More On Last Night’s Win

“Teams are just matching up,” Shelton (Derek Shelton Twins’ manager) said. “They’re using guys in higher-leverage situations earlier in the game. What teams are learning is that you may not get to the ninth.” Relievers themselves are buying into the new way of handling the later innings. Whereas relievers once seemed to yearn for defined roles — often by inning as seventh-, eighth- or ninth-inning guys — relievers now see their “roles” differently. Instead of being told when they’re likely to be used, they’re told who they are likely to face. He goes on to say that ‘Teams are learning, you may not get to the ninth.“ Pitchers used to say they liked defined roles. I used to say, ‘Yeah, closers like defined roles because they got paid more if they got a lot of saves.’ The rest of the bullpen? I don’t know, I figure they wouldn’t have minded getting the odd save. Now teams are trying to match up, and the pitchers know more about who they are likely to face than what inning they will be used. I do worry that this change will mean some guys get overused. One reason they saved closers for save situations is to prevent managers from overusing their best arms. Varland has pitched in two games in a row a few times and three games in a row a couple of times. Mark Eichhorn threw 157.0 relief innings in 1986 and 127.2 in 1987. I used to say that if you have a get-out-of-an-inning-free card, you are going to use it a lot. Beyond that, it was nice to see Jesús Sánchez get a couple of hits. And at the top of the order, while only getting one hit, the top four had eight walks. The choice of having Lenyn Sosa hit for Tyler Heineman was interesting. I would have rather had Brandon Valenzuela hit in that spot, if only so we didn’t have to use two players for the one move. This happened too yesterday