The Ballad of Joakim Soria

Let's say you run a baseball team.  Not a good baseball team.  Don't get carried away.  First you gotta calibrate your expectations.  It's a franchise with a wonderfully proud history, sure, but you're in a small market and your on-field product's been garbage for a long long time, and most people essentially have forgotten you are a major-league enterprise.  That proud history is now the only solace your fans cling to, the consecutive division titles, the playoff heartbreak, the upper-deck home run that at last sent you to the World Series, eventually even a championship.  There are flags and retired numbers on the scoreboard between the fountains past the outfield walls.  But the glory days are so long gone their memory seems an illusion.  In the here and now, your margins are tight.  The city did not vote to build you that new stadium.  You took the job knowing that, to contend for a playoff berth at any point, you have to maximize your advantages, draft exceptionally well, get significantly luckier than you deserve to.  You have relatively little money and no cachet whatsoever, so you know you are unlikely ever to attract marquee, or even second-tier, free agents.

Now, on your baseball team you have a pitcher, P-I-T-C-H-E-R.  He is your best pitcher.  He throws a cut fastball, 91-93 mph or so with good movement, but he also has exceptional command of that pitch, able to spot the ball on any corner of the strike zone four times out of five.  He also throws two varieties of curveballs, a hard overhand job that comes in at about 80, and a bananas lollipop 12-to-6 deal he can bring in between 65 and 75.  He keeps the ball down, gets his share of ground balls and soft pop flies, hardly walks anyone ever.  For two seasons, he has dominated the American League, as stingy as anybody in the circuit.  Yet for that entire time you have used him only for one inning at a time most games, and certainly no more than two.  He never starts; in fact, he throws fewer innings than any other pitcher on the staff except the mop-up guys.  Two or three times a week—and it would be more often if you were any good—he sits on the bench, not even warming up, not even soft-tossing, when the game is in the balance in the middle innings.  While other guys, not nearly his equal, cough up leads, or let close games get out of hand, in the middle innings.  So why do you do that?  Why is that your strategy?  MY QUESTION IS AS FOLLOWS: why do you proactively craft a game plan where the desired outcome is to use your best pitcher the least of all the pitchers on the team?  I mean, it's not like your starting rotation is out there col' runnin' shit.  You have two good starting pitchers and then a whole lotta nothin'.  And the offense you've built, full of mediocre young players who might get better someday, is impatient and consequently terrible, so the only way you possibly can win even half your games is to pitch out of your mind.  This is your reality.  In this reality, why would you not want to get this exceptional pitcher, your best pitcher, into as many games as early as possible, to make sure he faces as many batters as possible, throws the greatest possible percentage of your team's total innings?  Why would you not want to see if he can be equally great throwing 200 innings a year, and making a real difference, instead of 70 innings, where he is totally peripheral?

You've never tried him as a starter before—nobody has, not at the major-league level—so you can't say with any confidence he wouldn't be just as dominant in the rotation.  There is no downside if he fails; you just put him back in the bullpen.  So why on earth would you not make the move?

I'm just saying it seems to me you should.

Comments

[tris mccall]

you may recall that there was serious discussion about making tim lincecum a closer. i hope that has been put to rest now.

as you know, lincecum threw 138 pitches this weekend. i have always hoped that all that stuff about pitch counts and pitcher abuse points would turn out to be nonsense, and now... um... i'm *really* hoping. i remember when david cone threw 167 pitches, in the rain, in 1992. took him awhile to get over that one. some might argue he never got over that one.

[S.M.]

I winced when I saw what Bochy had done to Lincecum. He was going to get the kid a shutout if he had to explode Tim's labrum into suet to do it.

As for Cone, I read what you said and thought, "Aw, he's exaggerating." Well, you were, but just by one pitch. It was 166, in a 1-0 win over Bill Swift, whom I always liked. That was July 17, 1992:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN199207170.shtml

What's even more incredible about Cone in 1992 was that, in 27 starts with the Mets, he threw over 120 pitches 15 TIMES, including 10 starts of 130+, and 4 of 140+. From June 26 to July 22, he had a six-start skein where he AVERAGED over 140 pitches per. That is fucking crazy. Who was the manager then -- was that Torborg? Good lord.

When did you become a Giants fan?

[tris mccall]

i have been a giants fan since 1977, when i thought my baseball card of chris speier was just sooo dreamy:

http://texas-league.com.ismmedia.com/ISM2/MultimediaManager/Chris_Speier.jpg

ooh!

i was definitely peak gay at six. anyway, surely you remember me insisting that the '89 world series had been cancelled and must be treated as a tie. lemme tell you, i wasn't saying that just to piss off slammin' sammy kamin.

you can keep your billy buckner -- my nightmares are about scott spiezio and jose cruz, jr. dropping that fly ball in right field.

my teams:

orioles
kc royals
san francisco giants
seattle mariners
(sorta) cincinnati reds

teams i will root for when all my teams suck:

boston red sox
new york metsies
tigers and/or indians, whoever is doing well
florida marlins (?)
phils **if and only if** i am actually at citizens bank stadium

team i will root for **if and only if** david cone is pitching for them:

new york yanklins

team whose sole responsibility is beating the a's, and who lost to the a's in the playoffs, thereby guaranteeing i will NEVER FORGIVE THEM:

minnesota twins

teams i will not root for under any circumstances:

a's
blow jays
diamondbacks and rockies
astros
any team from chicago (in any sport)

aaaaagagatahagagahagagahghghggllglg:

st. louis cardinals

rule #1, codicil #1: if david cone is pitching, ignore this entire chart. i will root for the team david cone is pitching for, at least until he is lifted from the game. then i will root for tom henke, or whoever, to give up fifteen runs. since david cone is now a broadcaster (sort of), rule #1, codicil #1 no longer applies.

there is some chance that tim lincecum may fit into the david cone-sized hole in my heart!

[voxpoptart]

I'm just saying hi from astonishment at discovering a blog via Tris McCall with an eloquent take on singing in hip-hop, and then (scrolling months into the past) see the same blogger call out the Royals management for their cowardice in not making Joakim Soria a starter.

You're dead right, of course -- I've been telling this to the few friends who will listen for months; if they need a reliever they should try Tony Pena Jr., since that's a far more promising use of his arm than pretending he's a major-league shortstop. I just don't expect to see acknowledgement of the Royals' _existence_ outside the Royals blogs. It's a pleasant surprise.