I’ll let you know April 28th.
Strasburg will have blown his arm up by then, Ryan Zimmerman will be inevitably re-injured and Dan Haren and Rafeal Soriano will have died of old age…
Craig Kimbrel would like to have a word with you.
Well, we all knew that wasn’t going to last, didn’t we?
While Kimbrel is also a dominant closing pitcher, there’s not really anyone that approaches Chapman and his sheer power fastball. Perhaps Kimbrel is more versatile as he seems to have a pitch Chapman does not, but I wonder if it matters in the ninth.
Chapman is practically unhittable. We can do the math if you wish. I am confident Aroldis was the best reliever/closer in MLB last season and likely will be this season as well, barring injury.
It was a perfect day for baseball and we had a great time. I was glad that we finally got to see Sean Marshall pitch and it looks like he is fine.
I can’t say that I am too happy about Chapman still being a reliever. Closers are just not that difficult to find. Either Broxton or Marshall would do just fine there. As dominant as Chapman can be, he saved 38 games in 43 opportunities last year. The year before, Francisco Cordero saved 37 games in 43 opportunities. I would really have liked to see Chapman starting yesterday instead of Mike Leake.
It was fun to see Derrick Robinson get his first Major League hit.
Meh. Teams win the vast majority of games if they lead going into the 9th. Closers are incredibly overrated.
Especially when their names are Eric Gagne, Robb Nen, Mariano Rivera…yeah.
Anyway…what is the good argument for making Chapman a starter? I know the Reds wanted to make him a starter and he pitched as such a few games in Spring…he wasn’t terrible…but then he came out and said he wasn’t comfortable in that role, even though he was a starter in Cuba. So what do you do with him then? Tell him to fuck off and start? Seriously. What do you do?
I completely and utterly envy you.
This is as good a time as any to break open this argument. Mariano Rivera was/is one of the best closers EVER. Why did he not become a starter? And if not him, then why the push for Aroldis Chapman to do so? What’s the difference? And if great closers were “so easy” to come by, then why do more teams not have them?
I think solid closers are easy to come by, not great ones.
But if teams continue to pursue the acquisition of potentially great ones, then they aren’t overrated by anyone other than fans…right? Surely these baseball people know what they are doing to some degree.
Yeah, I can’t muster up any hate for the Reds anymore. I even root for them most of the time. BP has always amused me, and they now have two of my favorite former Indians on the squad.
But if you want to discuss former division rivals for whom I still have plenty of hatred, we can talk about the Braves…
The Pittsburgh Pirates, ladies & gentlemen, aren’t they great?
On paper, they’ve done all the right things over the past 5 years. It’s just that their patience and planning have failed. Bad ML scouting prior to trades? Yup. Bad drafting after the first 2 rounds? Yup. We’re probably looking at a front-office shakeup and the firing of GM Neal Huntington if they’re not close to .500, or have another of their yearly collapses. They’ll probably wait until the off-season as they’re conservative like that, and they might need to wait until the season’s end to hire the replacement. An overhaul of the scouting system is a big need, IMO. They might hire someone with an eye to steal scouts from that person’s present team. Pirate them, if you will.
They could still turn it around and be tearing it up as the weather warms. They’ve got hot and then cold before without explanation, could happen again.
I’ve heard it argued that closers are used wrong, and I see some logic in the argument. Ever see those situations in the 8th or 7th when the score is close and the other team is threatening, and they trot out the AAAA guy, or the swing-man, or LOOGY? If the game is in danger, put your best pitcher in THEN. If you don’t escape the 7th or 8th with the lead, you could lose while leaving you best pitcher on the bench. Instead, the managers go pushbutton, and since he’s playing it by the book, no one can blame HIM if they lose. Of course, he can’t scrape an extra win out either.
Often, you can pull a pitcher off the scrap-pile and make him a decent closer. Those pitchers that can dominate for 3-5 innings or so, then get hammered because the players saw them and can adjust the 2nd or 3rd time through? Prime candidates. Batters only see them one time in a game, maybe only 2-3 times over the season. Boom: closer. Pirates have done a lot of wrong in the past 20 years, but overpaying for a closer hasn’t been one of them.
In Rivera’s case, it’s primarily because he has one great pitch. As good as his cutter is, it’s very hard to be a good starter with one great pitch. When he was in the minors, before he developed the cutter they though he might be a starter, IIRC, but he didn’t have the stuff.
Actually he was tried as a starter in 1995 and was not very good but this was before he perfected his cutter. The latter part of 95 & all of 96 he relied more on going up the ladder with his fastball and it was during 97 his cutter became his dominant pitch.
It is possible in 97 he could have gone back to starting as he now had 2 great out pitches and a usable breaking ball but the Yanks needed a closer more than a starter and by 98 I don’t they ever again considered messing with the formula.
In Chapman’s case, he actually has three pitches as he’d developed a changeup to go with his fastball and slider. I watched him pitch in one of his Spring outings when the Reds were tinkering with making him a starter and he actually was pretty good. The problem with him is that his overpowering fastball is his best pitch and in order for him to be able to throw it that hard, he realistically can only pitch a couple innings a game.
As a starter, he had to take a lot off of his fastball in order to have the endurance to last 6 or 7 innings. And by doing that you take away his best weapon because frankly his other two pitches aren’t all that great.
He began his career as a starter and wasn’t successful. He was moved to the bullpen when he was 26 and running out of chances in the majors, and he became very successful as a reliever. And yes, it’s also true that guys with one pitch are less likely to succeed as starters.
The difference is that Chapman hasn’t been tried as a starter. I don’t think the Reds agree to pay him $30 million coming out of Cuba because they thought he was going to give them 60 innings a year. They thought they were getting a potentially dominant starter. Now it’s probably too late- he’s figured out that as a closer he can make similar money for much less work.
It’s not that hard to find a halfway decent closer. A guy who stays good over the long term is another story.
A multi-pitch closer that is a plausible starter (like Chapman, who has started before) really should be tried in that role. 200 innings of above average pitching is more valuable that 60 innings of unhittable pitching, even if those 60 are always the 9th with the lead.
As a Cards fan, I’m thrilled that the Reds put him back in the bullpen. I’d much rather face Leake for 5 innings and hope to never see Chapman than have to deal with his filthy stuff for 5+ innings. To counter - wouldn’t a Reds fan prefer that Wainwright was still the Cardinals closer (like he was in 2006) rather than a starter?
So Crawford is playing like the old Kemp, Kemp is playing like he’s still hurting, and I still can’t figure out what Mattingly is trying to do with the left side of the infield.
Mark Ellis seems to be platooning on top of injuries and everything else, does anyone know if this is residual from his leg issues last year?
Pitching looks great, but we knew that coming in. If we don’t hit better, the Giants can pitch just as well as we can…