Fire Gardy

Nick Blackburn got off to a rough start, throwing 44 pitches in the first two innings, but settled down after needing just 5 in the third.  He set a career high with 7 strikeouts, including Jason Bay two times. He seemingly let the leadoff man reach in every inning, but stranded him more often than not, not with the normal Blackburn DP grounder, but with lots of well placed strikeouts.  Guerrier and Nathan combined to look like a ghost of bullpens past in quickly dispatching the Red Sox in the 8th and 9th innings respectively.

On the offensive side of the ball, it was Justin Morneau who provided most of the offense. While the bottomof the order actually contributed.  Even Punto had two hits (I still wish we could let our pitchers bat and DH for either 2B or SS).  Mauer had a rare bad game, notching two strikeouts against Jon Lester.  He did work a walk and score on the Morneau blast.

Delmon Young had another terrible game at the plate, although he did make a nice running catch in left.  The Twins need to do something about him.  He clearly is a talented player, but is simply over matched in the majors.  Can we send him down to triple A for the rest of the season to figure his shit out? If not I think he will become more and more frustrated with each terrible at bat and spiral into the category of “biggest draft busts”.  Maybe he will breakout when he is 27 like one Michael Cuddyer, but we can’t afford to keep him around for 4-5 years if they will be 4-5 years of terribleness.  We also need to do something about the middle infield situation.  Those two clowns are two black holes in the lineup.  At least Gardy learned to bat them at the bottom of the order.  Took him long enough.

Tonight is Slowey vs. Dice-K, lets try to pull out a series win by getting tonights game, and getting behind Swarzak in the finale tomorrow afternoon against Josh Beckett.

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I’m at the airport* right now, blogging from the iPhone. I imagine, therefore, that this post won’t be a long one.
 
* By the way, I’ll be at the dome on Saturday sporting my Free Jason Kubel t-shirt — courtesy of those crazy guys over at some blog called Fire Gardy — so if you see me feel free to run up and leave a comment. Or, as I understand it is commonly called in the non-blog world, say hello.
 
Anyway, I was just reading FanGraphs, and they’re looking at the players who tend to get called out on strikes. The guys they looked for strike out in over 20% of their plate appearances … And who do you think is right up there among the leaders of “percentage of strikeouts that are NOT of the swinging variety?”
 
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/frozen-at-the-plate/
 
If you guessed Carlos Gomez (somehow) you’d be right!
 
I was pretty surprised to see this, given how often it seems like Gomez is flailing wildly at the ball. It just feels like he records a swinging strikeout a couple times per game.
 
But remember that talk in spring training about how Gomez was changing his approach at the plate, and that his newfound plate discipline would lead to more walks? Well, the walks haven’t come, but it’s certainly had an effect.
 
I don’t have copy-paste on my iPhone, and for the first time since I’ve had it this annoys me… because I can’t quote the article. So I encourage you to click through and actually read the thing.*
 
* Where you can also note that Gomez is the only guy in the top five that doesn’t really hit any home runs. I wonder what that means.
 
But if I remember the gist of it, Gomez has indeed changed his approach. He’s swinging at fewer pitches, and has actually cut down on the number of pitches outside the strike zone that he swings at. He’s also laying off more inside the zone, though.
 
So he’s cut way down on his forward facing K’s, with a smaller increase in backward facing ones. (I doubt this phone has that character.) Unfortunately, the new “discipline” is not accompanied by any new knowledge of the strike zone, or vision, which would help with his walks.
 
Still, I though this was pretty interesting. Every once in a while some statistic stands up and points out that one of your assumptions is incorrect. That happened to me this afternoon, and this it’s time for me to adjust the insults I hurl at Gomez while he’s “hitting.”
 
Who said stats aren’t useful?

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Yesterday afternoon’s game was a fun finish to an abysmal road trip, as the offense took out their frustrations after a week’s worth of being shut down. Unfortunately for me, and therefore for you, the game was on in the afternoon, and we were playing the White Sox … which means MLB.tv doesn’t allow me to watch it and I happen to not have cable at my office.* So I had to listen on the radio.

* Maybe I should bring this up with my boss.

I’d say the big story of this game is that Gardy changed the lineup in such a way that it emphasizes our best hitters and obviously improves our chances of scoring runs. The “stop giving away an out in front of Mauer/Morneau/Kubel” strategy paid early dividends, when Kubel’s base hit scored Mauer from second and moved Morneau to third with just one out, keeping a scoring chance in play for Cuddyer and Crede. They didn’t come through, but the new lineup configuration immediately increases the number of scoring chances, and we’ll come through on some of them.

We’ve been saying around here that our best possible lineup features Mauer batting second, with a top of the order of Span/Mauer/Morneau/Kubel, and Gardy finally went with it. Given that we know Gardenhire hates offensive production and benches players who hit well, and actively avoids things that might help us score more runs … is there any chance we stick with this lineup? Let’s see what the players think.

“I like that lineup,” said Cuddyer, who was 4-for-6 with four runs scored and three RBIs. “If we score 20 runs a night, heck yeah.”

So Cuddyer’s all for it.

“I like scoring 20 runs,” Mauer added. “I don’t know, I think it worked today. If we keep scoring runs, I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes.”

Mauer probably knows that any lineup would have worked really well the way everyone in the lineup was hitting all day, so there’s no need to go crazy. But since we’re the bloggingest blog of blogs, and blogs are best when they’re crazy, Mauer can stuff it because we’re going to get crazy.

But Gardenhire put a stop to the fun, saying the lineup will be different again Friday, crediting the bottom of the order with the bulk of the club’s success.

Gardy is crediting the bottom of the order for our success in that game? Is it possible he’s unaware that Punto went 0-4 with 3 strikeouts in this game? And what did I say about avoiding things that improve our chances of scoring? Why in blazes are you changing the lineup that scored you 20 runs without even giving it another go? Oh, and I’ll point out two things:

1. Tolbert isn’t going to start hitting more home runs now … please don’t move him back up in the order
2. Morales had yet another great game, in the bottom of the order which was apparently the whole reason we scored runs today … but you sent his ass down to AAA in return. Way to reward performance, coach.

How difficult is it for Gardy to admit that Mauer and Cuddyer basically won this game?

“Sure the big guys there are killers,” Gardenhire said, “but the guys at the bottom of the lineup got on the bases to load them up for those guys. The guys at the bottom did their job today.”

Um, yes. Did their jobs. Tolbert’s job is to hit home runs, and he did that. For the first time in his career. Morales’s job is to get hits and then smile when he’s demoted when he does it. Punto’s job is to strike out every time* but really look like he’s trying.

* He didn’t really strike out every time. He reached on an error on which Betemit’s throw hit him in the back of the head. Did I mention that I didn’t get to watch this game? Argh!

Oh yeah, and remember when Cuddyer and Crede hit back to back home runs? Well, Morales made his only out of the game as the next batter, when he put the ball on the warning track. He just had an awesome game.

I had my quarterly review yesterday afternoon at 3:00 PM, and I left my desk with Denard Span coming to the plate in the 6th against Gobble. So … yes. I missed Mauer’s grand slam. I left with a 12-0 lead and returned with a 20-1 win. It was awesome. But I still would have preferred to be there for Mauer’s blast. He’s on pace for 47 homers this year, if he gets exactly 500 plate appearances. Wow.

But in order to win a game 20-1, you can’t just score runs. You also need some pitching. And since that’s been our problem lately, I think it’s worth mentioning. Blackburn looked great out there, and was removed after 7 IP having thrown just 82 pitches. Apparently they would have let him go for the shutout if the game had been closer … which doesn’t make sense until you realize that he’d been sitting in the dugout for a long time several times during the game while we batted around. So it’s no big deal.

Bigger deal? Bringing in the 8th inning setup guy, Mijares, with a 20 run lead. Then bringing in Nathan with a 19 run lead.* Are you joking? Can’t one of our crappier pitchers be trusted to hold onto a 20 run lead in the 8th and 9th? I mean, you trust them with a 1 or 2 run lead, but 20 is too dangerous?

* Oh, that run? It was unearned, and scored because Tolbert made an error. Those guys just keep doing their jobs.

How did Blackburn feel about his performance?

“The White Wox were just swinging at everything today, so it didn’t take too long to get three outs,” the Blackburn said.

I like everything about this quote. I mean, I really like everything about this quote. Firstly, I’m going to go ahead and hope this wasn’t a typo, and that he did in fact call them “The White Wox,” and in support of that I’m going to start calling them that. Secondly, am I the only one who thinks he was insulting them? Because that would be awesome.

And finally, the quote was topped off by calling him “The Blackburn,” which is at least among the coolest modern baseball nicknames.

This win certainly makes the six game losing streak sting a little less. And I find myself amused that we finished off a 1-6 road trip with a +7 run differential. It felt bad while we were losing, but we actually weren’t doing that badly. Things just didn’t go our way for a while, and that can happen.

Hopefully the breaks start falling in our favor for a while, and hopefully the hits keep coming, and hopefully the lineup doesn’t change back to the “fuck scoring” configuration that Gardy prefers, and hopefully the other pitchers try to learn something from The Blackburn.

Let’s go get those Brewers!

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We’ve been talking a lot about the bullpen, and its repeated failures. But those failures are totally meaningless if the starters are awful … and lately, the starters have been awful.

It’s demoralizing for Slowey and Blackburn to have a good-to-great start erased by the bullpen late in the game. But what can the team do if the starter blows up early? In two of our last three games, the Twins’ offense took a 2-0 lead, followed immediately by the starter losing that lead in the next half inning; in both cases, the lead was gone before an out was recorded, and the scoring didn’t stop there.

On Monday, Perkins lasted only two outs, turning a 2-0 lead into a 6-2 deficit before handing the ball over to Dickey and heading off to the DL. On Wednesday, Liriano worked around his command issues through three innings, before the Twins took a 2-0 lead in the top of the fourth. Liriano quickly gave up 7 runs in the bottom of the fourth, and was done for the day, handing the ball over to Ayala.

In both cases the bullpen did a stellar job, holding the Yankees to 1 additional run (in 7.1 IP) on Monday and 0 additional runs (in 4 IP) on Wednesday. Dickey looked good, and while Ayala gave up what ended being the deciding run in a 7-6 loss on Monday, he actually looked good on Wednesday in 3 dominant and scoreless innings.

I don’t know if it was the roster move that basically told them “we’re willing to lose you on waivers if you don’t shape up, and you’re next,” or if Ayala and Dickey just prefer to pitch in blowout losses where the outs aren’t important. We’ll see as time goes on.

But if Perkins doesn’t come back healthy and looking good, and if Baker continues to pitch with his new wallet in his pocket, and if Liriano doesn’t re-discover how to command his fastball … it’s not really going to matter if good starts by Slowey and Blackburn are wasted. The Twins are not going to be winning any ballgames.

Frankly, it seems like these are all mental issues. As soon as the Twins take a lead, the starter gives it away. As soon as a baserunner reaches, there’s an immediate danger of a big inning, because the pitchers are letting everything that happens get to them. If Rick Anderson and Gardy had some sort of tricks in the past that helped with this stuff, it’s not working any more.

It’s not that early any more. It’s time to start playing ball.

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The Twins cut Craig Breslow today (he was claimed by Oakland), and promoted righthander Anthony Swarzak.  Swarzak will start on Saturday against the Brewers in place of the injured Perkins.  Speaking of Perkins, it sounds like nothing is seriously wrong and he should be good to go when his 15 days are up.  The only problem I have with this is as follows: Does that mean his inability to get guys out the last few starts was due to general suckiness and not an injury?

I like the Breslow move.  The current bullpen clearly wasn’t working so changes had to be made.  It looks like someone did go to jail, or in this case Oakland.  Which is basically the same thing.

Thats all for today.  Liriano goes tonight looking to snap the five game losing streak we are currently on.  Is anyone else’s mouth drooling at the thought of playing the delicious NL soon?

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Perkins was placed on the disabled list today, and will be replaced by Sean Henn.  Henn has appeared in 15 games for the Red Wings, pitching 24 innings, giving up 3 earned runs (but 7 unearned, ouch) with a 32/10 K/BB ratio.  That’s a 12.0 K/9.  Not half bad.   His major league track record hasn’t been great.  He has spent time with the Yankees and the Padres. 

Apparently Perkins was trying to pitch through elbow inflammation, which is never a good idea.  Hopefully this has been the cause of his recent May suckiness, not simply being a bad pitcher.  The bigger question is, who will replace Perkins in the rotation?  If its just one start my money is on Dickey, just like they did with Baker.  However, “elbow inflammation” never seems to last one start so they will have to call someone up.  The only pitchers in Rochester that are currently on the 40 man roster are Duensing, Armando Gabino, and Anthony Swarzak.  Duesning and Swarzak are starters so they are the two obvious choices.  Unless we want to grab someone from double A, which I would have no problem with.  It just seems that the Twins MO is to use AAA as their source for stop-gap players, only allowing players to jump from AA to the Majors if its for a full time job.

Hopefully this Sean Henn move injects some life (and by life I mean ability to get people out) into the bullpen.  I was hoping one of Slama or Delaney would be called up, but the fact that they weren’t further proves my AA vs. AAA theory.  If Henn turns out to be valuable, perhaps like Breslow last year, who will the Twins part ways with when Perkins comes back?  My money is on Ayala, even though he was moderately effective last night.  He just isn’t any good.

Speaking of last night, how about Dickey being basically the only reason we were still in that game.  After Perkins threw BP for 2/3 of an inning (even one of his outs was a warning track fly ball) Dickey came in for 4.1 innings and shut the Yankees down.  Impressive.  We still need to do a better job of hitting with RISP.  Maybe we should practice it more.  Oh wait, you can’t do that.  I think we have finally proved that what the Twins did last year was almost entirely luck.  Its unfortunate, but I think our increased (or at least seemingly increased, I haven’t looked at the stats) walk totals will help us greatly.  Especially now that Cuddyer is heating up, and Crede seems to be turning a corner. 

Brendan Harris needs more at bats.  If Gardy is going to play Tolbert as the regular second baseman, at least don’t bat him second.  Have a terrible hitter breaking up our best hitters is probably one of the worst ideas ever.  Similar to Napoleon’s “I can invade Russia during the winter” idea.  Or Chamberlain’s “Sure Hitler, you can have the Sudetenland back”.  Yes, I just compared two of the greatest political and military failures in history to Ron Gardenhire batting Matt Tolbert second.  Deal with it.

Leave your suggestions for Perkins rotation replacements in the comments.  Please, no more discussion of the Yankee series.  Let’s just go to Chicago and kick some White Sox ass.

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That was certainly a tough spot for Gardy in the eighth inning on Saturday afternoon’s game. Blackburn had looked good, getting through seven innings and giving up just a three run homer to Mark Teixeira,* and we’d just rallied to take the lead 4-3.

* Does anyone else think Teixeira is really dialing up his game against the Twins? He’s hit .369/.416/.653 in his career against the Twins, which is the third best he’s done against any other team. (After the Nationals and the Indians.) The reason for that can’t be Gomez, that was too recent. However, given how quick Teixeira was to explode at Gomez about something that was neither of their fault and was just part of the game, there may be a pre-existing issue here. I wonder if he blames us for not taking him first overall? Some baseball players have been mistreated … but, like people, some of them are just jerks.

Blackburn had already thrown 98 pitches, but with the knowledge that the bullpen is simply awful, Gardy couldn’t in good conscience bring in a reliever. Unfortunately, Blackburn surrendered a run in the 8th to tie the game, wasting the rally and his strong start.

I appreciate the fact that he disregarded the almighty 100 pitch count and left the starter out there for an extra inning. But we really shouldn’t have to do that. This demonstrates the fact that Gardy has realized that we simply don’t have an 8th inning reliever right now, and it’s found yet another way to cost us a game.

After extending Guerrier to another 2 inning outing,* we had to go to Breslow. He managed to record an out in the 10th, which was a minor miracle, but he couldn’t do the same in the 11th. He walked Teixeira and gave up a walkoff home run to A-Rod. There’s a reason that when Breslow comes in I immediately say “Well, here comes a walk and a home run.” And it’s because when he comes in, he gives up a walk and a home run.

* As I wrote the other day, we can’t keep using Guerrier like this. He looked good in those 2 innings, but this kind of thing is what wrecked his arm — and possibly his career — in 2008. If the plan is just to ride him until he blows out his shoulder and then cast him aside, then fine, but I don’t think that’s what we should be doing.

Another thing I said when Breslow came in was that for some reason, Gardy was still using our relievers as if it’s wise to use a pitcher for one batter in an extra inning game. He came in to face Damon, and I thought it was simply inconceivable to have him face Teixeira and Rodriguez, given that they’re both right handed power bats … and Breslow sucks. Again, it’s a tough spot.

Frankly, I wanted to be able to write about Mauer and Morneau today. This is the second time this season that they’ve both homered in consecutive games. While I think that’s awesome, we’re having serious OBP problems in the 2-hole — all five of the home runs the Twins have hit in this series have been solo shots. That’s pretty bad.

The Twins have come close to beating their New York curse in each of the first two games of the series, and each time have come up painfully short. Let’s see what they can do this afternoon.

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This post was supposed to be about Justin Morneau hitting two home runs on his birthday.

It was supposed to be about Mauer getting his fifth homer, which he didn’t do last year until July 12.

It was supposed to be about Liriano struggling but battling through command problems to get through 6 innings while giving up only one run.

Instead, it’s about our two new Delmons in the outfield, our new nemesis, and a blown save by Nathan.

Crain pitched the 7th inning, and actually looked pretty good until the Twins’ new nemesis — Brett Gardner — came to the plate and blooped a single down the left field line. Denard Span ran toward it, then slowed down at the last second and didn’t make much of an attempt to field it, just flailing his glove at the ball lamely as it scooted on by him. He then overshot by several feet and bounced against the wall, despite the fact that he was moving slowly to begin with. He Delmoned* Gardner’s single into an inside the park home run. Crain then fell apart, and had to be replaced by Mijares, who barely got out of the inning.

* I like this verb. I’m going to start using it.

It wouldn’t have been so bad … we ended up taking a 4-2 lead into the 9th. But Gardner led off that inning too, and lined a single to right center. Gomez for some reason just slapped the ball as he ran past it, leaving Cuddyer to hunt down the immobile ball sitting near the warning track and get it back into the infield. Gomez had played Gardner’s single into a triple.

Nathan couldn’t get anybody out. We lost the game 5-4 after intentionally walking Robinson Cano (for some reason) so we could face Melky Cabrera. Nathan threw 27 pitches, after having thrown a lot of innings over the past week. He probably needs a couple of days off, so hopefully we can win big a couple of times.*

* Heh. Yeah right.

In case you wanted to know what a game turning against us once we have it in the bag looks like, here’s a picture:

Games like this feel devastating, and seem like they should be right up on the list of painful losses. But all losses are painful, and we’ve pulled out some unlikely wins ourselves over the last few days. That kind of thing tends to even out, and this time it just happened rather quickly. These games will happen. It hurts, but we just have to come out the next day and play better. The team simply can’t afford to get down right now.

Though it’d be nice to start winning in New York.

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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.

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Clete Thomas should know better than to try and rob Joe Mauer twice in one game.  In an unusual display of power so far, Mauer has blasted 4 homers so far this season.  Which is excellent. 

The Mauer and Crede homers gave Kevin Slowey a nice lead to work with for most of his 6 innings.  He only gave up the one run but struggled.  He seemingly couldn’t get the leadoff man out.  Slowey threw 98 pitches in 6 innings, so everyone knew Gardy wasn’t going to let him out there for the 7th.  Instead he brought in Jesse Crain because he hadn’t given up a homer all year, the only pitcher to accomplish that feat.  Well apparently he got lonely in that club so he served one up to someone named Jeff Larish.  He also threw 11 pitches, only 4 were for strikes.  FOUR!  What the hell is that?

As was the case in the weekend series, the Twins drew lots of walks.  7 in this game.  The only people who didn’t draw a walk were Span (which is a surprise), Young (which isn’t) and Crede.  Cred had a homer and Span had two hits, so its OK.  

Mauer had another superhuman game.  Was 2-3 with a homer (almost 2) 2 RBI, 1 run, and a walk.  His average now sits at an even 500.  Looks as if he got his revenge on the Tigers for playing poorly against them last week.

Outside of Crain the bullpen look fine.  Mijares got some big outs, as did Guerrier.  Nathan looked excellent as always while pitching a perfect ninth.

One criticism is I would like for us to cut down on strikeouts while we increase our walk totals.  The team struck out a total of 8 times, including 2 each by Span and Tolbert.

Tonight we face the man formally known as D-Train.  Hopefully we can tee off on him early and often.  He was on the DL with “anxiety” problems.  Translate that as inability to get anyone out.   Hopefully Harris is in the lineup tonight.  Dick and Bert interviewed him from the dugout last night and I commend him for not wanting to go Kyle Lohse on people while losing playing time to Punto, Casilla and Tolbert. 

Is anyone else frustrated that Gardy has turned Gomez into nothing more than a late inning defensive replacement for Young?  I like Delmon more than most people, probably more than anyone (here is a piece by intelligent firegardy.com reader thrylos98.)  Gomez has too much damn potential to be rotting away on a bench to get at most 4 at bats a week.

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