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Tuesday, April 08, 2008 |
Mariner Mound Meltdown
Joe Sheehan on the Mariners' bullpen implosion-by-design following a 5-4 loss to Baltimore caused by the bullpen collapsing — again — and a series sweep at the hands of the O's:
John McLaren clearly had no plan for what to do after losing Putz, and has been muddling through in the five games since then. He used Miguel Batista on the starter's throw day to close the M's last win on Wednesday. Sunday, he tried to play matchups in the ninth and walked into O'Flaherty's nightmare, then watched Lowe lose the game. Monday, it was O'Flaherty in the eighth in a tied game that the lefty untied in a hurry. Lefties are unlikely to keep hitting .636 against the southpaw, so using him in a match-up role, and complementing O'Flaherty with Green from the right side, seems like a good idea. Elevating Lowe to a high-leverage role may be optimistic given his lack of experience and that he's still working back from surgery. As the folks at USS Mariner have noted, McLaren has barely used Rowland-Smith (one appearance), who may be the best candidate for one-inning non-matchup stints in the absence of Putz. Using Baek as the long man, Lowe in the seventh, O'Flaherty and Green for matchups, and Rowland-Smith to close is probably the best alignment of talent available to McLaren until Putz comes back in two to three weeks.That's not the problem. The underlying issue that even after Putz returns, though, the primary problem will remain: the Mariners' bullpen isn't nearly as good as it looked last season, and it is unlikely to help the team to the record in one-run games (27-20) that helped prop up last season's overall 88-74 mark in 2007. [Emphasis mine. — RLM] That's why they looked like a .500 team to me two weeks ago, and nothing we've seen in the season's opening stretch has changed that perception.
Labels: mariners
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