Angels Manager Mike Scioscia continues to believe in set roles for his relievers

Across baseball, the idea of more versatile, flexible bullpens is gaining traction, pushed along by several teams’ successful experimentation in this year’s postseason. It’s been the sport’s custom in recent decades, but a team’s most effective reliever need not always be reserved for the ninth inning, many managers acknowledged in the playoffs and again this week, at the annual winter meetings that neared an end Wednesday.

Not so for Angels Manager Mike Scioscia, who believes bullpens should be managed with rigidity. His team next spring will feature three relievers competing for the chance to be the closer: Huston Street, who has fulfilled the role for nearly half his life; Cam Bedrosian, who has 30 professional saves; and Andrew Bailey, who has saved 95 major league games, but few of them recently.

Scioscia doesn’t know who will be his closer or his top set-up man, but he knows someone will pitch the seventh inning in winning situations, someone else will pitch the eighth, and someone else the ninth.

“This isn’t that complicated,” the manager said at his 18th winter meetings. “You’re going to go with the guys that are best suited for a role. He might be more effective as far as his talent in the ninth inning, but if there’s a guy that’s better than a certain pitcher in that ninth inning, so be it.

“If he feels he’s less effective in the seventh, but somebody more effective in the ninth, he’s going to pitch in the seventh.”

It’s not as if Scioscia’s viewpoint is unique, only less prevalent now, with the spread of data showing how much more important earlier innings can be than traditional save situations. It’s all based on leverage, a quantifiable number, but Street himself said in 2015 that he would retire if a team ever told him, “Oh, we’re gonna start using you in these high-leverage situations.”

“All right, good,” Street said then. “You now can go find someone else to do that, because I’m going home. It’s a ridiculous idea. It really is.”

His manager believes in the value of saves, too, and even holds, a more recently developed but similar statistic.

“Save, it is an arbitrary number. It seems arbitrary,” Scioscia said. “But at least it’s a guideline that gives you a little baseline of a player’s performance. The hold is a stat that’s jumped into prominence in the last 10 years. Guys are lining up the hold leaders in every league. You can get an idea of what a seventh- or what an eighth-inning guy can do. Holding leads, those stats, even though they are arbitrary, they are there for a reason.”

Scioscia continued, saying he was not of the “school of thought” that the ninth inning was the same as the other available innings of relief.

“My experience tells me it’s different because I’ve seen guys that have stuff personified that is the type guy that you would love to match up in the ninth inning because of his stuff matches up with whoever the lineup is,” Scioscia said. “And I’ve seen it time and time again where guys will have the right makeup to go out there in the ninth inning, and they fail.”

Billy Eppler, the Angels’ second-year general manager, said he had no issues with Scioscia’s approach.

“All I’m trying to do is bring talent in, bring competent pitchers in,” Eppler said. “I don’t sit down with him and say, ‘OK, who do we want to make the seventh-inning guy?’ Those roles naturally evolve. I understand that relievers like to know their role. They like to be able to walk through the lineup and understand when they’re going to be utilized.

“In my perfect world, I’d love to be able to present five or six of those seven relievers that can do that role, so they can be interchanged.”

Short hops

The Angels remain in talks with several candidates to play second base next season. They are also sifting through the available minor leaguers in Thursday’s Rule 5 draft. Nine teams will have the right to pick a player before them, just as they will in the June 2017 MLB draft, but some will pass this time. With 39 men on their 40-man roster, the Angels can make one selection, which would cost them $100,000. … Free agent right-hander Jered Weaver’s agent, Scott Boras, said Wednesday that Eppler told him the Angels will evaluate over time if they are interested in a reunion. Asked if Weaver was interested, Boras said: “He enjoyed his time there. He’s certainly open to a lot of venues.”

pedro.moura@latimes.com

Twitter: @pedromoura