A bunch of bull...pen

Any Braves fan I've known has been patently scared when Cox sends for a reliever. (My best friend had to leave the room every time Chris Reitsma pitched because if he watched Reitsma would lose...) I decided to test whether the panic was justified in the Mazzone era off two main considerations: bullpen ERA relative to the league and bullpen W-L records. There's not a whole lot to say about the starters except that they led the NL in ERA from '92 to '02, which is utterly ridiculous. Sometimes it was by a full run over league average, which is utterlier ridiculous or utterly ridiculouser. Anyway, to the rankings (loss rankings are ordered fewest to most losses, so tied for second is good):

1991: 3.57 ERA v. NL's 3.60 (#6 best bullpen in league for ERA), 22-19 record (T6/T2)
1992: 3.68 v. 3.42 (#9), 26-22 (T5/T5)
1993: 3.15 v. 3.98 (#1), 26-16 (7/1)
1994: 4.44 v. 4.19 (#10), 16-13 (T8/1)
1995: 3.93 v. 4.15 (#6), 28-16 (2/1)
1996: 3.72 v. 4.06 (#6), 26-18 (T4/1)
1997: 3.56 v. 4.30 (#2), 26-24 (T6/T6)
1998: 3.83 v. 3.99 (#6), 16-16 (T15/1)
1999: 3.58 v. 4.39 (#2), 33-14 (1/1)
2000: 4.05 v. 4.56 (#4), 19-18 (T15/1)
2001: 3.73 v. 4.12 (#2), 24-23 (T7/T8)
2002: 2.60 v. 3.84 (#1), 30-14 (T4/1)
2003: 3.98 v. 4.06 (#6), 27-22 (T5/T8)
2004: 3.57 v. 4.09 (#3), 28-17 (T6/T2)
2005: 4.74 v. 4.23 (#12), 25-29 (T5/3)

You can see that most of the time, the bullpen wasn't actually that bad as a unit, and they certainly didn't do that much harm; that's 8 times in 10 years the bullpen had the fewest losses of any NL bullpen. Mind you, they were almost never as good as the starters, but that's because the starters were ridiculously good. Put up relative to other bullpens, though, they were above league average 11 times, and occasionally they were brilliant.

Random things I learned in researching this (I used baseball-reference.com's Splits function to find all this stuff out): In 1997, NL relievers were worse than NL starters, and there was a year that the Reds got more wins out of their relievers than their starters (36-33 or something like that). Yeech.

Mark Wohlers attacked the strike zone. Mark Wohlers missed!
John Rocker attacked the different people. It was a crushing blow. John Rocker dealt 250 HP damage!