Yeah this happens basically every year because Jed fills up the bullpen with a bunch of question mark filled veterans and young guys with upside and it take him 2+ months to figure out which ones are good. In 2023 we struggled to start the season, only managed to identify 3 arms that were reliable and wore them out in the summer, thus we blew a bunch of games in September and missed the playoffs by 1 game.
last year the pen (and offense) dug us such a hole that by the time we figured it out even a solid second half couldn’t get us back into the race.
happened in 2022 as well though they weren’t good enough for us to care.
2021 was the last time we came into the season with a solid back end of the pen with Tepera, Chafin and Kimbrel and we traded all 3 away because the rest of the team wasn’t good enough.