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I don't think there is anything better for evaluating relievers and other pitchers than their actual stuff, movement, control, pitch ratings, groundball/flyball tendency, and velocity. If you have good scouting accuracy and rely on these indicators, you're always going to get great results.
Sabermetrics are just the output that measures and verifies the impact of these core indicators in OOTP.
If you find a reliever who has good ratings in all three core categories, good pitch ratings across all of his pitches, and he's a groundball specialist with good velocity, he's an ideal choice. If he has at least three pitches and he throws them all well, and he has some decent stamina, that's also helpful.
As soon as you start drifting into guys with weaknesses in their ratings or pitch ratings, you're going to have problems. If they're also flyball pitchers or don't have great velocity, that can make things worse. If they have significant limitations where they're too one-dimensional, can't throw all their pitches well, or don't have the stamina to pitch around good hitters and pitch through a longer inning without getting tired, that's another issue.
All it takes is one weak rating or wrong tendency in the wrong place, and you can end up having consistent problems with a reliever. I've seen it countless times.
As soon as you acquire relievers who have better ratings and tendencies in all the right places, these problems stop or become much more rare. In my experience, it's as simple as that.
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