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Monday, May 29, 2006
Can this bullpen be saved?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Glenn Hubbard had his hands in mud. It’s part of his job description. Before every game, he grabs a jar of mud — not just any backyard mud but the official stuff from Delran, N.J., where it no doubt comes from someone’s backyard — and rubs up a bag of slick, new baseballs for the bullpen.
“I tried to add some pine tar to the mud once,” the Braves’ coach said, in a tone that would suggest this was excerpted from BALCO testimony. “But it didn’t really work.”
Given the Braves’ malfunctioning bullpen this season, a mixture with super glue might be a better option. Anything to prevent the ball from leaving a reliever’s hand would be progress.
Monday was a rare day for the Braves. They lost to Los Angeles, 12-5. But they made it through a game without a blown save. Celebrate, Atlanta.
Reliever Chad Paronto was punched for a three-run homer in the eighth. But by then John Thompson already had secured a blown start (seven runs in 1 1/3 innings, helped by three walks in front of him and three errors behind him).
With two-thirds of the season to go, the Braves are 27-24, and relatively close to first place. It’s this season’s little miracle. Not often can a team start the day with the National League’s 12th worst bullpen (4.61 ERA) and baseball’s 25th worst save percentage (.520), but still sit north of the Marlins. Or Richmond.
Those two trends can’t co-exist. The players know it. The manager knows it. Certainly, the franchise architect who tried to swing a deal for a closer in the winter, only to be forced to remodel a bullpen on a foundation made of Chris Reitsma, knows it.
We just passed Memorial Day. It’s too early for John Schuerholz to start chugging Red Bull and speed dialing other general managers until 3 a.m. But some things can’t be ignored. When a bullpen has devolved into a closer-by-committee, it doesn’t mean you have three or four really good closers. It means you have none.
“The situation with the bullpen now, even as early as it is, we’re far enough into the season where the body of evidence is there,” said Schuerholz.
Schuerholz doesn’t divulge a whole lot. For him, this was the equivalent of yelling, “My head’s on fire.”
He is looking for help. He is doing so even though Hubbard was willing to take one for the team Monday: “I must be mudding the balls wrong.”
Schuerholz still hopes a closer will emerge from within the franchise, but said: “I would be less than honest if I said we haven’t talked to people [about potential trades], because we have. Calls have been made.”
Problem: There aren’t a lot of good closers in baseball. More teams have none than one, let alone two. This isn’t like swinging a trade for a utility infielder.
“The hardest positions to fill are the positions that are essential to winning — starting pitchers, closers, shortstops and middle-of-the-lineup productive players,” Schuerholz said. “The universe of options is smaller.”
The Braves also are in the midst of being sold from Time Warner to Liberty Media, a situation that often leads to a frozen budget and a handcuffed GM. But Schuerholz said: “I have not had one conversation about that.”
The bullpen has blown 12 of 25 save opportunities. Sometimes the term “save opportunity” can be misleading. A save can be “blown” in the sixth inning. But in the Braves case, there is nothing misleading about what they’ve blown. Reitsma (four blown saves) isn’t the bullpen’s only stick of dynamite; he’s merely the biggest.
Only five teams had a worse save percentage than Atlanta’s entering Monday. Three had the worst three records in baseball: Kansas City (.333 save percentage, 11-37), Florida (.333, 15-33) and Pittsburgh (.500, 16-34). Another was Washington (.500, 21-30). Only Texas had a worse save percentage (.440) than the Braves and a winning record (26-24).
Monday was a departure. Lance Cormier, Oscar Villarreal and Macay McBride allowed only two runs in 6 2/3 innings of relief work, allowing the Braves an abbreviated comeback from 7-0. Then Paronto played the role of Wile E. Coyote in the ninth.
Some things are inevitable. Like — barring help — losing.
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