"Dude, you're blowing it," was the favorite line of a dude-bra friend of mine who graduated last year, but Jose Valverde can congratulate himself on eliciting the phrase from me, with 96% of a loss tonight. 8 innings of shut out baseball by Chacon, only to have Coop pull him from the game with a scant 109 pitches...WHY? Whatever Cooper's idiocy, Valverde's absolutely dismal performance can be blamed on no one but himself. Last week I suggested that luck is a large part of the game, while I hold firm to that claim, tonight, Valverde made his own luck with abysmal pitching. Here's to hoping he figures himself out, SOON.
Sphere: Related ContentTuesday, April 15, 2008
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9 comments:
Thank god I have been in the library not watching the game or otherwise I would have probably broken my tv or something else fairly valuable. Wow.
I just fed a small child to an alligator i was so mad
I shouted out loud in my night class, "You've got to be F***ing kidding me," so that interesting.
taking shawn chacon out was a good managerial move by coop. the meat of the phillies line-up was coming up and he had thrown 109 pitches. now i may be missing some sarcasm but we got jose valverde to close games for us.
Yeah, but Chacon wasn't struggling. He was still located and getting great movement on his pitches, nor was his velocity down. Why not let Chacon go out there and try to finish off the game, and if he puts someone one the go to the bull pen?
While this is just a hypothetical, given our bull-pen's woes, if you go to the bullpen for the 3 run save, then you're limiting your ability to go them the next game, which could be a higher leverage situation. So why do it? The move is even more bone-headed given that Valverde had pitched two games in a row in non-save situation (don't even get me started on that) and still struggled. Two things have to change, Cecil Cooper be realistic and Jose Valverde has to figure out what's wrong with him, because he just looks awful.
Guys its not Valverde's fault. It's Houston's. No matter who is on our team, the lineup will be awful 4 days a week. They will be good once a week. They will be good enough for a win, but the bullpen blows it once a week. And if they play a seventh, its a coin flip. The closer role is cursed, Papelbon probably couldn't get saves for us.
Mike:
Last week, Stephen and I were saying the exact same thing about our lineup. How, no matter who's in there, they will struggle. Now, they're starting to hit their stride a bit. Hopefully, Valverde will figure himself out. If not, we may have a 40 year old closing out games for us.
The thing is, if Coop had left Chacon in, we would have won the game. But our starters won't always go 9 innings, so we have to give Valverde the chance to figure this out. Besides Brocail (who hasn't been spectacular) our bullpen hasn't been very good. That is to say, it's been awful. If Valverde can't close, we're screwed anyways, so we might as well hand him the ball and let him figure it out.
Jack, touche. I admit that we can't have starters go nine all the time. However Coop has stated that won't allow starters to got he full nine if it is a save situation ever. That's just asinine. Chacon was rolling last night, with no indication that he was slowing down or tiring.
I agree that Valverde has to be allowed to figure himself out so that he can play his part on the team. However, I don't think it should be at the expense of the team. He needs to be reviewing film and working very closely with the coaches during his bullpen sessions. Just about any pitcher in major league baseball is capable of going into an inning with a three run lead and getting three outs -- no matter what line-up they're facing. The fact of the matter is, Valverde hasn't shown he's capable of doing that, he just looks sloppy out there. So let Brocail take over the duties for awhile while Valverde figures out what's wrong with him, but you can't let Valverde figure himself out at the expense of winning ball games. This team is living on a very thin margin of error, and while it's only been 14 games so far, I feel like they've tipped the scales for what lady luck is going to allow them to achieve.
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