How Do You Spell Relief Part 1

How often has this happened to you? Your watching a game and a manger does something that you just don't get. If you are like me you swear at the TV and wish once and for all they would start to manager with logic instead of blindly following "the book". This happens to me with the way teams manage their bullpen more than any other phase of the game. If you think logically about it the current use of bullpens defy logic. Just so we are all on the same page let me show you what I'm talking about. Every team has a closer. This guy is suppose to be the teams best relief pitcher. BUT you only bring him in if you are ahead in the 9th inning by 1-3 runs. Think about this this valuable commodities role is defined by a statistic!!! And now things are getting even worse. Its not bad enough where you have a closer now we need a setup man to only pitch the 8th. It makes me want to scream!!! Here is a hypothitical scenario. The Mets are playing Philadelphia. they are winning 4-3 in the 6th. The Phils have 1 out and the bases loaded. John Maine the starter has run out of gas. Jerry Manual sees Chase Utley and Ryan Howard coming up. So what does he do? He brings in Pedro Feliciano to pitch to the lefties right. But does this make any sense? Feliciano is either the 3rd or 4th best reliever the Mets have. In this situation with the game on the line WHY should the Mets bring in anything but thier best. If I'm Manual I'm bringing in K-Rod right there and then. I want my best trying to preserve the lead. Not my third best. When K-Rod gets Utley and Howard out he could go one more inning then give the ball to Putz. In other words the most critical part of most games does not happen in the ninth inning. It occurs at some point leading up to the ninth. This point can not be overstated. Baseball is a game of 9 innings all of them having the same value. You don't get extra runs by scoring in the 9th. Many more games are lost in the 6th, 7th and 8th by manger being stubborn than are saved in the 9th by saving their best to only get the last three outs How critical is it to save your best to only get 3 outs when your up by 2 or 3. It drives me nuts why managers won't put in their best guy if the score is tied. Though I did see it every now and then last year. Most teams would rather put in option 3 or 4 in a tied game. I firmly believe ALL teams lose games every year by screwing up how to properly use the pen. I don't know who was the genius who created the closer role but they did smart baseball a huge disservice. In addition whats absolutely drives me nuts is EVERY team does this more or less. God Bless Joe Madden for how he used he Rays relievers after Percival got injured. He probably did the best job or any manger last year handling his pen. Also kudos to Terry Francona for letting Johnathan Papelbon pitch in the 8th inning. So how did we get to this point of madness and where are we going? Thats what the next two entries in this series will be about. Part 2 will be a history of bullpen uses. And part 3 will be a look at bullpen usage in 2009. As usual comments are welcomed more than you know.