Fire Gardy

Is it just me, or are the offdays getting more frequent as the season winds its way closer to the bitter end? Maybe it’s just that I desperately want to get the foul taste of yesterday’s lost out of my mouth, and thus today’s lack of a game seems unforgivable. That said, I bet the Twins need it. Losing like that is tough for the fans, but I can only imagine it’s tougher on the players,* and they could probably use a day off.

* Is anyone else glad that Redmond insisted on calling for Nathan’s breaking balls on a full count to two consecutive hitters? Because the radio guys said it looked like Nathan really didn’t want to throw those, and wanted to go with his fastball. He spun up a couple of hangers, and there you go. Can someone tell me why Mike Redmond is still on our team? And can someone also tell me why catchers seem to get worse at calling a game as they get older? Posada has gotten worse at calling games, Pudge Rodriguez has got worse at calling games, even Varitek has gotten worse at it. And I don’t remember Redmond actively doing shit he knows the pitcher doesn’t have confidence in before this season. This asshole has got to go.

Anyway, there’s been a lot of talk lately about Nathan, in the context of the old “is Joe Nathan okay?” conversation that we have every season around this time. Actually we usually have it a little bit earlier in the season, I think … but I contend that this phase of his season is based on innings pitched or appearances or something, not the calendar, and since we haven’t had as many leads this year as we normally do, we haven’t used Nathan as much. Usually the conversation bounces between the extremes of “we’re paying this old man too much money and he sucks!” and “he must be injured, he needs rest” and “he’s fine, just keep rolling him out there.” It’s easy to go to extremes when you’re talking about a closer: all his moments are in high leverage situations, and if he has a bad day, you lose, simple as that. So if he stuggles for a little bit, the team has a lot of trouble winning games.

But have we seen this before from Nathan? (Obviously, I had to pick where his struggles started and ended. Some years it’s more pronounced than others, and I had to just pick the best dates I could. You can disagree about the specifics, I suppose, but I think this ought to give you a general idea.) Let’s take a look at the numbers.

2004 opening phase, 4/15-8/18: 49 G, 51 IP, 0.35 ERA, 2 ER, 62 K, 15 BB, opponents: .160/.234/.211
2004 struggle, 8/19-8/24: 3 G, 2.1 IP, 23.14 ERA, 6 ER, 3 K, 2 BB, opponents: .600/.647/.867
2004 finish, 8/25-10/2: 17 G, 15.1 IP, 1.17 ERA, 2 ER, 20 K, 3 BB, opponents: .115/.164/.135

2005 opening phase, 4/5-8/30: 57 G, 58.1 IP, 2.31 ERA, 15 ER, 74 K, 21 BB, opponents: .177/.251/.263
2005 struggle, 9/3-9/6: 3 G, 3 IP, 6 ER, 18.00 ERA, 5 K, 0 BB, opponents: .462/.429/1.000
2005 finish, 9/7-10/2: 9 G, 8.2 IP, 0 ER, 0.00 ERA, 15 K, 1 BB, opponents: .103/.133/.138

2006 opening phase, 4/6-8/13: 46 G, 50 IP, 1.44 ERA, 8 ER, 71 K, 9 BB, opponents: .173/.216/.263
2006 struggle, 8/15-9/11: 9 G, 9.1 IP, 3.86 ERA, 4 ER, 11 K, 4 BB, opponents: .129/.222/.226
2006 finish, 9/12-10/1: 9 G, 9 IP, 0.00 ERA, 0 ER, 13 K, 3 BB, opponents: .100/.182/.133

2007 opening phase, 4/2-9/1: 56 G, 58.1 IP, 1.70 ERA, 11 ER, 60 K, 11 BB, opponents: .210/.250/.286
2007 struggle, 9/4-9/17: 6 G, 7 IP, 5.14 ERA, 4 ER, 7 K, 1 BB, opponents: .231/.259/.577
2007 finish, 9/18-9/30: 6 G, 6.1 IP, 0.00 ERA, 0 ER, 10 K, 7 BB, opponents: .182/.379/.227

2008 opening phase, 3/31-8/21: 55 G, 55 IP, 0.98 ERA, 6 ER, 61 K, 13 BB, opponents: .185/.239/.277
2008 struggle, 8/25-9/16: 7 G, 6.1 IP, 5.68 ERA, 4 ER, 6 K, 4 BB, opponents: .240/.367/.480
2008 finish, 9/18-9/30: 6 G, 6.1 IP, 0.00 ERA, 0 ER, 7 K, 1 BB, opponents: .050/.095/.050

2009 opening phase, 4/8-8/19: 49 G, 46.2 IP, 1.54 ERA, 8 ER, 61 K, 11 BB, opponents: .160/.217/.245
2009 struggle, 8/21-?: 6 G, 6.2 IP, 8.10 ERA, 6 ER, 9 K, 6 BB, opponents: .300/.417/.700

So my personal feeling about Nathan’s struggles is mostly correct: that he does, in fact, struggle every year, and it always happens at roughly the same time. He always gets through about 46-58 innings before he enters a sort of a dead-arm period and becomes hittable — in some cases quite a bit worse than hittable: he can put up some pretty ugly numbers during the struggle period.

Be the struggle period usually doesn’t last very long. In his first couple yars, it lasted just 3 games; his longest struggle was in 2006, which also happened to be his least struggly struggle period (his opponents OPS stayed below .500). In the other years, it lasted between 6 and 7 innings.

One thing that stands out for me is that his 2009 struggle period showed up in the smallest amount of innings in his career, though not (quite) the smallest amount of appearances. In severity, it’s middle of the road; his 8.10 ERA is 3rd out of 6, and his 1.117 OPS is also 3rd of 6. And we’re getting close to the end of it. It’s likely that it’s over now, and at most we can anticipate 3 more games during his struggle. While the Twins are at a point of the season where they can’t afford a struggling Nathan for three more games, it’s not really Nathan’s fault that he reached this level of usage this late in the season. He either should have gotten more save opportunities (blame the offense, or the starting pitching, or the bullpen), or should have gotten more non-save appearances (blame Gardy’s “old” fashioned closed-mindedness).

And the reason not to fear using him more often, given his dead-arm period? Look at his post-struggle numbers. In 45.2 IP, he’s given up 2 ER, for an absurdly awesome 0.39 ERA. Once his struggles end, Nathan dominates through the end of the season.

While it obviously hurts when we lose because of Nathan, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. We’ve seen this before from him, and he’s always gotten out of it. We just have to hope he gets out of it soon and that the rest of the team can give him enough opportunities that his late-season dominance makes a difference.