Where's Wagner?

By Jack Flynn
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Duaner Sanchez nearly ruined my column this week. So did Joe Smith.

But it was Pedro Feliciano who provided the death blow, giving up doubles to So Taguchi and Jimmy Rollins on the way to a six-run ninth inning in a game the Mets eventually lost 8-6. The Philadelphia Phillies were back in first place and the Mets were left battered and bruised, wondering how it all got away.

My column, originally meant to poke holes in the conventional theory of closer usage, was going to look mighty silly on a night when three Mets relievers gave up six runs in the ninth inning before Aaron Heilman mercifully put an end to the farce. It’s hard to call the job that Billy Wagner does overrated when Sanchez and Feliciano so completely spit the bit when asked to fill his shoes.

It all started in the bottom of the fifth inning in Tuesday night’s game. Mets’ play-by-play man Gary Cohen was quick to note that Wagner’s status was questionable because of some shoulder issues that cropped up Sunday afternoon. Cohen delivered the news in grave tones, with the clear intonation that someone other than a proven closer might be called upon to save the game.

He proved to be right – Sanchez was called on first, loading up the bases on three straight singles. Smith was more the victim of bad luck; a high hopper in the middle of the diamond off the bat of Carlos Ruiz could not be converted into an out by Jose Reyes.

Then came Feliciano, whose miserable 2008 season was made worse by back-to-back doubles from Taguchi and Rollins that gave the Phillies the lead. To add insult to busted column, the Phillies’ eighth run was the direct result of Feliciano’s inability to convert a one-hopper up the middle into what should’ve been an inning-ending double play.

Thanks for nothing, guys.

A few edits later, this week’s effort had a new spin. It wasn’t that closers don’t play a very important role in a bullpen – the Mets reminded us of that fact last night. It was that closers are actually misused and are sometimes held out of situations where their talents are sorely needed. The most obvious situation that came to mind is how closers are almost never used in a tie game when their team is playing on the road.

Conventional wisdom, of course, dictates that from the ninth inning on the road manager should hold back his closer until after his team has taken the lead. Such wisdom begs an obvious question – doesn’t anyone realize that if you're more concerned with saving a closer to finish out the game if your team gets the lead, that you may never get a chance to use him?

It is a small bit of common sense that is routinely ignored by managers at all levels of professional baseball. This has already happened to the Mets three times this season – and each time the decision not to let a closer pitch in extra innings on the road ended up leading to painful losses.

It seems so long ago now, but the Mets lost the second game of the 2008 season to the Florida Marlins when Matt Wise was given the ball to start the tenth inning instead of the man who deserved the ball - the closer. Wagner’s chance to pick up his first save of the season went by the wayside when Wise served up a gopher ball to Robert Andino that ended the game. Sadly, the decision proved to be a harbinger of things to come, as Met skippers continued to be burned for playing by the book.

One of the toughest losses of the 2008 season came on June 7, in the dying days of Willie Randolph’s managerial career. The Mets had checked into San Diego two days before with a 30-28 record and visions of gaining ground on the division-leading Phillies by beating up on one of the weak sisters of the National League West. Two days later, they had dropped consecutive contests by the score of 2-1 and were facing an extra-inning tilt with the suddenly rejuvenated Padres.

After the Mets were shut down by journeyman Mike Adams in the top of the tenth inning, Randolph had a decision to make. Once Raul Casanova led off by pinch hitting for Sanchez, who had put up 1.2 scoreless innings to that point, the manager needed a reliever to pitch the bottom of the tenth.

The obvious choice should’ve been Wagner. Besides being the Mets’ closer and therefore the nominal “best pitcher” in the bullpen, Wagner was fully rested (having not pitched the previous two days) and was sporting a 0.36 ERA and a 0.769 WHIP at the time. The Mets, having lost two straight games to a terrible team already, couldn’t afford to use anyone other than their best pitcher.

Of course, that’s exactly what they did. Conventional wisdom reared its ugly head, Feliciano was brought in to pitch instead and two batters later, the game was lost thanks to a solo home run from unlikely hero Scott Hairston.

Willie Randolph certainly had his limitations as a strategist, but Jerry Manuel made the exact same mistake less than a month later. On July 2 the Mets dropped to 41-43, the victims of a game-winning solo home run off the bat of St. Louis Cardinals slugger Troy Glaus in Busch Stadium.

That fateful pitch was served up by Carlos Muniz, who was inexplicably called upon in the bottom of the ninth inning that night to face the fearsome heart of the Cardinals’ lineup. With Wagner again being held back for the save opportunity that never came, Glaus launched a ball deep into the St. Louis night and handed the Mets one of their most bitter defeats of the season.

So why do today’s managers continue to fall into this trap? Perhaps it’s because closers have become mental security blankets that managers believe that no lead is safe without. They are extremely reluctant to use their closers in any situation other than the final inning of a game that their team has a lead of no more than three runs in, for fear that anyone other than the closer can be counted on to hold the fort.

Instead of being used at the most critical junctures of the game, which is the very definition of a tie game in extra innings on the road, closers are held back in the solitary pursuit of a meaningless stat that tells the serious baseball fan nothing of import. The save has become a bane on today’s game – a statistic mistakenly believed to be an accurate barometer of reliever effectiveness.

A good closer is what separates good teams from great teams. But knowing when to your closer properly, in high leverage situations as opposed to just conventional save situations, is what separates great teams from championship teams.