Re: Is it the Bullpen or Catching?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Team Clark
The blog was pretty interesting. I can certainly concur with him about the bullpen usage. There is a fine line between using a guy often enough and over using him. Right now there are a few guys that are being abused. On the flip side... what are your choices? If you have to keep going to them and the pitchers say they can pitch...well? Not an easy job to manage a bullpen but it doesn't take a genius to screw one up either. The Hammond example was pretty interesting. A 40 year old arm was abused and run out of the league coming off of a good year. JMO
Thank you for your kind comments.
I've been watching this issue for a while and the thing is that it isn't just "Right now there are a few guys that are being abused." There are ALWAYS a couple of guys being overused while the rest of the pen pretty much sits around. Right now it's Stanton and Coffey, but Coffey and Weathers both pretty much went through the exact same thing Hammond did last year. Hammond retired. Weathers started to suck and then sat down with an injury. Coffey pretty much sat around for a couple of weeks then started to get used more and more.
You see it again today. The starter gets them 6 2/3 inning and a four run lead. How many relievers does it take to get 7 outs with a four run lead? Right now the answer is 3 in game and I don't know how many warmed up. Coutlangus pitches to one guy and is then lifted without even a pinch hitter. With a four run lead?
After the off season I felt the big issues facing the reds as an organization this year was how Jerry Narron handled the bullpen and how Edwin fared. I was a big fan of the offseason. Gave Narron and Krivsky a great deal of credit. Now........well, not so much.