Major League Baseball

Protecting leads, and closers, a struggle

Published May. 2, 2012 1:00 a.m. ET

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A ninth-inning lead in baseball is never safe, but these days, managers may be reaching for the Maalox more than ever.

The season is barely a month old, and injuries have taken out reliable arms, replacing them with cheap, untested hurlers. Now, finding dependable closers might be a season-long problem.

There are eight teams not using the closer they thought they would be — and it shows. If the season had ended Monday, the league’s save percentage would be tied for the second lowest in the past 10 years.

As April ended, 13 ninth-inning specialists had ERAs of 4.00 or worse, not including Angels closer Jordan Walden (8.31 ERA), who was just removed from the role.

The Halos aren’t the only team struggling to find an answer. Take White Sox first-year manager Robin Ventura, who tabbed rookie Hector Santiago for the job. One month later, Santiago is hanging by a thread, critics are calling for future closer Addison Reed to jump in, and vet Matt Thornton grabbed a save on Sunday. It’s a mess.

Some of the problem can be attributed to slow starts, but there’s an alarming trend that begins with pitchers ignoring what their bodies tell them.

“[The shoulder] wasn’t that bad. I could kind of fight through it, and then I woke up [Saturday] morning and it was barking pretty good,” Blue Jays closer Sergio Santos said after he landed on the disabled list on April 22. He will miss at least the next four weeks.

Brian Wilson, slated to undergo a second Tommy John surgery, echoed Santos: “My mindset was, ‘OK, if it’s inflammation, get out of your mess. If this is season-ending, your last pitch is going to be preserving [Madison] Bumgarner’s win, and not walking off the mound a failure,’” he said during a press conference. “That’s just how I pitch. I don’t care how painful it is.”

Common sense would say major arm injuries stem from exhaustion, but the culprit actually could be underuse.

“I’m not a proponent of the pitch count. These players today are supposed to be stronger and more durable,” Hall of Fame hurler Bert Blyleven says. “I don’t think pitchers throw enough.”

Jeff Montgomery, who saved 304 games during a 13-year MLB career and now is a Royals analyst for FOX Sports Kansas City, concurred.

“The first half of my career, it wouldn’t be unusual at all to pitch somewhere around 90 innings as a closer,” he said. “Now it seems like if someone throws over 75 innings, a manager would lose his job over it. If you have a game or a stretch where you bring your closer up there and it’s taking 40 pitches and he’s accustomed to 20 to 30 pitches, there’s fallout from that later on.”

The bite of the injury bug means a handful of unknowns have taken over, another reason the ninth inning ride could be bumpy.

“You’ve got less experience in the closing position,” Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild said. “When you lose guys like [longtime closer] Trevor Hoffman, those are pretty steady guys. They stabilized that profession. Now you don’t have as much of that.”

Given the current financial climate and the injury risk, relative unknowns may be the trend. Franchises figured out that locking up talented young starters, they will save money down the road by knocking out arbitration years that could potentially result in hefty raises. That’s part of the reason why Bumgarner, Jonathon Niese and Derek Holland were among the pitchers who received long-term contracts in recent months.

But it means less money for the men paid to finish out games pitched by those well-paid starters. Ironically, with younger arms on strict pitch counts, there’s a bigger emphasis on bullpen talent.

“Teams have recognized if they have a finite amount of dollars to spend, they can get the guy that was successful as a middle reliever,” Montgomery said. “Instead of paying this guy umpteen million dollars, let’s save those dollars for somebody that might be more effective punching in as a starting pitcher.”

If it means fewer wins, something radical will have to change, like a reliever being stretched out for more five- and six-out saves.

“As people fail more and more, you’re going to see changes. Anything’s a possibility,” Rothschild said. “No matter where you are, people want to win. And they’re going to do whatever they have to.”

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