Fire Gardy

Remember yesterday when I pointed out that until things change, there’s no reason to be optimistic about Liriano? Well, things haven’t changed. He looked pretty awful last night, and miraculously allowed just three runs while putting 12 men on base in 5 innings.

He didn’t have any command of any of his pitches, and he looked like he was abbreviating his follow-through on most of his deliveries. That probably still has to do with what Blyleven pointed out a couple of starts ago — that Liriano is landing on his heel instead of the ball of his foot, which creates recoil and makes it harder to deliver pitches with velocity or control. Basically, Liriano is fighting against himself.

I don’t have access to his release point data … but I’m going to go ahead and guess that his release point was all over the map last night. There’s no way it couldn’t have been, given his erratic mechanics.

The solution to The Liriano Problem is unclear. Do we keep sending him out there every five days and hope that the offense can carry us that day … like we did for Carlos Silva, Livan Hernandez, Ramon Ortiz, Sidney Ponson, and other 5th-or-worse starters? Do we try moving him to the bullpen to pitch in high leverage situations, where he would almost certainly suffer frequent meltdowns? Can we put him on the DL for something? What about AAA?

None of these options sound particularly good. But the only thing that’s obvious is that Liriano has a problem, and it’s not showing any indication of getting better.