Fire Gardy

Last night Slowey through an absolute gem: 8+ IP, 7K, 0BB, 1 ER.

He was basically dominant the entire time, and only had one AB in the first 8 innings where he was in trouble, when he got to a 2-0 count on Shin Soo Choo with Travis Hafner on second base. It was his only 2-0 count of the night. He worked it to a 3-1 count, against a power hitting lefty who’s been swinging well; he threw a change up and got Choo to fly out.

[Joe C] asked Slowey how common it is for him to throw 3-1 change-ups. He said it was the right pitch for “a power-hitting lefty who swings very well. It’s something I need to continue to work on, to throw a pitch like that in a count like that.”

Kevin Slowey is a smart guy.

But I have one thing to complain about in that pitching performance. With a 7-0 lead going into the ninth inning, and your starter has already thrown over 100 pitches, and is just 25 years old, and the entire bullpen is rested after two off days and a rainout in the last week, along with a dominant start the previous night … there’s no reason to have the starter go for the complete game.

So what did Gardy have to say for himself?

“After an easy eighth, you have to let him take a shot at it,” Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said of the shutout. “We said we are going to stretch these guys out. I think it had been seven days since his last start, and he’s got six days before his next one. It’s an opportune time to let these guys stretch out if they can do that. … It didn’t work out, they rolled some balls through and got some hits. But you want these guys to understand that we are not afraid to do that.”

Don’t get me wrong. I want to see our pitchers start getting more complete game shutouts. But I don’t want them starting any innings once they’re over 100 pitches. And when the bullpen is rested, they can be used.

Especially since we have one Juan Morillo, who has the arm to be a setup man, but can’t be trusted. In his two outings for us, he’s looked fantastic in one and truly awful in another. We’re working on the guy, trying to rebuild him … and we need to figure out who he is soon, because he might be the guy to go once Crain returns. I don’t want us making that decision based on too little information.

That the move didn’t work out as planned isn’t my issue. My issue is that it was the wrong decision from a baseball standpoint. It was made in an effort to generate a meaningless statistic for Slowey (CG SHO) that at best shows how macho he (and his manager) is. The problem is that it prevented the possibility of generating meaningful statistics for Morillo, who needs more outings and can’t be trusted in a close game at the moment.

Oh, and while Ayala looked good in only allowing one run with the bases loaded and nobody out … what does it say about how much Gardy trusts him that Nathan was warming up before that inning ending double play?

I think it says a lot.

No comments