MVN - Most Valuable Network

Isringhausen Takes a Pause to Refresh

This was different, Jason Isringhausen told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Joe Strauss, after a Friday night gig in which he acquired a somewhat unique and dubious tandem, the National League’s blown saves leadership (he shares it with the once-impregnable Eric Gagne) in hand with the league leadership in saves consummated.

“I’m just getting sick of embarrassing myself and letting my team down,” Isringhausen told Strauss, after two swift outs on behalf of protecting a 3-2 St. Louis lead turned into this: A single up the pipe by J.J. Hardy. Pinch-hitter Gabe Kapler dumping the proverbial quail into right. A walk to Jason Kendall to set up the proverbial ducks on the pond for Rickie Weeks. Weeks slashing a two-run single to left, and the Milwaukee Brewers taking it wherever they could get it, 4-3.

Isringhausen had a little more to say to Strauss, who isn’t even close to alone in noticing Isringhausen’s current inability to get or stay ahead in counts has robbed him of his deal-sealer, his curve ball.

“We should be five more wins in the win column in my mind, so we should be ahead in first place even more,” Isringhausen continued. “But they can’t keep sending me out there when I’m pitching the way I’m pitching. We’re going to have to figure out some kind of remedy. I’m sure that remedy will give me some time off and get somebody in there that can do a better job right now . . . I’m just pitching like a second grader.”

This wasn’t as it was in 2006, when Isringhausen pitched through hip trouble but finally had to undergo his second hip surgery in two years, leaving rookie Adam Wainwright to step in and close through the postseason, all the way to (do they still call it thus?) the surprising World Series conquest and, for Wainwright, the starting rotation.

Isringhausen himself asked to meet with manager Tony La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan Saturday morning, a meeting that ended with Isringhausen surrendering the role in which he’s pitched since not too long after the Oakland Athletics bagged him in a trade deadline deal from the New York Mets.

(Met fans may remember then-manager Bobby Valentine demurring from moving Isringhausen to the bullpen: he’d once been a glittering Met prospect, one of the touted Generation X young starters who were going to pin the National League’s ears back until all three—Isringhausen, Bill Pulsipher, and Paul Wilson—got pinned themselves by various injuries. Valentine suggested moving Isringhausen to the pen would be like using an Indy car as a taxicab. Who needed an Indy car when you had . . . Armando Benitez?)

There are those who think a player asking to meet with his manager and pitching coach for a temporary change of job might amount to a sudden loss of intestinal fortitude. If there’s a more weighty rock or hard place between which to be caught for a baseball player, such a place escapes me for the moment.

One thinks back to Hideo Nomo, briefly enough a 1998 Met, and struggling enough as a 1998 Met, turning down a stretch drive starting assignment because he didn’t believe his record as it stood had earned him an assignment that important. To this day there are Met fans who think Nomo left his guts somewhere in Los Angeles. To this day, I think words four through nine in the preceding sentence apply to those fans wrongly.

And Isrnighausen himself admitted Saturday morning that his shift in the pen—with Ryan Franklin and Russ Springer likely to share the closing job for the time being, though Franklin has the superior jacket to this point (a 2.00 ERA in nineteen setup gigs, and equal stinginess against lefthanders [.227 BAA] and righthanders [.217])—would be as much a mental break as anything else.

La Russa doesn’t seem to have lost faith even if Isringhausen thinks he needs a mental break from the ninth inning. “He’s still prepared to pitch important innings, but for a while we’ll try to keep him out of the ninth inning,” the boss told reporters. “If we’re playing well, there’s still going to be games where you can’t cherry pick his situations because if we’re playing well, you need your bullpen.”

Such thinking is also called confidence rebuilding. The frazzled second grader and the hardiest man alike need those rebuildings now and then. Not just for the big innings, either.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Catbird, Jason Isringhausen, Ryan Franklin, Russ Springer, St. Louis Cardinals. 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.