Marchman On Closer-By-Committee

Good read about the closer-by-committee situations currently working in Atlanta and Tampa. Don't expect it anytime soon in Flushing, but I particularly liked this from the article:

"As the story goes, a team that declines to slot its pitchers into rigid roles is supposed to suffer all sorts of problems, as anguished relievers find themselves unable to prepare and mentally broken by the idea of pitching with the game on the line......a pitcher's job is to get outs whenever the manager asks him to get them rather than to fulfill a certain marquee role."

over 2 years ago James Kannengieser 4 comments 0 recs |

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What? That's preposterous!

Tony LaRussa told me so!

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Jul 10, 2009 5:14 PM EDT reply actions

The problem is

Aside from Frankie’s contract, we don’t have a manager who properly understands situations to begin with. So even if we had a comparable reliever to Frankie (say, a healthy Billy Wagner or a healthy JJ Putz, which me way have soon), I don’t really trust him to divide up the work in the best way anyway. I almost prefer Jerry just assume that the 9th inning is the most important and that he use Frankie there, he’ll screw up less than if he actually tries to use him in more creative ways.

"All energy flows according to the whims of the great magnet

What a fool I was to defy him"

-HST

by Mark Himmelstein on Jul 10, 2009 5:28 PM EDT reply actions