- CJ has lived on the edge all year. Sometimes it works out and he gets the save, and sometimes it explodes in his face. The rollercoaster continued last night.
- Why CJ is not a closer, and what a closer needs as compared to what CJ has.......
NEEDS -
1) Needs a cannon and the ability to strike people out with 2 pitches - Fastball must be 95+ and you must have an off speed killer pitch, either a change-up (it looks like the fastball, just slower, kills hitters), or a good curveball.
2) Needs the mentality - Nerves of steel, not rattled easily. Closers blow saves, even the good ones. But the great ones shake them off and come back to the mound the next night.
3) Needs quirkiness - Good closers are weird and nuts. Have to be.
4) Needs to be right handed - Unless you're throwing 99 mph and can blow people away, you have to be right handed. Most hitters in baseball are right handed, and most right handed batters hit lefty pitchers better than they do righty pitchers.
5) Needs to limit pitches - You have to get up there and go right at hitters and try to blow them away. The mentality is - here's my stuff, try to hit it. You cant try to dance around and outsmart a hitter. You'll throw too many pitches, and closers arent built to throw tons of pitches. The more they throw, the less effective they are.
WHAT CJ HAS -
- CJ has half of #1. He has a good fastball (95 mph), but he has no great secondary pitch to keep hitters off-balance.
- He has #2.
- He has #3.
- He doesn't have #4. He doesn't blow people away, so most right handed hitters can have success off him. This ties with #1. If he had a great 2nd pitch, he could get away with being a lefty closer who tops out at 95-96 mph with his fastball.
- He sure doesnt have #5. He tries to outthink hitters and nibble the corners. He's been the most effective this year when he's just gone right at guys. When he attacks the strike zone instead of dancing around trying to outsmart a hitter, he's pretty good.
The problem is, he doesn't do it enough. He's a former starting pitcher, and that's their mentality, to nibble and dance around the strike zone and outsmart hitters. You cant do it as a closer.
- Another reason- A hitter's mentality changes in the 9th inning when his team's down a few runs. His team needs base runners, so they are patient and don’t bite on pitches dancing around the strike zone. Earlier in the game, hitters take chances on those pitches and they swing more freely. But late in the game, they lay off those borderline pitches.
If CJ would just attack the strike zone right away and come at hitters, he'd be more effective (See his consecutive strike-outs of Jim Thome and Paul Konerko a few weeks ago). Instead, he walks a ton of batters and has baserunners on the majority of the time he’s pitching.
Summary -
Unless he develops a good 2nd pitch, he needs to be a set-up guy on a winning team. On the Rangers, he's the closer because it's all they have and they're not contenders. But if he's a corner-nibbling, lefty who throws 95 mph with no off-speed pitch, he's going to be just an average closer.
- Rangers lose a chance to win a series on the road against a 1st place team.
Karma, Quentin crush Texas Rangers, 10-8
12:29 AM CDT on Thursday, July 24, 2008
By RICHARD DURRETT / The Dallas Morning News
rdurrett@dallasnews.com
CHICAGO – If you listen to White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, it was those pesky baseball gods who doomed the Texas Rangers and closer C.J. Wilson in a 10-8 loss Wednesday.
Wilson entered with two outs and two on in the eighth after the usually reliable Eddie Guardado had given up two runs and couldn't find his command. Wilson's first pitch – he called it a "meat ball" – was blasted by Carlos Quentin over the left-field wall to give the White Sox the lead for good.
Guillen wasn't yelling at Wilson from the dugout this time. He was ejected a few innings earlier for arguing balls and strikes. Maybe he was cheering in front of the television in his office.
He was asked if winning the game against Wilson meant more to him.
"Not to me," Guillen said. "But I think for the team, yes. They might not say it, but they should.
"... Always out there is the baseball gods. Be careful what you do and what you say in this game because he's going to get you back."
Guillen yelled at Wilson during the last series in Arlington after Wilson showed emotion in getting out of a jam in the ninth to win a game. Guillen felt it was unprofessional and showed disrespect to his players.
Wilson said Wednesday's loss wasn't any tougher because it was to the White Sox.
But it was tough in general. Kevin Millwood, as has become a pattern, left the game early. His right groin tightened up in the second inning and he was taken out after giving up three runs in 12/3 innings.
"It got bad enough to where I couldn't push off, and I wasn't going to do us any good that way," Millwood said. "It's annoying. It's frustrating. I want to get it taken care of and be able to pitch without worrying about it."
It was the 11th time this season a Rangers starter hasn't completed the third inning. The Rangers are 4-7 in those games. For Millwood, it was the fifth time an injury has forced him to leave a start – twice because of a bruised shin and three times with groin issues.
The injury led to overtime innings for the most-used bullpen in baseball. Josh Rupe, Warner Madrigal and Jamey Wright came through, but Guardado couldn't hold the three-run lead. He put the blame on himself, not any baseball gods.
"I didn't get the job done, plain and simple," Guardado said. "It's frustrating when that happens. I could not find the zone, and when I did, I was behind and they hit the ball."
The Rangers, for their part, hit the ball, too. An offense that was struggling to hit consistently, scored six two-out runs and was aggressive on the bases with four steals. It wasn't enough, though, to overcome the White Sox heroics. Or the baseball gods.
- Dillwood hurt again, there goes his trade-ability.....
Texas Rangers' Millwood ends start early
08:46 PM CDT on Wednesday, July 23, 2008
By RICHARD DURRETT / The Dallas Morning News
rdurrett@dallasnews.com
CHICAGO – It didn't take pitching coach Mark Connor long to figure out something was bothering starter Kevin Millwood. After Millwood walked two consecutive batters with two outs in the second inning, Connor made a visit and immediately signaled to manager Ron Washington and assistant trainer Kevin Harmon to come out to the mound.
Millwood felt his right groin tighten – a recurring problem the last few months – and he left. Washington said Millwood will be examined today. If Millwood can't pitch in his regular slot Monday, the club could turn to Scott Feldman or Luis Mendoza, who pitched four innings Tuesday.
Feldman is supposed to pitch out of the bullpen but made a spot start for RHP Eric Hurley on Monday. He gave up one run in six innings in a win over the White Sox.
Hurley expected to start Sunday: Hurley, who is on the disabled list with a hamstring strain but was scratched from his last start because of a sore arm and stiff shoulder, appears on track to start Sunday in Oakland. Hurley said he has felt good throwing off flat ground from various distances the last few days.
Davis showing power: 1B Chris Davis has eight home runs since he was called up June 26, the most in the AL since that date. "His power is legit," Washington said. "It's not just BP [batting practice] power." Davis is pleased with his power production but said he still has "a lot of work to do."
He pointed to Tuesday's second inning as an example. He grounded out to pitcher Mark Buehrle on an 0-1 count with a runner at third and one out.
"I got a little impatient," Davis said. "That was the first time I faced Buehrle, and I should have taken some more pitches there. I was pretty disappointed I didn't get that run in."
But he did homer off Buehrle in the eighth, his third homer off a left-hander this season.
Briefly: OF Milton Bradley was hit in the left forearm in the seventh and didn't hit in the ninth. He's listed as day-to-day. ... The Rangers agreed to terms with 2008 fifth-round draft pick OF Clark Murphy from Fallbrook (Calif.) High School and seventh-round selection RHP Matt Thompson, who lives in Burleson and attended Grace Prep Academy. ... ESPN has picked up the Rangers' home game against the Yankees on Wednesday, Aug. 5. FSNSW also will broadcast the game.
- Trade deadline talk from Master Newberg.....
Last year at this time, the likelihood of the Rangers being central figures in the trade market was much greater than it is today, not just because the club isn’t hopelessly out of the hunt this time around but also because Texas has fewer obvious trade pieces right now. On the one hand, it seems unlikely that the Rangers would part with blue-chip prospects for a veteran unless it were an impact player who would be under control for multiple years (not many of those available), and on the other hand, given where the team is right now, there may not be an active effort to trade a veteran who is a key part of the lineup or staff unless the offer is overwhelming.
But seeing national writers report, for instance, that the Yankees are calling about Gerald Laird, that the Dodgers have joined a couple other teams showing interest in Hank Blalock, and that there are any number of contenders that could use Eddie Guardado, and figuring that another gem out of Vicente Padilla tomorrow night could make him as valuable as any starting pitcher on the market, I find myself fired up that A.J. Preller and Don Welke work for my team.
The thing I love about the Yankees, as an example, showing interest in something we have is that I’m comfortable that Preller and Welke probably know New York’s international kids as well as anyone in the Yankees’ own front office. Slight exaggeration.
When the 2007 season began, 18-year-old righthander Neftali Feliz was ranked by Baseball America as Atlanta’s number 18 prospect (lower than Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Elvis Andrus, Matt Harrison, and Beau Jones, by the way), having only 29 stateside innings under his belt.
When the 2007 season began, 17-year-old outfielder Engel Beltre was ranked by Baseball America as Boston’s number 20 prospect. He had yet to play a pro inning.
Less than four months into the season, they were Rangers property, Feliz after another 27.1 short-season innings, Beltre after a pedestrian 125-at-bat run (.208/.310/.400) in short-season ball.
But it’s not all about what your pro scouts can envision when watching other organization’s kids play Gulf Coast League and Appy League games. Preller and Welke knew all about Feliz and Beltre well before they signed with the Braves and Red Sox.
Now, that’s not to suggest that those teams didn’t know what they had in Feliz and Beltre (or that other teams weren’t aware of them). Recall this note from Peter Gammons after the Gagné trade:
“The biggest holdup in the Gagné deal, other than working out his negotiated rights to refuse a deal to Boston, was 17-year-old outfielder Engel Beltre. When Epstein went to bed at 2 a.m. Tuesday morning, he had refused to include Beltre in the trade, so on Tuesday morning, the Rangers still were down to the Brewers ― who were on Gagné’s list of teams to which he could be traded ― and the Red Sox. But Epstein decided a 17-year-old kid a half-dozen years from the big leagues probably was worth including for a shot to win the World Series. ‘When Theo called and said he would put Beltre in the deal, it was down to the no-trade language and the paperwork,’ Daniels said. That paperwork was so complicated that it almost was not completed by the 4 p.m. deadline.”
Let me put this another way.
Even if Texas doesn’t make a major trade in the next seven days, and does nothing except maybe find a new home for Frank Catalanotto, we won’t be getting someone’s Chad Reineke back.
And if Preller and Welke worked for the Padres, they wouldn’t have, either.
