How Do Cleveland Indians Vinnie Pestano and Chris Perez Compare to Other Duos?

The strong late-inning relief work of Vinnie Pestano and Chris Perez has contributed to the success of the Cleveland Indians this season. It seems if the Tribe can just get to Pestano in the eighth inning with the lead, they are in good shape.

The numbers support this feeling since Pestano has 15 holds and Perez has 19 saves.

But how does this 1-2 punch compare with other good bullpens in the American League? Let's take a look at the stats of teams with good bullpens.

	Pitchers	Wins	Saves	Holds	K/9	ERA	WHIP	Ranking Points
Angels	Frieri/Downs	0	9	14	11.4	0.00	0.86	20.5
Rays	Rodney/Peralta	3	17	15	11.2	1.25	0.89	23.5
Orioles	Johnson/Strop	4	21	11	6.6	1.41	0.95	19
Indians	Perez/Pestano	2	19	15	10.0	2.49	1.02	18.5
Rangers	Nathan/Adams	0	13	10	9.1	2.70	1.03	8.5

I obtained the data from Yahoo! fantasy baseball and gave equal weights to each of the stats noted in coming up with the ranking points.

An argument can be made that more than two pitchers should be considered in evaluating a bullpen, but I just used two for this comparison.

The Tribe's duo has served the team very well. Their total of saves and holds is top among the teams examined, but their ERA and WHIP is substantially worse than the very best teams.

So using this method of comparison, we see four of the teams are relatively close and, the Tribe's duo is indeed up among the best.