Alburquerque Struggles With Men on Base

Saturday night the Tigers enter the 9th inning trailing 1-0 when Leyland summons Al Alburquerque out of the bullpen.  Groans ensued throughout Twitter, yet I felt confident.  My "eye test" told me that Alburquerque does alright starting an inning and he didn't disappoint, pitching a clean 1-2-3 inning.  However, using memory as any kind of reliable source is asking for trouble, so onto Baseball-reference.  As it turns out, I was a little bit wrong on Alburquerque; he's not just good with the bases empty - he's great.

Situation	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG
Bases Empty	98	0.152	0.316	0.177
Men on Base	98	0.313	0.408	0.542

Oh, I just love it when the sample size perfectly match.  These numbers obviously show a lot; Alburquerque appears to be one of the best relievers in the game when no one is on base, yet pitches like a AAAA-player as soon as someone is occupying one of his bases.  There are several explanations that range from random variance to pitch usage.  But the one that immediately comes to mind is that his delivery may be off when pitching out of the stretch.  

Going back prior to his 1 full year in the majors in 2011 when he had a 1.87 ERA and a 2.08 FIP, here were his numbers in the same situations:

Situation	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG
Bases Empty	80	0.182	0.325	0.182
Men on Base	102	0.110	0.260	0.122

Alburquerque certainly looked capable of pitching with men on base before.  Again, it could be, random variance, confidence/mental issues, but the "what's wrong with Al Alburquerque" could be as simple as a mechanical adjustment when pitching out of the stretch.  Now I'm not one to post videos comparing how a pitcher looks when pitching out of the wind-up vs. out of the stretch.  Honestly, I wouldn't know what to look for.  I'll leave that up to the bloggers who are smarter than me.  And I really hope someone takes on that project.