What Do You Know?
Dave · April 8, 2008 at 7:52 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Ryan Rowland-Smith does not suck, and despite not being a proven closer, is able to get people out in the 9th inning. Amazing. Maybe we should rethink this whole strict rules of bullpen usage thing?
You gotta love those former AquaSox. Wait a minute; O’Flaherty and Lowe are former AquaSox too. D’oh!
plus he has those cool Closer glasses.
oooh, I do love a minor league broadcaster look-in.
RRS has a pretty sweet array of breaking balls. He’s a good ad hoc closer as any, though I’m guessing he’ll be mostly used as lefty vs. lefty guy this season.
of course EOF doesn’t suck either, but he certainly isn’t starting off on the right foot.
It was nice to see the fastball miss location by about 2 feet and still get the K vs Pena. Most good closers can fire a fastball and miss location (not straight down the middle) and get a swing still.
In another plus, RRS is not Eric Gagne. Gives up another save blowing HR, to USSM endorsed Corey Patterson! Good thing Gagne is a proven closer though. Who cares he has 1/3 of the stuff he use. He won a Cy Young! He must be closer material.
Just like they drew it up in the playbook. Sexson with the clutch hit and RRS with a five out save, which is no mean feet. Papelbon did it once last year. Joe Nathan none. Putz was 5 for 5 which is amazing.
Wow, that was…good, fun to watch. A nice example of how to retire the 9th under 90 mph.
It’s nice to see our ‘pen finally hold a lead. Very good stuff from RRS.
Here is the flaw in your reasoning.
Good thing we waited until we lost a few before we made any changes to our draconian thinking.
10- Sadly, I doubt this was a matter of Maclaren rethinking things. It was probably that EOF was physically unable to pitch after 3 straight days of work so Mac had to grit his teeth and go with the “crappy, unreliable youngin'”.
Does he have crazy eyes under those glasses? I’ve noticed that effective closers seem to have stares that give me the chills. Putz is one of them. Yankees closer Rivera and BoSox closer Papelbon, as well. Is there a “closer” look? Is intimidation one of the secrets?
RRS looked totally fearless. Reminds me of when they finally let JJ close.
Yeah, tonight was cool and kinda reinforces my point from yesterday about not necessarily needing a “closer.” One game does not a career make but maybe we HAVE found Putz’ Putz. (Putz was the understudy while Guardaro was the closer.)
Not sure anyone wants to be known as “Putz’ Putz,” even on the Mariners, but it was sweet watching the Aussie.
Maybe we should trade RRS, Triunfel and Aumont for a proven veteran closer. That way we won’t have to rely on his inexperienced arm to get us through these tough patches. We’re trying to win now, right?
Works for me. While we’re at, let’s trade Lopez and Yuni for Bret Boone and Pokey Reese. and
18-
what?
I think it is silly having this bullpen structure, especially saving your best reliever for the 9th inning, only when there’s a 3 or less run lead. Wouldn’t you rather have your reliever out during the highest pressure situation, which is possibly in the 7th or 8th inning, and then just have someone else cruise through the 9th? I can understand how the idea of the high adrenaline and hitters really focused to possibly rally back, but, wouldn’t you rather have the best reliever help in those high pressure situations to keep your team the lead so they can hold on to the lead by the 9th inning rather than the 2nd or 3rd best reliever?
I reckon the Mariners did this on accident in 2001, which they had Jeff Nelson and Arthur Rhodes pitching those high pressure situations and then have Sasaki cruise through the 9th. Maybe that could’ve possibly been a factor in the 116 wins.
If RRS had blown the game instead, wouldn’t we be reading about how one game is too small of a sample size to judge?
2RS did great. Why he has been riding the pine while EOF has been getting beat down during the first six game is beyond me. People keep making the comment that 2RS has poor Velocity. He throws a 2seemer at 87 and a 4seemer at 92. His curve is from 81 to 76 and has a decent slider at 84-86. 2RS through 2 very nice hammers to Crawford that had great bite. Crawford look totally fooled. He has 4 pitches, through them all for strikes. Looks like a good lefty to me. Yah Sherril was hitting 94 for good movement and did not need more then his 2 pitches, but 2RS looks real good.
EOF, in my opinion, is still a quality lefty arm in the bullpen. Part of his failure was due to overuse by Mac. He should be OK by season’s end. 2RS was good, and had he failed last night, my opinion of him wouldn’t change. He was effective in nearly 40 innings last year, some of them high leverage. There was no reason, aside from Mac’s silly and counterproductive designation of bullpen roles, that he should not have pitched on Monday.
And since an Aussie saved the game for a Canadian, I hereby designate today “Mariners Commonwealth Appreciation Day.” Mariner team stores will accept all tender with images of Queen Elizabeth on it.
I don’t know about the wisdom of asking McLaren to eschew roles (he might turn to tea leaves) when managing bullpen usage but I do know that the men’s ComfortSoft waistband underwear from Hanes might possibly be the best product on the market (any market) right now…..
What I want to know is how many runs Raul will cost us in LF this year. That routine pop-fly that landed in front of him was begging to be caught. He’s cost at least a run in each of the last three games due to his lack of range.
EOF will bounce back once he figures out how to not leave that breaking ball waist-high in the center of the plate.
quote of the day:
“I love (Rowland-Smith) to death,” Sexson said. “He’s a great competitor, and he concentrates on every pitch. You go out there and he’s breathing like a mad bull.”
oh, and this winning stuff? wouldn’t you want to keep it up? just look how happy it makes Ichiro!
Speaking of Sexson, is his groin an issue? If they throw in Cairo or Willie at 1B I’m gonna puke…
Maybe we should rethink this whole sample size thing…
I agree RRS probably should have been used more in the past week.
I agree EOF and the “closer” Lowe couldn’t handle things, but it’s not like we kept trotting them out there Ayala-style.
Come on, can we at least wait for a second appearance?
No one here is making absolute statements. We all fully recognize that one good performance by RRS doesn’t make him a great reliever, prove that he should be the closer, or any of that crap. The Mariners are the ones defending these absurd notions of absolutes, such as a player can’t be used outside of his predefined role without being publicly named to that role so that he can mentally prepare.
We’re not saying this proves anything, so the sample size argument doesn’t mean anything. We’re just saying it does disprove McLaren’s ridiculous beliefs about bullpen management.
Yes, one game is too little to judge from, but in the bottom of the ninth, RRS was awesome. He didn’t just close it; he absolutely mowed them down. finishing with good morning, good afternoon, good night to Pena.
McLaren said they’d run the closer “by commitee” until Putz returned, but then used EOF as the “closer”…he can’t even follow his own planning…hopefully we see more of what we saw last night until JJ is ready…and how about Corcoran? He’s looked pretty good…nice surprise there…
In defense of McLaren (man, I can’t believe I am saying that) in that horrible game in Baltimore, I would have also assumed that Lowe could have gotten one out to end the game.
OK, mistakes were made leading up to that point, as Derek previously pointed out, but still the M’s should have won that game.
Yeah. It’s the SEVERAL strong performances over the past year that would seem to make him a good reliever (or at least better than his usage warrants).
Now, watch McLaren fall in love in RRS and use him continuously there….
(Hrm. Did his skillset match up better with the Tampa Bay hitters he faced in the 9th? I.e., change of speed, curve, etc.?)
35- Except JJ’s blown save because of the injury, the Ms should be undefeated…they’ve given every loss away by poor defense, managing decisions, and poor pitching from the pen…
Yes, because we can expect a team to play mistake free baseball every game.
Seriously, you could say that about every team in baseball. It’s not worth anything if every team should be undefeated if they hadn’t made any mistakes.
McLaren said they’d run the closer “by commitee†until Putz returned, but then used EOF as the “closerâ€â€¦he can’t even follow his own planning…I suspect McLaren has been around long enough that he generally knows what he should say to the media in most situations. But there’s that, and then there’s the habits he naturally falls into, habits that have developed unchallenged over a long career of received “wisdom.” He is what he is, a long-time and old school baseball man, and he’s not going to get creative and challenge his prejudices at this point (I don’t think it’s occurred to him that that might be part of the reason he went so long without getting the top job, and still wouldn’t have one if it hadn’t fallen in his lap).
Would it make sense to have a permanent page on the site where USSM readers noted plays that Ibanez failed to make that cost us runs, but where a decent outfielder would have made the plays.
This could be a running log, which might then be useful in convincing the M’s to figure out a way to get Ibanez out of Left Field and make him a DH or a first baseman.
With RRS, it is not a single game sample size. We have a pretty good idea about him from his performance last year in the majors (and in the minors before that). His major league line last year was:
38.2 IP, 39 H, 9.78 K/9, 3.49 BB/9, 0.9 HR/9, 8.3% HF/FB, .343 BABIP, 73.4% LOB%, 20.6% LD%, 33.6% GB%, 3.96 ERA, 3.69 FIP
We also know he showed only a mild platoon split.
2007 v. RHB: .266/.346/.447
2007 v. LHB: .275/.322/.412
He misses a lot of bats at the expense of walking some, he is an extreme flyballer who could be prone to give up homers (but still put up a slightly below average HR rate last year), he was a little unlucky with balls in play, he had a LOB% in the expected range, and he can pitch to right-handed hitters when necessary. Going forward, RRS should be pretty similar to the pitcher he was last year, which in this bullpen means he is one of the better options in high leverage situations (in spite of the high fly ball rate).
Did anyone else hear that doctor they interviewed on KJR I think that said Putz’s injury can require up to 12 weeks to heal becuase even coughing or sneezing can reaggrivate it? I sure hope that’s not the case. On a better note though it was great to watch RRS mow through those batters. So much better than watching another one get away in the late innings. How about Pena’s homerun right after Blowers said “he’s hit a few already this year” then he proceeds to belt one 15 rows over right field and Niehaus nonchalantly says, “well, there’s one.” I was laughing pretty hard.
Rowland-Smith called Shannon Drayer “mate” at the end of their postgame interview. That alone should be worth another shot at closing out the next game.
Re: # 21 –
I think it is silly having this bullpen structure, especially saving your best reliever for the 9th inning, only when there’s a 3 or less run lead. Wouldn’t you rather have your reliever out during the highest pressure situation, which is possibly in the 7th or 8th inning, and then just have someone else cruise through the 9th?
Right on! This is essentially what Whitey Herzog said in YOU’RE MISSING A GREAT GAME. ‘This nonsense will stop,’ (and I’m paraphrasing)’some day in the 7th or 8th inning when a manager says to his ace reliever, “I don’t give a damn about your stats; we need this game, and there’s a fire out there. Go put it out.” ‘
BTW, I can’t think of a scoring rule that has so changed the way the game is played.
I did find out why Mac didn’t think of RRS for closing. The official poll on the Mariners website only lists Batista, Green, Lowe, O Flaherty [sic], and committee. How was he to know there was someone else around?
you mean this doc?
No I didn’t but I’ve commented before that since the injury deals with the ribcage, JJ should AS LONG AS he doesn’t breathe or use his arms until it heals. The 12 weeks sounds more believeable than the 4 weeks, especially if we don’t want him on and off the DL all year a la Edgar in 1993-94.
Edit to 47, Line 2: “should be fine” (dropped a couple words there)
sigh.
Norm calls RRS “Roly”