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The Bullpen
by CSF
Staff
12-05-2006
There was a quote by Indian's GM
Mark Shapiro in recent days:
"We've been clear [using an
in-house candidate] is not something we're looking to do,"
Shapiro said. "As time goes on during the season, it's possible.
But from the outset here we've said we'll provide some external
alternatives."
This was
in regards to a question about other teams going with a young
player in the closer role, trying to catch lightning in a
bottle. Bobby Jenks from the White Sox and Adam Wainwright
(Cardinals) were examples. The Indians view the experiment of
Fausto Carmona and Tom Mastny in the 2006 season as examples of
trying and failing.
Well,
first of all, did they really try like those other teams did?
Consider the history of Fausto Carmona and Tom Mastny. Carmona
(21 yrs old), with about a half year in at AAA, had never
pitched out of the bullpen until he was pressed into duty there
after the injuries and poor performance of pitchers like Rafael
Betancourt, Guillermo Mota, Danny Graves, and others. When the
Indians did move him there, after Sabathia came back and took
his temporary starting rotation spot, he was barely used -
pitching an inning here and there in non pressure situations.
This led many people, including apparently the Indians brain
trust, to assume he was doing well in a setup role.
A few
weeks before the Indians decided to trade Bob Wickman, Carmona
started to see more pressure situations near the back end of
games. One, I recall, was in New York against the Yankees. He
got out of it, but not without struggling mightily with his
control. This problem of Carmona's had been growing as the year
had gone on to anyone paying attention. He was overthrowing more
and more, in the process getting out of his mechanics, and the
ball was all over the place. He was, if not walking guys,
getting behind in counts repeatedly. It all came to a head when
he was handed the closer's role after the Wickman trade. He went
into meltdown mode in extreme pressure situations - one in
Fenway facing Ortiz & Ramirez, which eventually led to the
Indians backing him out of that role and trying other players.
Which
leads to Tom Mastny. Mastny, although older (25), had little
bullpen experience until this year, where he pitched 38 innings
for AAA Buffalo and 24 IP in AA Akron. He had good numbers in
Buffalo: 38 IP, 46 K, 16 BB, 0 HR, but nothing earth shattering
given his age for that level. The previous combined year in A
Kinston & AA Akron he did a little of both - start & relieve. So
while he had much more bullpen experience than Carmona (who had
none), and showed signs of dominance given the K/IP numbers, he
still was a little older for each level he pitched at. Time
would tell if his stuff was good enough to repeat that at the ML
level.
The main
problem with the Mastny experiment was not that the Indians
tried him in the closer role - he was a good candidate for it.
The problem was that they waited too long - should never have
went with Carmona to begin with, then at the first sign of
trouble they yanked him out of the role. Here was the timeline:
around
July 19th, 2006: Wickman was traded to Atlanta and Carmona is
put in the closer role. Carmona can't handle it and I am still
amazed that anyone feigns surprise at this development.
August
19th-September 5th: Mastny gets his first save on the 19th and
pitches very well in this role for the next 2 1/2 weeks: 9 IP, 6
hits, 3 BB, 9 K, 1 R.
September
8th is Mastny's first bad outing, a blown save against Chicago.
He doesn't pitch again until almost a week later.
September
14 & 15: Two more bad appearances.
September
22: After another week off, the 22nd is his worst appearance,
not getting out of an inning and giving up 3 runs.
Mastny
did not pitch again the rest of the year - another 10 days.
What is
interesting here in regards to Mastny is that around the 8th of
September, Matt Miller was coming back from injury and put in
the bullpen to get innings. Around this time also, Fernando
Cabrera starting pitching more as he had improved over the last
month or so. It is confusing as to why Eric Wedge did not have
Mastny pitch for almost a week after his first bad outing. What
is obvious looking at the game logs is that he was starting to
work Cabrera & Betancourt especially into the later parts of the
game. After Mastny's last bad outing the Indians went almost
exclusively with Betancourt the last 10 days.
So what
does that tell us about these two players - Carmona & Mastny?
Carmona is a starter, always has been, and shouldn't be moved to
a less valuable bullpen spot until every opportunity is
exhausted in tapping his starting potential. And if he is moved
to the bullpen eventually, he needs to gain some experience
first, preferably in the minors, then a 6th/7th inning role and
so on. Mastny, on the other hand, showed much promise in a
bullpen role, at the very least a back end guy and maybe even a
closer candidate. He deserves a real opportunity there.
The
problem for him, and more importantly for the Indians, is the
helter skelter way they develop young pitchers. It is as if they
do not know what they have and if the player doesn't immediately
show dominant ability they kick them aside for the next thing to
try. They have no patience whatsoever with young pitching. The
manager is a problem too - just call it a gut feeling, but I get
the impression he has certain preconceived notions about
veterans and younger players/rookies. I believe that if
Betancourt and Cabrera hadn't been so awful earlier in the year,
they would have been given the first shot at closing and most
people would have never heard of Tom Mastny.
Another
complication in all of this is this whole taking young starters
and converting them to relievers. If you ever read any of these
guys' comments, you can tell they do not like switching roles
like this. There are a multitude of reasons, some of which
include:
A) this
will effect future dollar earnings in a big way down the road
B) the
chances for injury increase with the switching of work load,
days pitched, innings
C) player
development, whether that be refining certain pitches or working
on a third one gets shut down since they will not be throwing
enough pitches/innings to work on these things.
D) if the
player isn't already aware of these things, you can be sure
their agent will inform them.
So it can
be a touchy situation in even the best case scenario where a
starter is a little older and has already failed multiple times
at starting in the minors. Put an extremely young guy like
Carmona, who was rated the Indians #1 pitching prospect to start
the 2006 season in that role and even if effective I am not sure
how happy he will be and for how long. Most of them will not say
anything in the press because with the huge egos involved among
the coaches and front office staff they will send them back to
the minors in a heartbeat. And even a meaningless middle relief
role in the majors is worth $350K/year compared to a starter in
the minors at 25K/year. For these guys that's the difference
between being poor and upper middle class in America. For the
Latin players they can not only live well here but set up their
families well in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and so on.
As an
example, Jason Davis is one who has/had the stuff to be a front
of the rotation starter until the Indians rushed him and then
started experimenting with him in bullpen roles after he
struggled in 2004. He's been back and forth, majors to minors &
back, doing the starting/bullpen/starting/bullpen dance. Davis
hadn't said a word until this year where he admitted he didn't
like it and at this point would be happy if they just kept him
in the bullpen from now on. It is interesting to note that the
Indians no longer have options on Davis and will either have to
keep him on the ML club or lose him to another team in 2007 so
he probably felt they couldn't hurt him for voicing his opinion.
This
background is why I think the Indians gave the closer job to
Fausto Carmona. I think they knew he probably wasn't thrilled
with going to the bullpen and maybe used a possible future
lucrative closer job as a carrot. And when Wickman was traded,
what were they going to say to him? Carmona did not say anything
in the press at the time, other than he would do whatever the
team wanted. But when they stopped the experiment late in the
year and had him get a few starts he offered that he was happier
starting. A similar situation happened this year in Chicago
where the White Sox took another good starting prospect -
Brandon McCarthy and used him in the bullpen. Kenny Williams had
this to say this off season about that situation:
link
If White Sox general manager Ken Williams does not trade a
starting pitcher from his current rotation, he was adamant on
Monday that pitcher Brandon McCarthy would start the season back
in Class AAA Charlotte and not in the bullpen for a second
straight year.
''One year of the bullpen, that gives you one year of a
teaching tool, a little bit of something you can grow and hang
your hat on,'' Williams said. ''Two years, now I'm affecting
whether or not [McCarthy] will be an effective starter, and
that's two years of not using his entire repertoire and keeping
the strength and stamina and the core built up to where he's an
effective starter. It's not fair to him.''
Compare Williams' approach to
that of Mark Shapiro, who said in regards to Carmona moving
forward, the Indians will use him in a way that best benefits
the team in 2007, even if that means a middle relief or setup
role. And furthermore, this is the same Mark Shapiro who, during
an in game interview this past season, said it was a waste of
Carmona's talent to use him in the bullpen unless he was a
closer only.
Talk about mixed messages and
then settling on the one that is not in the long term interests
of the team. You have got to wonder at this point how high of an
opinion the players have of the Indian's organization.
Moving on
to the other pitchers mentioned in comparison ... Bobby Jenks
finished this year with an ERA around 4, not exactly great for a
shut down closer, yet you don't hear anything about the White
Sox being in the market for a new one. Probably because they
realize he had 41 saves and even good closers will blow saves on
average 1+ a month. Jenks had 2 blown saves and a loss in
September alone. Jenks has a similar history to Mastny as far as
age, bullpen experience, and numbers in the minors. In this
comparison the White Sox not only gave Jenks a legitimate shot
but are staying with their guy while the Indians are out buying
piles of mediocre veteran arms with spotty ML records and known
injury issues. At this point, it doesn't look like Mastny is
going to have any bullpen role, let alone a shot at closing, in
2007.
Adam
Wainwright (25 years old) does not have the same history as
Jenks and Mastny and at this time isn't a closer candidate for
St. Louis. He's basically a failed starter in the minor leagues,
hitting a wall with back to back Jeremy Guthrie like seasons at
AAA. But even the Cardinals did not throw just him into a high
pressure closer's role. That role was already taken by the
veteran Jason Isringhausen. Wainwright started the year in a
middle relief role and ended up in some save (3 total saves)
situations towards September only because of injury to
Isringhausen. When Isringhauen comes back at the start of the
year, Wainwright will not be the Cardinal's closer.
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