Bullpen Report: April, 21st 2018

Life is full of guarantees… death, taxes, and Fernando Rodney finding himself on the closer hot seat. Its only April baseball and yet here we are again. Rodney fialed close it down Friday night with just a one-run lead. He would cough this one up in a fairly strange sequence of events.

Gomez was awarded first base on a Rodney hit by pitch and wouldn’t waste any time before stealing second to put himself in scoring position. Soon after Brad Miller would score Gomez on a well-struck ball that would ricochet off the mound and just out of reach of the shortstop Eduardo Escobar.  Rodney has now blown his last two save opportunities and is in danger of losing his position as the Twins closer. Addison Reed, the team’s next man up has been lights out in the early going. Too early to drop Rodney but might be a good time to stash Reed as we wait for the next save opportunity for Minnesota.

While we are discussing blowups, we should probably spend some time going over Shane Greene’s multi-game effort yesterday. After throwing 12 pitches in game one of the doubleheader, Greene was again called upon by Ron Gardenhire to pitch in the nightcap. After striking out the leadoff batter, Greene would give up three consecutive singles and allowed another to reach base by error. He threw 26 pitches in game two, bringing his total workload for the day to 38 pitches. Greene would escape this outing with just one earned run. That run, however, would cost the Tigers the victory. This was Greene’s second blown save of the season and his second in just a week. Greene may have been setup for failure in this one by being asked to pitch in both games of the doubleheader, but either way, his standing as the Detroit Tigers closer is in serious jeopardy. Two guys to keep close tabs on in this situation would be Joe Jimenez and Alex Wilson. Wilson has struggled this season allowing seven earned runs in just 8 appearances, so if there was a speculative pick it would be Jimenez.

Baltimore’s bullpen situation is somewhat baffling. The problem is that they have been playing so poor that their save opportunities have been slim to none.  Before last night’s win against the Indians, the Orioles had been on a six-game skid with a delayed game somewhere the middle. Entering last night’s game Brad Brach had only made one appearance in a week and that was Tuesday when he pitched in the 7th inning. Tonight, with the game on the line, who did Buck Showalter turn too? Brad Brach? Nope, Darren O’Day who had been roughed up a few days earlier was asked to close this one down for Baltimore. Third times a charm I guess for O’Day. After failing to convert on either of his first two save opportunities, O’Day was awarded his first save of the season. According to Rich Dubroff of PressBoxOnline.com Showalter said he “went with O’Day instead of Brach because he liked the matchup and wanted to get O’Day out there after his rocky outing on Wednesday”. A situation we may have thought was more defined just became situational. With three likely candidates for Showalter to choose from, this will be a bullpen to monitor… assuming Baltimore can try and stay in a few more games.

Quick Hits

Keona Kela in a non-save situation was tagged with three runs off of three hits and would exit the game after throwing 18 pitches but only retiring one batter.

Serio Romo was called upon to pitch in the eighth inning with one on and one out and a four-run lead but would struggle mightily and eventually give up a grand slam (Eddie Rosario) to tie the ball game.

Bud Norris got his fifth save of the season but needed 29 pitches to get through the inning and allowed two hits and a walk in the inning.

Brad Boxberger was hit around hard and ended up receiving his second loss in just three days for the Diamondbacks. Not a save situation for Boxberger who entered the ninth in a tied 1-1 game, but he failed to retire a batter in this one and he has now allowed five earned runs in his last two innings of work. The natural reaction would be to slot Archie Bradley into the ninth inning role if Boxberger continues to struggle but if you remember last season Torey Luvullo was extremely patient with his closer Fernando Rodney. It remains to be seen if he will take the same approach this season.

Also worth mentioning both Brad Hand and Nick Vincent pitched 1.1 innings and recorded four strikeouts. Not bad for a nights work.