Unwritten

by Danny Knobler

  That’s not the way things always have been done, but it is the way it’s been done for 30 years or so. There are good reasons for it, but also good reasons to ask if it’s still the best way.

  “I think philosophically, we all need to challenge the shit out of our own beliefs,” Philadelphia Phillies manager Gabe Kapler said during a 2018 season in which he had been doing just that. “What we think, we need to constantly be asking ourselves, is that true? We should always be open to changing our minds.”

  After going through April and the first weeks of May with Hector Neris in a fairly traditional role as the Phillies closer, Kapler decided he needed to make a change. But rather than name another closer to replace Neris or even using some form of closer by committee, Kapler chose to use his relievers simply by where he felt they would fit best in a game.

  Over the course of the season, nine different Phillies pitchers recorded at least one save, tying a franchise record. While rookie Seranthony Dominguez led the team with 16 saves, Kapler would often call on Dominguez in the seventh or eighth inning with the game on the line, and then go to another reliever in the ninth.

  On the next-to-last weekend of the season, with the Phillies in must-win mode to stay in the National League East race, Kapler had Dominguez start the sixth inning in a tie game against the middle of the Atlanta Braves order (Dominguez pitched a 1-2-3 sixth, but the Phillies lost the game by allowing five runs in the seventh).

  It was “Bullpen by Gabe,” as Phillies beat writer Scott Lauber wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

  And as much as it may have warmed the hearts of those who have long championed changing the way bullpens are run, Kapler operated this way with a significant caveat.

  As he told Lauber midway through the season, “I can assure you if we had Kenley Jansen on our roster, he’d pitch the ninth inning.”

  In other words, Kapler does believe in a traditional closer role, but only if he has a traditional top-flight closer. He does believe pitching the ninth inning is different from pitching other innings, even though he also believes “the most important spot in the game creates very similar emotions to the ninth inning.”

  It’s those emotions that make the difference, because ­obviously the actual pitching doesn’t change. And just as ­obviously, the opponent’s toughest hitters can come up in the seventh or eighth inning just as easily as they could in the ninth.

  The difference in the ninth is there’s no safety net. If a pitcher can’t hold a lead in the seventh or eighth inning, his team could still rally to win. If the closer doesn’t do the job in the ninth, the team usually loses and the clubhouse is silent.

  Nothing makes a team feel worse than a ninth-inning loss. Nothing is more likely to generate quotes about how “That’s one we should have won.”

  If the starting pitcher has a bad day, no one says it was a game you should have won. If the cleanup hitter goes 0-for-4, no one says it.

  When the closer fails, everyone says it, and not every pitcher is built to handle that feeling.

  “There’s some development to pitching the ninth inning,” Kapler said. “Sometimes the plug is pulled too early.”

  He’s probably right on that, but most managers aren’t willing to suffer through many ninth-inning losses before pulling that plug. The alternative, all too often, is to risk seeing the team’s season go past the point of recovery.

  It’s why proven top closers still get paid much more than other relievers. Jansen, who Kapler referenced, got a five-year, $80 million contract from the Los Angeles Dodgers when he became a free agent after the 2016 season.

  The money matters, and it’s one reason using a bullpen with no set roles is so hard to do. Since relievers know they’ll get paid based on saves and their ability to pitch the ninth inning, few top closers will react well if they’re told a manager prefers to use them in high-leverage spots in the seventh or eighth.

  The problem for baseball is that with starters pitching fewer innings than ever, managers much more frequently need relievers to protects leads in the seventh or even in the sixth. More creativity is required, and more managers are tempted to tell pitchers, “You want to know your role? Your role is to get outs when I tell you to pitch.”

  As good as that sounds, many pitchers perform better when they can predict when they’ll be used and can mentally and physically prepare for it. And if managers have more or less established roles, it’s easier for them to distribute work to their relievers in a way that avoids overuse and burnout.

  It also limits how much a manager gets questioned about his bullpen use, because even in losses, fans, media, players, and front-office people are more forgiving when a manager simply follows a set formula. Varying from that formula may slightly improve the chances of success in any one game, but it also creates more confusion and more chances for second-guessing.

  So what about bullpenning, the concept Brian Kenny has championed both on MLB Network and in his book, Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution? Kenny believes a manager should use his best relief pitcher as a “relief ace” rather than as a traditional closer.

  Kenny and others loved how Terry Francona used Andrew Miller during the 2016 postseason. Miller appeared in 10 of the Indians’ 15 games, and each time he was asked to get more than three outs. Three times, Francona called on him as early as the fifth inning. Miller went through his first 16 innings without allowing a run and the Indians got to Game 7 of the World Series before losing to the Cubs.

  It was brilliant pitching and brilliant managing, as Francona took advantage of both his available talent and the postseason schedule. With only a month to win a championship and off days liberally sprinkled in, he could use Miller, a true “relief ace,” as Kenny would call him, in the key situation in every game.

  Two key points: First, when the Indians acquired Miller and Francona began using him earlier in games, he said the only reason he could do it was his trust in Cody Allen as the Indians’ closer. Francona is a thinking-man’s manager, but he has an old-school sensibility in believing he still needs a closer accustomed to handling the final three outs of a game. Allen also appeared 10 times in that 2016 postseason, and in eight of those 10 games he was on the mound at the end.

  The second key point is that while Francona was super-­aggressive using Miller early in October games, he knew better than to try the same thing from April through September. Miller appeared in 57 games for the Indians in 2017, never as early as the fifth inning and just seven times before the seventh.

  For the most part, Francona used Miller in a fairly traditional setup role in the regular season, having him enter a game in the seventh or eighth inning with a closer, Allen, behind him.

  Why wouldn’t you try to win regular season games just as much as you try to win in October? You have to make the playoffs before you can win them, right?

  Of course you do, but if you start using a pitcher like Miller as soon as you think the game is on the line in the fifth or sixth inning, you’re going to find yourself warming him up every night. Even if you don’t bring him into every game, all those pitches thrown in the bullpen add up. Managers who use their bullpen too aggressively in April end up with relievers who are burned out by July.

  Managers probably do pay too much attention to the dictates of the save rule, holding closers back for a save situation (a lead of no more than three runs, or the tying run on base, at bat or on deck for a pitcher entering mid-inning). But as long as pitchers get paid in part because of how many saves they get, it’s hard for a manager to move away from that strategy.

  There are top relievers who will tell you they’ll pitch whenever the manager needs them. Miller is like that, but he was a 32-year-old veteran with a long-term contract. ­David ­Robertson said the same when he was traded back to the ­Yankees in 2017, but again he was a 32-year-old veteran with a multi-year deal.

  And most ma
nagers don’t have the luxury of having two or more relievers with that kind of experience. The Indians had Miller and Allen. The 2017 Yankees had Robertson and closer Aroldis Chapman, as well as other top relief arms in Dellin Betances and Chad Green. Plenty of other teams are trying to get by with a closer, perhaps a setup man or two and then a bunch of guys they wouldn’t really trust to close out a game.

  Is the ninth inning really that much different? Pitchers who get moved to the ninth always say they want to treat it the same. But plenty of those same pitchers find out the ninth is different, because of the adrenaline that shows up with the game on the line and because if they fail, the team usually is going to lose.

  “It’s coming down to you,” said Shawn Kelley, who has pitched both as a closer and as a middle reliever. “You’re high-fiving and you did your job or you’re answering to the media on why you blew the game. You can screw up earlier in the game and your team still has a chance to win. [As a closer], you either do the job or you’re the goat.”

  It’s why teams are willing to pay big money to pitchers who have proven they can close. It’s also why the unwritten rule that still holds says you don’t use that closer until the latter part of the game.

  40. Bullpen by Gabe, Part II (or Position Players Can Pitch, Too)

  SPARKY ANDERSON MANAGED 4,030 GAMES IN the major leagues. Only six men in history have ever managed more. He won five pennants and three World Series, two with the ­Cincinnati Reds and one with the Detroit Tigers.

  One more thing: Anderson never once put a position player on the mound to pitch.

  It didn’t matter if the game went 19 innings, as one Reds game did in 1972 (Anderson got through it with just three pitchers). It didn’t matter if his team gave up 19 runs in the first game of a doubleheader, as the Reds did one day in 1978 (he used four pitchers in that game, and just two in winning the nightcap).

  It didn’t matter. He considered it disrespectful to the game if he put a non-pitcher on the mound, and he wasn’t going to do it.

  Gabe Kapler did it in the third game he ever managed.

  Down 13–2 to the Atlanta Braves just two days after Opening Day in 2018, with his starter having given him just eight outs and four other actual relief pitchers already used and his bullpen already taxed from overuse in the first two games, Kapler sent utility man Pedro Florimon out to pitch the eighth inning. Florimon gave up two runs, but at that point it hardly mattered.

  What mattered to Kapler was he was saving some wear and tear on pitchers he might need the next day or the next week.

  Kapler’s bullpen strategies drew some criticism, especially early in the 2018 season, but he wasn’t being disrespectful by putting Florimon on the mound. In today’s game, with the emphasis on pitch counts and overuse of pitchers, he was simply being prudent. Teams all over baseball use position players to pitch now, more than ever.

  At least Kapler planned for it.

  “The only thing that has stopped us from using position players more frequently in blowout games in the past is fear of embarrassment,” Kapler told Jared Diamond for a story in the Wall Street Journal. “Somebody has to be the one that says, ‘I don’t care that this looks embarrassing.’”

  Kapler didn’t want it to look too embarrassing, so in spring training he told his team he would sometimes use position players to pitch. He had Triple-A pitching coach Dave Lundquist work with Florimon and some other players who were most likely to be called on to pitch.

  Some managers still don’t believe in it. Mike Scioscia didn’t do it in his first 18 years managing the Angels, until he used catcher Francisco Arcia in two blowout games in 2018. Dave Roberts of the Los Angeles Dodgers is another who doesn’t like it, although he sent utility man Kike Hernandez out to pitch the 16th inning of a July 2018 game in Philadelphia. The Dodgers had already used eight actual pitchers in the game, and Roberts pinch hit for the eighth one while trying to score a run in the top of the 16th (they didn’t, and Hernandez walked two and gave up a three-run walkoff home run).

  In 2018, 25 of the 30 clubs used at least one position player to pitch. Kapler used four (including Florimon twice). Joe Maddon of the Cubs used five, including Anthony Rizzo, his All-Star first baseman.

  Using a key position player on the mound has almost always been a no-no for a manager, at least since Kevin ­Kennedy put Jose Canseco on the mound for the Texas Rangers in 1993. ­Canseco was the everyday No. 3 hitter for a Rangers team hoping to contend, but he had been begging for a chance to pitch and Kennedy gave it to him when the Rangers were trailing 12–1 at Fenway Park.

  The only problem? A few days after his 33-pitch stint—or stunt—Canseco complained of pain in his right elbow. Tests eventually showed torn ligaments, and by the All-Star break Canseco was having season-ending surgery.

  Kennedy was ridiculed for losing a key player by putting him on the mound in a blowout, but the truth is that better players than Canseco had been used as pitchers before. Hall of Famer Jimmie Foxx pitched a scoreless inning for the Red Sox in 1939, in a year where he finished second in MVP voting. Ted Williams pitched two innings for the Sox in 1940, at his own request, with the Boston Globe story the following day reading, “Tempestuous Teddy Williams, the Red Sox problem child, pitched at Fenway Park yesterday.”

  And in 1952, in the middle of his Hall of Fame career, Stan Musial threw one pitch for the Cardinals, in a gimmick arranged by manager Eddie Stanky.

  Musial was on his way to a third straight National League batting crown, and Stanky decided it would be a great idea for him to pitch to Cubs outfielder Frank Baumholtz, who was just behind him in the batting race, on the final day of the season. Stanky brought Musial in to face Baumholtz, who hit a ground ball to third base and reached on an error. Musial returned to center field, never to pitch again.

  “I didn’t really want to do it,” Musial told the St. Louis Post-­Dispatch years later. “They wanted to bring some people into the park, knowing I was going to pitch to one hitter. I was leading Frank by five or six points in the batting race. If it had been any closer than that, I wouldn’t have done it.”

  Even so, by the time Bob Brenly put Mark Grace on the mound for one inning when the Arizona Diamondbacks were being blown out by the Los Angeles Dodgers in September 2002, Brenly felt the need to explain himself to fans and to Dodgers manager Jim Tracy.

  “I didn’t intend to make a mockery of it,” Brenly told reporters, adding that he was going to call Tracy and explain he wanted to save his other relievers.

  Grace, who was 38 years old and near the end of a fine career, made the most of the chance to pitch, and also of the opportunity to take some of the edge off what was, at the time, the worst loss in Diamondbacks franchise history. At one point, he launched into an imitation of hefty D-Backs reliever Mike Fetters.

  “My butt aches, my legs ache, my arm hurts,” Grace told reporters. “But if you can have five minutes of fun in a game like this, then it’s worth it.”

  Maddon and Rizzo obviously thought the same thing in 2018. Well, Rizzo certainly did. Maddon must have been holding his breath as one of his key players threw the two pitches it took him to retire A.J. Pollock on a fly ball and end the top of the ninth inning in a 7–1 Cubs loss.

  “I promised Joe I wouldn’t blow out [my left arm],” Rizzo told reporters. “You have to have fun with it and try not to embarrass yourself at the same time.”

  Rizzo said Maddon told him not to throw at maximum effort.

  “He got his shot,” Maddon said. “I don’t want to hear it again, and he conceded he’ll never pitch again.”

  So yes, in today’s game you can use a position player on the mound without anyone accusing you of disrespecting the game. Every once in a while, you can even do it with one of your stars.

  41. If a Big Game Is Tied, Shouldn’t Your Best Pitcher Pitch?

  CLOSERS WHO DO THEIR JOB WELL MAKE managers’ jobs eas
ier. For years with the Yankees, Joe Torre (and then Joe Girardi) never had to worry about how to get through the ninth inning. Mariano Rivera took care of it. Torre could even go to Rivera in the eighth inning, which he did regularly in October as the Yankees were winning championship after championship. Rivera had 31 career postseason saves of four outs or more. No other closer has more than seven.

  You get a lead. You hand him the ball. You shake hands after you win.

  Simple.

  But what happens if you get to the ninth inning and the game is tied?

  Now it gets more complicated.

  We’ll start with the traditional unwritten rules governing closers: You always use him in a save situation in the ninth (leading by no more than three runs to begin the inning, tying run on deck with the inning in progress), unless he has worked too many days in a row. Every manager has a different guideline on how many days in a row are too many, and it can vary dependent on how much of a rubber arm your closer has.

  You also use your rested closer in the ninth inning of a tie game at home, because at that point you’re not going to have a save situation in that game. If you take a lead after that, the game ends. You don’t have any more outs to get.

  The tougher call is what you do in a tie game on the road, and it’s a call bound to start arguments between old-school managers and new-school numbers guys. The traditional rule says you don’t use your closer, because you could still have a save ­situation in extra innings. The numbers guys say by using a lesser reliever, you’re running too big a risk of losing a game without your best reliever ever appearing in the game.

  It’s the Buck Showalter question, or the Zach Britton question, if you prefer. Showalter was the Orioles manager in 2016 and Britton was his standout closer. And in the American League Wild Card Game, which the Orioles lost to the Blue Jays in 11 innings, Britton never pitched. Seems like a problem, even if Showalter was following that traditional rule. The Orioles never led after the fifth inning, and they were playing on the road at Rogers Centre. Using Britton to keep the game tied risked needing to use someone else for a save if the Orioles ever took the lead. Showalter wouldn’t do it, and when he brought in first Brian Duensing and then Ubaldo Jimenez to pitch the 11th inning, the Orioles lost the game and went home for the winter, wondering what might have been. The Blue Jays, on the strength of Edwin Encarnacion’s dramatic home run off Jimenez, moved on to the ALDS against the Rangers.