Among the analytical and Sabermetic community of baseball writers, one issue that generates more scorn per capita than any other topic is Major League organizations’ use of relief pitchers. Central to this criticism are managers, “managing to the save”. Managing to the save means assigning one reliever, in most cases your best, to pitch the last inning of any game where your team is leading by one to three runs. Hence this reliever gets the save.
A long line of writers and analysts have screamed like Al Pacino in Scarface about how this is a misusage of bullpen arms. To summarize a body of work that is vast, precise, and usually unnecessarily cruel; pigeonholing your best pitcher into a role that requires he pitch one inning (and one inning only) at the very end of the game when a save is on the line is not the best way to use your top bullpen arm. The reasoning suggests that there are many instances where using your best reliever earlier in the game during a tight situation - say for example, in the 7th inning of a tie game with the heart of the order coming up, is more valuable. Admittedly, this is a quick and dirty version of the how Major League teams could better utilize their bullpens; but it’s not hard to see that having your closer come in with a three run lead in the bottom of the 9th to face a lineup’s 7-9 hitters is not necessarily getting the most bang for your buck.
Typically, this new type of thinking has been ignored by Major League clubs, who continue to trot their best relief pitcher out in ninth inning save situations. They tend to use this anointed closer regardless of platoon splits or any of the other factors mentioned above. Over the past couple of years however, there have been a few managers on the block that look like they could be interpreted as trying something differently; if you look at it in the right light that is.
To be clear, no manager has come out and said that anything that refers to a more progressive approach to bullpen management. But even if someone is trying to do things differently, why make it into an issue and create a story in the media? Big league managers are in a different position than people looking at the game from a purely analytic role. There is more to lose and people to answer to. With that said, certain managers, like Robin Ventura, Don Mattingly and Joe Maddon have made the “peculiar” decision to appoint someone other than their best reliever as the team’s closer. In the right light, this may suggest that maybe (and it is a big maybe), they are thinking a little differently about bullpen management.
In Chicago, Ventura has chosen to use Hector Santiago in many of the team’s save situations, instead of the harder throwing Matt Thornton and Addison Reed. Using Santiago in a majority of save situations, frees up Reed and Thornton to pitch in higher leverage situations that the game dictates. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, sophomore manager Don Mattingly has chosen to stick with closer Javy Guerra instead of turning the job over to dominating setup man, Kenley Jansen; much to the chagrin of fantasy owners everywhere. Like Ventura and Mattingly, the always forward thinking Joe Maddon has elected to use Fernando Rodney instead of Jake McGee or Joel Peralta. By refraining from committing their best reliever to work the 9th inning, these managers are free to use their most dominant bullpen arms as they see fit.
After Sunday’s game, in which Matt Thornton, not “closer” Hector Santiago, was sent out to pitch the 9th inning, rookie manager Ventura, made comments that could be interpreted in a way that suggest he may be going against the old baseball wisdom of defined bullpen roles. Ventura said the following to Kerry Walls of MLB.com about managing his pen:
"I think it kind of goes with the game and how games are going," Ventura said, "how guys are feeling. I feel like I understand it. It's just more of getting to know your guys and who might need a day and who might not. But the game kind of dictates what happens."
He isn’t coming out and saying that they don’t need a defined closer, but he is suggesting that roles don’t need to be etched in stone.
Some may look at Fernando Rodney, Javy Guerra and Hector Santiago and see ineffective closers. If you’re being optimistic, these closers could mark a changing of the guard in bullpen management. Like a Marxist interpretation of Die Hard, just because you can correlate something, doesn’t make it true, but change happens gradually in baseball, so maybe (and it’s a big maybe), not committing your best relief pitcher to the 9th inning is the first step to getting rid of rigid and defined bullpen roles that allow for a more fluid and ultimately more effective use of relief pitchers.
No comments:
Post a Comment