By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
February 26, 2015
There has been a dual narrative buzzing around Detroit that the Tigers’ bullpen is going to be improved in 2015 because the team has more big league arms at Brad Ausmus‘ disposal and that relief pitchers cannot be trusted on a year-to-year basis anyway, so why not just add a bunch of cheap alternatives and hope for the best?
This line of thinking was best summed up by longtime baseball scribe Peter Gammons when he made the point on Twitter that a few years ago the Indians had the best bullpen in baseball and the Tribe then brought the same guys back the next season and they stunk. The same cast was great again the following year.
That is a wonderful anecdotal story but one that completely ignores the Tigers’ recent history in regard to their disastrous bullpen. It’s been their Achilles’ heel for a decade and it — along with Jim Leyland’s bungling of said group — surely robbed them of the 2013 World Series and again cost them — this time with Ausmus at the helm — in the 2014 ALDS versus the Orioles.
To say that Dave Dombrowski should just haphazardly throw a bullpen together without doing everything necessary to solidify the corps because relievers are unpredictable would be like stating that the mayor of Kamloops, British Columbia has the same responsibility to protect his city against terrorism as the Port Authority does when it comes to the Freedom Tower.
You would have thought after watching his bullpen’s ineptitude cost his team ANOTHER shot at the team’s first ring since 1984 and the Royals ride their relievers to a World Series berth that Dombrowski would have moved mountains to FINALLY rectify this issue.
Well, you would have thought wrong. Instead, this is what Dombrowski is banking on ..
1) A 40-year-old Joe Nathan somehow rebounding from a year where he lost a couple miles off his fastball and posted a 1.53 WHIP and 3.94 FIP, numbers that almost doubled from the previous year. Did I mention Nathan will be 41 this year???
2) That Bruce Rondon will stay healthy when it hasn’t even been 12 months since he underwent Tommy John surgery. And it’s not like Rondon was an established major leaguer BEFORE the injury. He has only pitched 28 2/3 innings in MLB and there isn’t a Tiger fan around who doesn’t see Joel Zumaya when watching this kid pitch.
3) Tom Gorzelanny as the only somewhat established lefty out of the ‘pen. But here is the thing about the former Brewer reliever ….. he actually had a reverse platoon split in 2014. Righties had a .553 OPS against him last season while lefties enjoyed a .792 OPS. That’s not exactly the most comforting stat in the world for your only reliable LHP and, even if it was an anomaly, it’s not like Gorzelanny reminds anyone of Billy Wagner ….. or even Jamie Walker, for that matter.
4) Alex Wilson — the unheralded portion of the Yoenis Cespedes/Rick Porcello deal — to give Ausmus another option. And while Wilson was pretty good in 2014, he has only appeared in 44 career MLB games and had much better numbers in Boston than in Pawtucket last season.
5) The potential contribution of Joba Chamberlain, who signed a one-year deal for a million dollars.
The Chamberlain signing earlier this week was hilarious. The Tigers’ brass was indignant that ANYONE would suggest that the team is bringing Joba back to pitch the eighth inning.
Dombrowski and Ausmus seemed incredulous that anyone would make that suggestion considering Joakim Soria has that gig.
It’s almost like the GM and manager somehow forgot that the Tigers have played ZERO freaking games since getting eliminated by Baltimore when …. ya know …. Chamberlain had a lock on being the EIGHTH-INNING GUY!!!!!!
Even though Chamberlain had a 4.97 ERA and a 1.50 WHIP after the All-Star break while Soria was nearly unhittable in September (1.35 ERA, .45 WHIP.)
These jackasses are scoffing at the idea of Chamberlain supplanting Soria when they absolutely refused to switch their roles entering the 2014 playoffs, even going as far as to not even pitch Soria during the final series of the year against the Twins, thus leaving him high and dry™ (Def Leppard) when the postseason commenced.
Dombrowski and Ausmus must think we are brain-numbed zombies who can’t remember what occurred just five months ago.
The Tigers 2015 bullpen strategy seems to be if the aforementioned pitchers don’t work, they will try Al Alburquerque or Josh Zeid, and if that doesn’t go well …. how about Kyle Ryan, Buck Farmer or Blaine Hardy?
It’s the musical chairs of bullpens!!! Or Russian Roulette, depending on your worldview. Guess which one I am leaning towards?
The funny thing is, Dombrowski could have gone a LONG way toward resolving this virus once and for all by doing what he SHOULD have done at last year’s trade deadline … acquire former Tiger Andrew Miller.
He never should have let Dan Duquette outbid him for the dominant lefty’s services last July and, considering Miller “only” received a four-year, $36-million deal from the Yankees, it is absolutely criminal that DD didn’t pursue the dominant southpaw.
Dombrowski KNEW the Tigers weren’t getting back into the Max Scherzer sweepstakes — Max had pissed off Mike Ilitch in the process — so it would have been a relative bargain for him to FIX the team’s constant weakness by bringing back Miller.
If you start off with a foundation of Soria and Miller you only have to hope a couple of the other 74 relief arms work out and all of a sudden the team’s thermal exhaust port issue is now potentially the superlaser that destroyed Alderaan.
But that’s not what Dombrowski did. Instead, he has once again rolled the dice with several flawed candidates with the blind hope that some of them will exceed expectations and solidify the ongoing third-trimester abortion.
I will just be over here betting on the “Don’t Pass Bar.”