MVN - Most Valuable Network

As I Was Saying About Closer Usage

Bases loaded, no outs, 8th inning, 2 run lead. Felix Hernandez is clearly out of gas.

To me, this is a perfect time to bring in J.J. Putz. No, he does not get the save. He gets out of the inning, and Brandon Morrow, Mark Lowe, Ryan Rowland-Smith, someone else gets the save.

But the book, as currently written says you don’t bring in your closer unless he is going to close it, and here he is not going to, especially since he struggled last night.

So you leave in Felix one hitter too long, tie up the game, then bring in Brandon Morrow to lose it.

I’m sorry, but the end result for J.J. is the same–either way, he doesn’t get the save. The only difference is that one way, the M’s get the win, the other way they don’t. And I thought that’s what we are playing for.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.