Fire Gardy

To nobody’s surprise, the bullpen has been the team’s biggest weakness this year. This is unusual for a Gardy-Era Twins team, and it is extremely painful to watch the pen waste good starts and acceptable offensive performances. We’re not used to that here in Twins-land, and it sucks. But what can be done about it? Most of the guys who are struggling the most are the same guys who had success for us in the past. Crain used to be an extremely effective reliever; is it possible that he simply hasn’t recovered from his shoulder injuries? Guerrier also used to be very effective, especially while he was transitioning from long reliever to trusted late innings setup guy; but did he get overused last year, and will he be able to bounce back?

Of the two, Crain is much worse right now. In his last two appearances, he has not recorded an out. Single, single, wild pitch, double, done. Home run, walk, done. This is not at all what happens when a viable late inning reliever enters the game. The best thing for Crain right now is to stay out of (major league) games and work on his mechanics, and possibly to get his head on straight. The best thing for the team is to get Crain the hell out of there and only let him back if he demonstrates he can locate his pitches consistently. It’s probably close to the time to discover some sort of “injury” and put him on the DL.* And if it turns out he doesn’t get straightened out, then that’s that. It’s over.

* In honor of Dontrelle Willis returning to the majors to face us tonight, I propose that we put Crain on the DL with “anxiety.” We cannot allow that “injury” to fall by the wayside; we need to keep an AL pitcher out with anxiety at all times. Of course, we could also go the route the Mariners did with Silva or the Yankees did with Wang, and put him on the DL with “he sucks”-itis.

It’s tough to analyze what might be wrong with Guerrier. It doesn’t seem to be his command (12 K vs 3 BB in 18 IP). But he’s give up 12 hits in those 18 innings, and 7 runs. In some outings he can locate the ball and record outs; in others, he just gets shelled. Could it have something to do with the fact that his workload last year was ridiculous and this year, once again, he’s leading the club in relief innings? Guerrier’s biggest problem very well could be that Gardy can’t trust anyone else in the bullpen.* So let’s get to talking about them, shall we?

* Except Joe Nathan, of course, who has pitched fewer innings than Guerrier, Ayala, and Dickey. Seriously. Whose idea is it to give the most innings to the least effective pitchers?

Luis Ayala (in)famously signed a $1.3M contract to come to the Twins and lose ballgames for us. So we’re getting what we paid for, in that when he enters the game, we lose. He’s pitched 15.1 innings, and given up 21 hits, 4 walks, and recorded just 10 strike outs. Oh yeah, and 9 runs.* We can’t afford to bring this guy into games any more, which just adds to Guerrier’s workload. Ayala is performing just about exactly as well as he could reasonably be expected to perform (maybe better, actually) … he’s not going to improve, he’s not going to turn any corners. He is what he is: awful. He needs to go as soon as possible. No fake injuries, no DL. Release him.

* Shockingly, he’s only given up 1 homer this year. It really feels like more.

I had high hopes for Breslow coming into the season, based on the fact that he appeared to improve dramatically after we plucked him off waivers from the Indians. Last year he wasn’t used as a lefty specialist, but just as another 1 inning reliever, and it worked to his liking. But after jettisoning Reyes, Gardy needed to fill the “lefty specialist role” in his mental roster, and so Breslow has been thrust into it simply by virtue of the fact that he throws left handed. How has it worked? 10.2 IP, 8 H, 10 BB, 8 K … 9 runs. He’s even worse than Ayala. And look at it this way: he’s already 28 years old, and we only got him because the Cleveland Indians (whose bullpen woes are at least as bad as ours) cut him. He doesn’t have much of a future. I don’t know how long we should stick with this guy. Especially given his facial expressions and body language on the mound — even BEFORE he throws a pitch.

RA Dickey was brought in as a quirky knuckleballing long reliever, and everyone assumed that he could go 5 innings every day if we needed him to. After all, knuckleballers can do that, right? Well, he hasn’t really been able to do it this year. He’s gone over 2 IP in an outing just twice, and never completed 3 IP. He’s had performances of 0.0 IP, 0.1 IP, and 0.2 IP. Worse, he’s given up at least one run in 5 of his 8 relief outings this year. You can’t go 5 innings in long relief if you’re incapable of recording enough outs. His WHIP is over 1.9! He’s giving up 12 H/9! He is Livan Hernandez! His failings here have led to innings for Crain and Guerrier in blowout victories and defeats, which they shouldn’t have to do. Even the long reliever needs more than the theoretical ability to not get tired while throwing a baseball. He needs to be able to get guys out. And Dickey has demonstrated over the years that he’s not very good at that. He probably needs to go.

Jose Mijares showed promise last year when we called him up in September, and developed an entitled attitude that Twins management really does not care for. He put on a bunch of weight over the offseason,* and showed up in spring training out of shape as if he thought he had a spot locked up. After being taught a lesson and sent to the minors, where he was largely ineffective, we had to call him back up because of the unrepentant crappiness of everyone else in the bullpen. He’s actually performed pretty well, with an 11.0 K/9 (the best strikeout rate on the team) against just a 2.5 BB/9. In a recent outing, he gave up a two run homer to Griffey that tied the game; while I wish that hadn’t happened, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility or anything. The worst part about that was the look on Mijares’ face afterwards, as he sat on the bench unsuccessfully trying to hold back tears. You can’t show those emotions when you’re on the field. Mijares is just 24, though, and presumably has a reasonable future with the Twins. He could step into the 8th inning role, and the only fears I have are: a) that Gardy will overuse him a la Guerrier and Neshek, and b) that Gardy will decide to use him as a lefty specialist rather than a far more valuable “real reliever.” I guess I have a third fear … and it’s based on the knowledge that Gardy will definitely do at least one, if not both, of those things.

* Although I have the distinct feeling this was at the request of Gardy, who needed to slot someone into his “ludicrously fat Latino reliever” role.

Finally, that brings us to Nathan, and what will be the overall point of this article (what, you didn’t think there’d be one?). Nathan has thrown just 12 IP, and given up all of 2 runs (both on solo homers). He remains one of the elite relievers in the game, which is an extremely valuable asset to have. Unfortunately, like most other “Closers,” he is being misused because of his manager’s insistence on pandering to the “save” statistic. It is unacceptable that Nathan sits on the bench while Crain and Ayala lose the game in the 8th inning; Nathan should come into the 8th in those situations to save the game when it’s needed, rather than wait in the hopes that we can use the best reliever on the team to get 3 outs with a 3 run lead and call it a “save” as if there’s something magical about those last three outs.

And this, of course, is the point. Everyone has been ingrained to believe that the members of a bullpen need “roles” in order to perform their duty. That for some reason relievers sit out there in the bullpen NOT ready to pitch, and if you bring them in at the wrong time they’ll get confused. That you need to keep your best reliever as The Closer who doesn’t pitch unless it’s easy. That you need a crappy former 7th starter out there who you can throw out there in blowouts and call him The Long Reliever. That you need a Fat Latino. That you need at least one, and preferably two Lefty Specialists. That you need A Seventh Inning Guy, and also An Eighth Inning Guy. With this old fashioned LaRussian bullpen configuration, you too can be like every other manager in baseball over the last 25 years!

The thing is, relievers are a notoriously unpredictable bunch. Some are consistently good over the course of years, like Mariano Rivera and Joe Nathan. Others have a good year or two and disappear, like Pat Neshek and a thousand other guys you saw at one point and have forgotten because it turned out they were nobodies. Others have a good year or two and then linger on, ineffective but trying to recapture past glory — think Crain and Guerrier. But you can’t predict who’s going to be which kind, and you also can’t predict who’s going to be good in any given year. So, despite the fact that the best thing to do is give the jobs to minor leaguers and retreads, and to pitch them based on rest and matchups and leverage (rather than preset roles) … what teams instead want to do is trade prospects for relievers, or spend millions of dollars on the free agent market, and then give them all roles as if LaRussa was unquestionably correct, and then hope they get lucky that year. And it is just luck, for the most part.

Steven Goldman of Baseball Prospectus points out:

So what is a general manager to do if he wants to end up with the Phillies ‘08 bullpen and not the Mets ‘08 bullpen? Prayer might help—that, and a gambler’s mentality. For though the instability at the top of the reliever corps is great, the pitchers that move onto the list have to come from somewhere. Quite often, they come from the minor leagues, be they prospects or journeymen. This means that a GM’s best option is often also his cheapest option. When we examined the top reliever ranks in 2006, we found that from 1975 through 2005 on average the top 50 contained only 20 pitchers who had thrown more than 10 innings in the majors the previous year. This particular form of turnover seems to have slowed in recent years, with only one-fifth of the list yielding to pitchers who, through injury, inexperience, or ineffectiveness, were largely absent from the major leagues the year before.

So why not throw away the LaRussian bullpen, and dispose of the precious roles? One way to look at it is that this is exactly what Joe Maddon of the Rays did in 2008, and his bullpen was a huge strength of that team.

Personally, I don’t really care for that kind of hero-worship. (I just led off with it because if you believe in blindly trusting LaRussa, maybe you’ll be convinced by an exhortation to blindly trust Maddon.) The I prefer to look at this is that it frees you from sticking to a rigid method of using your bullpen, and allows you to use pitchers in situations that they are either a) most likely to succeed in, or b) most needed in. Sure, sometimes you’ll bring in the best reliever with a lead in the 9th; but sometimes you’ll have a 3 run lead and you can go with someone else. Sometimes you will have already used the best reliever in the 7th or 8th with men on base, and need to go with someone else to start the 9th.* Even if the second or third best reliever blows the game in the 9th (which is not likely since ALL relievers, overall, convert over 90% of “save situations,” so the value of having a truly elite closer is, in reality, minimal), you can rest easy in the knowledge that you probably wouldn’t have even HAD a save situation in the first place if Luis Ayala had come in to face a good hitter with men on base — they would have scored and we would have lost with Nathan sitting down. And then we’d have to let Nathan into a game with a wider margin and absolutely no leverage, just to let him get his work in.

* The common refrain here is that “closers aren’t as good when it’s not a save situation.” This is most likely a case of seeing something happen once or twice and ascribing it to be related to a previously held belief. IE, a confirmation bias. The real question is: in a high pressure situation, like men on base and the middle of the order up, would you rather have your best reliever on the mound, or your fourth best? Does it matter whether it’s the 8th or 9th inning? Why?

The fact that it’s somehow considered a good idea to keep The Closer on the bench during a close loss so that you can save him for the next day when he gets an inning in a blowout “just to get his work in” is laughable at best, and is the clearest sign that something about this absurd status quo needs to change.

Will Gardy start making changes to the way he uses the bullpen? Almost certainly not.

Should he? I think so, absolutely.

Anyhow, why worry? What could happen? Nathan doesn’t get saves because he’s creating save situations for other pitchers rather than not getting saves because the rest of the bullpen is blowing the lead before he gets the chance?

It’s not like the bullpen could actually be worse than it is now. At least TRY to change something in the hopes that it can work better.

No comments