Ollie Stays Put

Oliver Perez resigned with the Mets today for 36 mil over 3 years. The bottom line is the Mets are a better with him than without him. The lenght of the contract and the money is a fair deal for both sides. The Mets rotation is now Johan, Maine, Perez, Pelfrey and either Redding, Garcia or Niese. Overall its not bad. But after Johan their are questions about everyone else. As for Perez he is inconsistent. Saying Perez is inconsistent is like saying Shakespeare can write. Perez has terrific stuff. And any 27 year old lefty who can throw 90 will garner interest. So lets look objectively at Perez. The good is he is capable of throwing unhittable stuff at any time. When he is on few lefties are better. But his main problem is twofold. Last season he averaged close to 5 walks a game. That figure makes it very difficult to be a consistent winner. But even looking past the 5 walks Perez tends to be wild in the strike zone. When he gets behind too often he'll throw a pitch with terrible location which turns into a longball. Which brings us to Perez's second problem. Ollie is a flyball pitcher and when he makes mistakes they tend to cost him runs. Less walks and better control can turn him in a allstar. An interesting thing to look for early in the season will be how will Citi Field play? If its like Shea and is a pitchers park Ollie will be more valuable but if the ball carries it could spell trouble.

How Do You Spell Releif Part 3

Over the past two blog entries I have talked about relief pitching. The first essay told of my disgust how bullpens are managed today. And in part 2 I went over a quick history of bullpen usage in MLB. This morning in the final part of this series I want to compare usage levels of todays best with yesterdays best and make a final plea to reason.

I have two main gripes with bullpen usage now. The first is how much these guys are used. Simply put closers today are babied. While I'm certain teams will tell you since these guys are now highly paid we need to carefully manage their workload. So my question to those guys is does only having your best relieve pitcher pitch 1 inning 3 to 4 times a week prevent injury? While I'm no doctor I can say with virtual certainty teams are not preventing injury to closers with such limited work loads. Over the past few seasons we've seen injuries to closers with very carefully manged workloads like Billy Wagner, Trevor Hoffman and Brad Lidge. If you go back into history and go to what I call the Golden Age of Relievers those guys pitched much more and most of the successful ones had long careers. The injury rate of relievers in the 70s did not seem to be any worse than today. So if you throw out the injury argument why are those guys only facing 3-4 hitters per game? Yesterday I had some free time and decided to do a little experiment. I choose 5 of the most successful closers of the last 5 years, Mariano Rivera, Francisco Rodriguez, Johnathan Papelbon, Joe Nathan and Jose Valverde. I looked at the average number of batters they faced per appearance. I took numbers for the last 5 years(3 for Papelbon and 4 for Jenks). And then I did the same thing for 5 closers of the golder era. For these guys I picked the 5 year period they were most effective(they had to be 5 consecutive seasons). The 5 guys I selected were Bruce Sutter, Goose Gossage, Dan Quizenberry, Rollie Fingers and Mike Marshall.

Today Average Batters Faced Per Appearance

M. Rivera 4.30

K-Rod 4.46

J. Pabelbon 3.94

J. Nathan 3.92

B. Jenks 4.45

It does not take a genius to figure out that if you are averaging about 4 batters faced per outing you are probably getting 3 outs and allowing 1 baserunner. Which makes sense because these guys WHIPs are around 1

Golden Age

B. Sutter 6.59

G. Goosage 7.02

D. Quizenberry 6.99

R. Fingers 6.65

M. Marshall 7.93

Looking at the above chart shows are very large difference. Also think about the 3 under 7 Sutter, Fingers and especially Quiz were EXTREME groundball pitchers who probably threw alot of double play balls which would suppress the batters faced per appearance a bit. As a group the above averaged facing 7.10 batters per appearance while todays closers faced 4.21. Their average appearance is 41% shorter than the 70s group. The 3 extra batters translates into 1 inning when a team does not have to use a middle of the road reliever. And if a team like the Red Sox have a key part of the game in the 6th or 7th they can bring in J-Pap to preserve the lead or not let the game get away. Let him go 2 or 3 and then they can have Manny Delcarmen finish or Francona can play matchups. If they are up by 2 or 3 runs at that point the chances of surrendering the lead is minute. Make Sense.

The other area that I find illogical is when to use your best bullpen weapon. Only bringing closers in the 9th if your up by 1-3 runs is great if they are on your fantasy team but makes no sense in real life. Like I said earlier the idea should be to win games NOT get your closers saves. Teams can win or lose games during all 9 innings not just the 9th. While planning ahead an inning or two is critical in baseball. Recognizing the key point in a game is also critical. If a manager botches innings 6-8 the closer becomes a non-factor in the 9th. If your closer is really your best reliever shouldn't he be in during the most important parts of the game? Knowing that each game is different. This crap that its important for all members of the bullpen to know exactly what their role is garbage to me. These guys are all highly skilled very competitive people or they wouldn't by Major Leaguers. Their job is simply to get hitters out whether its the 2nd, 5th, 7th or 9th inning. Teams are missing the boat/ Think about this. If you owned a business and had to send one of your salesman out on a critical sales call that can mean big bucks who are you going to send? I would think your best salesperson. Another smaller example is when I write the schedule for the store its no accident my best employees get the most hours while my worst employees get the least amount of hours. Bullpens should be the same way. Out of 30 teams last season only 6 had their save leader throw the most innings. And oddly enough two of those six teams leaders were guys that lost the closers role at some point in the season.

So thats my case. I'm sure its more than most of you have ever thought of managing the bullpen. So can things change? Sure. But we will need one team to rip up the "book" and try something different. You just do things the way they used to be done when it was done correctly. Younger fans who don't know any better and older broadcasters know don't know any better will yell and scream. All it takes is one team. But if there is something we all know about baseball is it does not like change.

This 3 part series was aimed at making everybody think a little. I really hoped you enjoyed it. Comments are very much looked foward to.

How Do You Spell Relief Part 2

Yesterday I wrote about my frustration regarding the way teams use their bullpens in 2009. I won't be redundant except to say I firmly believe teams lose games every year because of irrational use of relief pitchers. So how did we get to this point of insanity? Like any good student of history can tell you we can't know where we are going until we know where we've been. I took some time yesterday reviewing the saves leaders from 1900 to the present. I'm going to break it down into 5 eras. I'll talk about bullpen usage in that era and quote some numbers you might find interesting.

1900-1925-This is the era where starting pitchers were expected to finish what they started. If the starter did not go the distance there was a problem. There were a couple of reasons for this. 1.Rosters were much smaller-the typical team only carried less players than they do today 2.Since teams had less players the relievers were either starters who did not start that day or if the team was way behind they used the guys who were not good enough to start. There was no rotation like we know today.3.Also pitchers in the early 20th century as a rule were much better hitters than later. Most pitchers were as good hitters as the 2 or 3 bench players teams used. So for the above reason saves were relatively rare events. 4.The term pitch count was unheard of for another 80 years. How come I can't imagine John McGraw going out to Christy Mathewson and saying your pitch count is up to 120 its time to come out. Among the league leaders in saves during this era were HOFers Ed Walsh, 3 Finger Brown, Cy Young and Iron Joe McGinnity who led the league 3 times. I went through each decade and figured out the average amount of saves the league leader had.

1900-09 4.5 Frank Arellanes 8

1910-19 7.1 Chief Bender and Three Finger Brown 13 As a foot note when both of these pitchers saved 13 games they each won 21 the same season.


1925-1949-While starting pitchers were still expected to pitch complete games the idea of relieve pitchers was starting to take shape. HOF pitchers only led the league in saves twice after 1931. Carl Hubbell in 1934 with 8 and Dizzy Dean in 1936 with 11. A few interesting things jump out during that era 1.In the 12 year period between 1923-34 the Washington Senators had the league leader in saves 9 years. Firpo Mayberry 5x, Jack Russell 2x, Alan Russell 1x and Garland Braxton once. None of the above pitchers are household names. During this period the Senators only won one pennant in 1924 and were mediocre for the rest of the time. Also oddly enough over the 12 years they had 4 managers. I'd love to know who in the Senator organization had this idea. Also during this period we see the first Yankee relief star, Johnny Murphy.From 1938-42 Murphy led the AL in saves 4 out of 5 years. While he must have had more opportunities than any one else its telling the best team in baseball decided to devote someone full time to finish games. With that said his saves totals for those 4 years were 11,19,15 and 11. Hardly eye popping numbers today.

1920-29 8.0 Firpo Mayberry 22

1930-39 10.2 Johnny Murphy 19

1940-49 13.5 Joe Page 27

1950-1975-This is the era when we started to see every team see the value of having 1 or 2 relieve specialists. By the 60s these guys were very valued members of the team. Above you see Joe Page has 27 saves for the Yankeees in 1949 but I carefully chose 1950 to start this era because in 1950 Jim Konstanty of the Whiz Kids Phillies had the best year of any releiver in history up to that point. Konstanty won MVP for his work in the pennant winning year. He won 16 games, saved 22 and finished an amazing 62 games. His season must have revolutionized baseball. During this era some specialists especially in the NL started popping up like Al Brazie of the Cards, Clem Labine of the Dodgers, Roy Face of the Pirates and Phil Regan of the Cubs. All these guys led the NL in saves twice. What I found a bit odd is no pitcher during the 60s in the AL led the league in saves more than once. But as we reached the end of this era you needed over 30 saves to lead the league. As John Hiller had 38 for the Tigers in 1973 and Sparky Lyle had 35 in 1972 for the Yankees.

1950-59 17.8 Ellis Kinder 27

1960-69 25.5 Ron Perranowski 31

1970-79 30.6 John Hiller 38



1975-1990-To me this is the golden age of relievers. While guys did not rack up 50 save seasons they were used correctly. Remember the concept of fireman. Your best relieve pitcher comes in to "put out a fire" Think back to the 70s. The Yankees never waited until the 9th inning to put in Sparky Lyle. Goose Gossage did not become a 3 out pitchers until the 90s. It was nothing for guys like Lyle, Sutter, Gossage, McGraw,Fingers and Quizenberry to pitch 2 or 3 innings. That was the norm not the exception. These guys were used MUCH more effectively than today. Managers did not manage by who would be in the game in a save situation. They managed with 1 over laying thought which was how can I best win this game. And the theory that relief pitchers should not throw too many innings is proven false as many firemen from the 70s had very long careers. Some pitching into their 40s. For those of us older than 20 think back to your childhood can you imagine managers not using their best in a tie game. The thought would be absurd. Mike Marshall in LA used to come in at all points late in the game. And I can remember whoever was managing the Mets never waited until the 9th to bring in Tug McGraw.

1980-89 37.4 Dan Qizenberry and Dennis Eckersley 45




1990-Present-While I can't be certain I believe Tony LaRussa is to blame for the current state of relievers. I think he turned Dennis Eckersley from a fireman to a closer. And like most ideas that seem good at the time they tend to get perverted over time. Eckersley was successful as a closer. But he also would have been successful if he was used like the firemen of the 70s. Eck was just lights out. By the way oddly enough thought the 80s no AL pitcher lead the league in saves more than once. In part 3 I'll talk alot more about where we are now. But rest assured somewhere between 1989 and now things have gone horrible wrong. Save numbers are up. But logic, common sense and good baseball are down.


1990-89 44.0 Bobby Thigpen 57

2000-08 46.3 Francisco Rodriguez 62

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.

Garland to D-Backs

Jon Garland signed a 1 year deal for over 6 mil to pitch for Arizona. First things first. I don't like Jon Garland. Its nothing personal I'm sure he's a nice guy. Its the kind of pitcher Garland is that I don't like. That is the soft tossing hurler who doesn't strike out many hitters. The margin for error for guys like Garland is much smaller than guys who strikeout alot of hitters. Garland can be a poster child for why as a fan you can't trust win-loss record as a way be evaluate pitchers. Since 2002 Garland has a record of 96-74. Pretty good huh? Now lets look a little deeper. In the past three years he is only 56/98 in quality starts for a very average 57%. In 7 out of the past 8 years his ERA was over 4.22. For his career he only had 1 season when his WHIP was under 1.3. Statistical studies have consistently showed if you don't average 5 Ks per 9 innings its very tough to win on a consistent basis. In my humble opinion he has let a charmed life who may not be able to continue his winning ways. For the D-Backs to invest 6 million dollars they must have really wanted him. My knowledge of Arizona is probably better than it should be. I admit I stayed up way past my bed time watching them so I can hear Mark Grace announce games. As of today Arizona is as good as any one in the worst division in baseball. Webb and Haren are fantastic. Doug Davis is solid when cancer free. The back of the rotation with Max Scherzer and Yusmeiro Petit are talented but questionable. So I can see why Josh Byrnes wanted to get Garland. I don't think its a great move but its understandable. The key to Arizona season will be how their young hitters mature. If the combination of Justin Upton, Stephen Drew, Connor Jackson and Mark Reynolds hit like they are capable they should contend Jon Garland or not.

Player For Sale-CHEAP

When John Steinbeck wrote the Winter of Discontent he did not have baseball in mind. But the way this winter is playing out he might as well. With about three weeks until pitchers and catchers there are still a lot of quality free agents still unsigned. Except for the collusion years baseball has seen nothing like this. I remember early in this off season when some baseball people said the sluggish economy will not effect baseball. Well they could not have been more wrong. While the Yankees spend huge dollars the rest of the league has scaled back spending. Except for the long term contracts given to young players buying out arbitration years like the one given to Zack Grienke today veterans are finding the free agent waters very disappointing. I'm certain players will begin to sign in mass in the next week or so. But since really nothing has happened what I thought I'd do is list one player from each position and a couple of pitchers and give them to the club that makes the most sense. THESE ARE NOT PREDICTIONS ON WHERE I THINK THEY ARE GOING!!!!!!!!!! Only a fun little exercise on if it was a perfect world. And as we all know the world is rarely perfect.

C-Jason Veritek-This is easy. Veritek belongs on the Red Sox. He is the heart and soul of that team. Even though he only hit 220 last year he is more valuable to them than any other team. I'd be stunned if he ends up anywhere else.

1B-Kevin Millar-Millar belongs with the Angels. With Tex in New York Kendry Morales is the starter. Millar would give the Angels depth if Morales does not produce. Millar is also a great locker room guy.

2B-Orlando Hudson-O-Dog belongs on the Mets. I know the problems about no one wanting to take Castillo's contract but the Mets are in a position where they should not have to worry about a extra couple of million in payroll. Either release Castillo or keep him for pinch running or depth. Hudson saves runs on D and like Millar is a great clubhouse guy. Something the Mets really need.

SS-Orlando Cabrera-Cabrera goes to the Reds. If we learned anything from 2008 if you have very good starting pitching and good defense improvements are possible. The Reds have Volquez, Cueto, Harang, Arroyo and Bailey. Also a young lineup. Cabrera would plug up their biggest hole.

3B-Joe Crede-I'm sending Crede to Minnesota. The Twins have no real 3rd baseman. Last year they got by with a mix and match of Buscher, Lamb and Harris. Crede would add power and if he still is not healthy at least the Twins can go back to the trio I mentioned.

OF-Manny Ramirez-This one is also easy. Manny belongs with the Dodgers. While LA has some excellent young pitching the offense is not very threatening without Manny. With Manny the Dodgers are probably the favorites in the NL West. Besides doesn't Manny belong in LA??

OF-Adam Dunn-Dunn goes to the Nats. Washington only hit 117 HRs last year. And Nats park looks to be a good hitters park. Dunn will hit his usual 40 and probably more.

OF-Bobby Abreu-Abreu goes to the Giants. With the improvements the Giants have made all they need is more offense to compete. Since Manny's staying in LA Abreu is the best plan B. With that rotation and a little more run scoring contention is not that far fetched.

SP-Oliver Perez-The Mets need him. Signing Freddie Garcia and Tim Redding does nothing to solve the Mets need for a front line starter. Perez is Jekyll and Hyde and I don't think the Mets should go beyond 3 years but unfortunately if they are going to contend they need to upgrade the starting rotation

SP-Ben Sheets-Sheets goes to Texas. The Rangers had the worst staff in baseball. The team president Nolan Ryan is probably the teams best pitcher now. They could afford to take a risk with Sheet's health because they have nothing better. Besides Sheets is from Texas and we've seen this off season how that has affected players decisions.

By the way for any new readers WELCOME!!!!!!!! I hope you enjoy the blog. I can't stress enough how much I love comments from people. So I urge you guys to comment on anything you need.

So Long Jeff

With a total lack of interesting things going on on the Hot Stove I figured I spend some time reviewing the career of recently retired 2nd baseman Jeff Kent. Like I said in the past when I grow up I'd love to be a baseball historian. I'm sure every era in baseball history had players like Kent that will be appreciated more throught the prism of history than when they played. Kent was never a favorite with the press because he never said very much. Also playing on the west coast for most of his career probably hurt his national exposure. To me the most striking stat of his was Kent hit 351HRs in his career. Thats a full 74 more than the second place player at his position, Ryne Sandberg. I don't have stats in front of me but I don't know if any other player has hit 20% more dingers than anyone else at his position. Kent drove in over 1500 runs averaging over 100 RBIs over 162 games. He made the All Star team 5 times and captured the 2000 MVP. In addition something to think about is Kent played almost his entire career in very difficult hitting parks, AT&T, Shea and Dodger Stadiums. Baseball Reference lists a players top comp and oddly enough between age 30-33 Kent's top comp every year was Joe Gordan the recently voted in HOF. His detractors will point to his below average defense at 2nd. Thats fair. And all his big years were a direct product of hitting after Barry Bonds. The bottom line is even if he saw alot of pitches to hit he had to hit them. I could honestly say watching him all those years I never thought he was HOF material. But the body of work may say otherwise. Definitely not a first ballot but maybe down the road. So where does he rank with the all time second baseman here is my list of the top 10 second baseman ever

1.Rogers Hornsby-The guy averaged over 400 over 5 years.

2.Joe Morgan-Best 2nd baseman I ever saw. Did it all. Pompous announcer

3.Eddie Collins-Cornerstone of $100,000 infield of A's dynasty of 1911-14 And NOT one of the dirty Black Sox

4.Nap Lajoie-338 career average. At the turn of the century the Indians were called the Naps after him.

5.Jackie Robinson-His career numbers would have been even better if he was given the chance earlier.

6.Rod Carew-A 328 career hitter with 7 career batting titles. Not a great fielder but he sure could hit.

7.Ryne Sandberg-Known for his bat but earned 9 Gold Gloves. He even stole over 50 bases one year

8.Charlie Gehringer-Part of the G-Men with the Tigers in the 30s with Hank Greenberg and Goose Goslin. Think Killer B's with Gehringer being much better than Biggio.

9.Fankie Frisch-Player/Manager of the Gas House Gang Cards of 1934. Played on 8 Pennant Winners

10.Roberto Alomar/Joe Gordan/Bobby Doerr/Jeff Kent-I know its cheating. Take your pick.

I believe Chase Utley has a very good shot at this list if he stays healthy.

As always your thoughts and comments are not only welcomed they are STRONGLY encouraged.