His numbers this year in the pen are pretty amazing, especially when you put them up against his career numbers. His ERA is sitting at 1.93, good for an ERA+ of 237 :shock: . Through his 5 year career and just north of 400 innings his ERA+ averages out to 105. So over the course of 23.1 innings his ERA+ is 132 points better than his career average. He's averaging 11.6 K/9 this year compared to a career average of 6.7 K/9. His K/BB ratio is just over four this year compared to a career average of just under 2. His walks are down and his strikeouts are way up compared to what hes done the last four years. While I don't have the Bapib against on hand right now it seems unlikely that hes getting too lucky seeing as K/BB has increased so dramatically. So what gives? Are his pitches just awkwardly good in small sample size, is he relying other pitches more, or have his pitches just gotten better when only working for an inning or two? For starters his straight fastball has gotten a little hotter. Going from about 87 to 90 MPH can certainly make a difference. He's also throwing his fastball more as well as his cut significantly less. He's completely eliminated the change from his repertoire this year. Hes really relied pretty heavily on his curve this year though, throwing it 44% of the time compared to a career average of about 23%. I think its also worth noting that the velocity on the curve has jumped about 4 mph, seems odd to increase the velocity of a curve ball. His fastball has improved and hes relied on it a little more this year. He's gone away from the cutter quite a bit and really relied heavily on his curve ball. The results speak for themselves and it doesn't appear as though he getting lucky. Personally I'd like to see him kept in the bullpen because I think his pitches are considerably sharper there and hes quite valuable in high leverage 7th and 8th inning situations. I'm asking 2 questions though, A) how long can he keep pitching like this, and how much of this do you think is a direct result of being a full time reliever? I'm curious to hear some input.