Francisco Cordero or Why Managers Should Have Some Patience

You all know he's been just awful this season. Last night I was giving him a pass, nothing was hit hard but everything was finding a hole. Then he didn't cover first. costing two runs and just subtracting the tiny bit of me that was feeling bad for the guy. Pitchers are told from the age of 12 to start moving to first on every ball hit to their left. If they aren't needed, they can stop, but you always start. You have to, baseball was developed perfectly. If the pitcher doesn't move right away, the runner is going beat him.

Anyway, you know the story, he's got an ERA of 6.00. Even when he's been good, he hasn't been good. In June he had an ERA of 1.59, but batters were still hitting .286/.375/.405 against him. You have to be very lucky to have an ERA that low with a batters hitting line like that.

John Farrell has been talking about how he needs someone to pitch the 7th and 8th when we are behind, because, you know, we can't use the good pitchers unless we are in front. Sort of like you can't use the good china except when guests are over.

Farrell only has faith in 3 guys, Jason Frasor, Darren Oliver and Casey Janssen. He goes back and forth on Luis Perez. He had some faith in Carlos Villanueva, but he's in the rotation now. When we are leading Frasor gets the 7th, Oliver gets the 8th and Janssen get the 9th. I think it is a silly way of running a pen. The only way of defending it is that it is a way of not overworking your favorite guys. Personally, I think they worry about that too much. Duane Ward would pitch 100+ innings a year. I don't understand why relievers can't go more than an inning at a time. Tom Henke pitched more than an inning 20 times in 1990. I don't think there would be a problem giving a reliever around 100 innings, but instead they try no to have them pitch more than 60 to 70 innings.

Since Farrell won't use these guys if we are behind and he doesn't trust anyone else we get Cordero.

Why doesn't he trust anyone else? It's because he uses his young relievers the same way my mom uses the TV remote.

My mom continuously clicks through the channels never stopping. "Hey Jepardy, look mom the subject is History, or like they called it when you went to school Current Affairs'. Click, "Hey Seinfeld, that's the one Teri Hatcher." Click. "A nature show, look at the lion sneak up on that....." Click. 'Look baseball, lets watch'. Click. This goes on until she somehow, randomly, hits the weather channel. Then she stops. We need to see the temperature in Acapulco. It's 35. It is always 35. Anyway, that is how Farrell has been using the young guys in the pen:

Evan Crawford. We get told 'Evan has great stuff, he really showed something in spring training.' but he gets into a game or two and he's gone.

Joel Carreno. He was great last year. He's here and gone.

Chad Beck. He's here almost long enough to tell the story about how Alex sat beside Pete Rose and Pete said how much he liked Beck.

Robert Coello. Here and gone.

David Pauley. Ok, he was awful.

Jesse Chavez. Yeah, he was awful too.

Ryota Igarashi. He wasn't around long enough for me to figure out how to spell his name.

Scott Richmond. I always kind of figured he'd be ok as a relieve if you could use him only against RHB

Andrew Carpenter. I think he's still here. Ask again tomorrow.

Sam Dyson. "Has the best stuff in the system". Will that get him through a full week.

Farrell still hasn't found the Weather Channel. I'm sorry, but you have to keep a guy around for a bit before you start feeling confident in him. Bringing them up, giving them a week to impress you and sending them out, well, John knows a lot more about pitching than I do, but why not give one of these guys a real look. IF Dyson has the best stuff in the system (I don't know how, since he didn't get strikeouts in A-ball), then let him pitch here for a while and see if he can get Farrell to develop some faith in him. Give him long enough to figure out how his 'stuff' can get out major leaguers.

Shipping a guy out, after his first bad outing isn't going to work. If you keep doing that, we are going to keep seeing Cordero in these spots.