To Pitch Or Not To Pitch?

Sometime in mid- or late September, the Washington Nationals are going to shut Stephen Strasburg down for the remainder of the season.  At that point, the team that currently holds baseball's best record will voluntarily shelve its best starting pitcher while standing on the brink of the playoffs (barring a 2011-Red-Sox-ian collapse, of course).  Since no team has ever done anything like this before in sports history, and since D.C. baseball fans have been among the most consistently abused people in sports history*, the question of whether the "right decision" is being made has become much more incendiary and vitriolic than a normal hot-button sports argument.  The Nats' fans (and some players) are furious, the Nats' brass are standing pat, and the rest of us are either vehemently arguing one side or the other or simply scratching our heads at the whole thing. 

It's been said that the line between genius and insanity is often gossamer thin.  There have certainly been notable past instances of courageous innovation and full-blown lunacy being two sides of a singular coin, as Picasso or Mozart would attest if they weren't, you know, centuries dead.  In fact, unorthodox thought is often perceived as madness until hindsight shows us otherwise.  So, what will history show us about Washington deactivating one of the game's elite pitchers on the doorstep of the city's first postseason appearance since 1933?

As Jayson Stark's cover-all-the-angles article noted last week, medically, we simply can't know.  There is no predicting the effects of a season-ending shutdown versus skipping a start here and there verses 15 or 30 days of rest now and reactivation when things get serious next month versus letting Strasburg continue to pitch as he has all year.  Each body reacts differently to Tommy John surgery and recovery therefrom, and past outcomes have been varied enough that a definitively correct medical course of action cannot be identified.  The Nats are apparently erring, in the most dramatic way possible, on the side of caution.  That a team would be so bold and far-sighted as to place the long-term health of a player above more pressing and immediate concerns, even in the face of so much averse reaction from fans, is its own form of courage.  And in a weird way, it is commendable.

This is no little thing the Nationals are doing, or at least have assured us that they will do.  It flies in the face of conventional wisdom, of putting your best possible team on the field, and some might even say the spirit of baseball or sports in general.  In the name of protecting the future, the team is voluntarily rendering itself less competitive, less likely to win in the present, in a season where they have a legitimate shot at a World Series title.  That's some Big Picture Thinking accompanied by a pair of Big Brass Ones.  It's certainly breaking new ground.

But here's the thing, and somebody probably ought to have told Mike Rizzo this at some point:

Winning a World Series is extraordinarily, phenomenally hard.

Ask any fan, sports journalist, broadcaster, player, or coach.  The sheer amount of factors that have to align for a specific team to plaster a locker room in champagne in October is staggering.  Team health, luck, fate, coaching decisions, umpiring calls, and usually at least one purely miraculous act have to not only be involved, but be involved in the correct sequence.  Trust a Braves fan here: my team had the best rotation in baseball for a solid decade and 14 straight division titles, and they captured exactly one World Series title.  They could have, and probably should have, had more.  But there are just too many things at play over 162 games and the playoffs.  Too much can go wrong; fate is too capricious. A Kent Hrbek/Ron Gant call here, a faulty Bobby Cox pitching change there, or a plain old "it just wasn't our year" moment, like running into that buzz saw of a Yankees team in '99.  There are literally infinite variables, some so minute that you only notice them in retrospect, that can derail a team's road to a championship.  In other words, people are asking the wrong question.

The question is not: is this a wise decision for the future of Stephen Strasburg's career, and by extension, the Nationals organization?  The question is: when staring at lightning in a bottle, when everything is clicking for your team, when you have momentum and chemistry and all those other intangibles on your side, and they are in evidence on a daily basis in the Win column, how can you resign yourself to anything less than a full-on assault at the trophy?  The Nats are in the middle of a charmed season, and they are prepared to throw it away because they believe there are many more in store.  [Ed. note: as a Braves fan, I am absolutely not complaining about this.]  Problem is, baseball almost never works like that. 

Stephen Strasburg may never miss another start for the rest of his career.  Fine, but what happens if Bryce Harper goes down with a broken tibia next July and the heart of your order can't get along against elite pitching without him?  Or if Gio Gonzalez never comes close to replicating his stellar 2012 season again.  Or if the bullpen falls apart?  If, if, if.  That two-letter word isn't worth much in Scrabble, but it's everything in baseball, and Washington is banking on several ifs, for years to come, coming out in their favor.

The odds of that happening are stacked heavily against them.  That's why you don't look gift horses in the mouth.  That's why you don't ignore lightning in a bottle.  That's why you let transcendent talent keep taking the mound.  You just never know. 

*It's true.  We think that, say, Sonics fans have it bad, but Washington has had its baseball team taken away TWICE.  The original Senators franchise had a proud history including Hall Of Famers like Walter Johnson and Goose Goslin, and were the 1924 World Series champs.  They mostly faired poorly in the '30s and '40s, but following the 1954 signing of Harmon Killebrew, their fortunes looked to be improving.  Killebrew led the league with 42 homers and made his first of 11 consecutive All-Star teams in 1959 ... and then the team was shipped to Minnesota to become the Twins in 1961.  The expansion/replacement "new" Senators were objectively terrible, averaging 90 losses a season from 1961 to 1971 ... and then they moved to Texas to become the Rangers.  Lacking a baseball team from 1971-2005, D.C. fans were forced by default to root for the Baltimore Orioles.  Aside from the '83 World Series and the privilege of watching Cal Ripken Jr.'s incredible career unfold, this was a pretty miserable proposition for most of those years.  And of course, when the city did get the Nats in '05, they were awful and have been right up until pretty much this year.  That's a lot of losing, both in the W/L column and in the ignominy of having your team taken away two times in a decade. 

The Ghost Of Pitching Changes Past

Not to speak ill of the semi-retired, but a certain facet of Bobby Cox's managerial style used to drive Braves fans up a wall.  Let's be honest here: though he was and is and is a lifelong top-echelon baseball thinker, the man had a penchant for inexplicable bullpen moves.  Cardinals fans are nodding in sympathy right now, but this tendency wasn't anything akin to Tony La Russa's mad scientist schtick.  Most of the time it wasn't some elaborate, matchup-oriented chess maneuver or high-concept stunt.  Neither Bobby nor pitching coach Leo Mazzone ever went in much for that brand of gamesmanship.  No, it was simply that he'd leave a starter in a few batters too long, or pull them when they were cruising, or send precisely the wrong guy to the mound in key situations.  Worst of all: you knew it as it was happening.  You could just feel it. 

Any Atlanta fan over the age of 25 knows exactly what I mean.  Maybe John Smoltz would be in a jam, clearly having an off night.  His stuff wouldn't have the electric zip it usually had, guys would be tagging singles left and right, and Bobby would leave him on the mound.  We'd collectively sit there thinking "get him out of there!!!", as if we could telepathically force our manager to make that decision through sheer force of will.  By the time he listened to our ESP prompting, it was almost always too late.  Conversely, maybe Tom Glavine would be ripping through opposing batters, and then with one out in the sixth, for reasons known only to himself, Bobby would yank him and send Armando Reynoso or Mike Remlinger or some other poor soul out to the mound.  Your gut would tighten, you'd wince, and you'd think "Oh f*** here it comes."  And it would come.  The leadoff walk.  The double into the gap.  The crack of a towering homer leaving the bat to slice through the humid Georgia night and land deep in the seats.  As if by alchemy, a two-run lead would become a three-run deficit. For all our gawdy starting rotations (and often underrated bullpens) of that halcyon 14-year run, Bobby's pitching changes sure could spin straw into crap.  

When it was announced that Fredi Gonzalez would be taking Cox's seat in the dugout, the general thinking was that a guy who spent a number of years with the organization was the perfect replacement.  Gonzalez, after all, understood the Braves Way, or How Bobby Did It, or whatever.  Unfortunately, that apparently includes a pronounced atavism regarding Cox-ian bullpen management.

I was driving home from work on Friday when, in the opener of a semi-critical series with the Nats, Andrelton Simmons sent a two-run dinger juuuuuuust over the wall in left-center; his apparent favorite spot in Turner Field.  That homer completed a four-run rally to tie the game; it was pretty much the definition of a momentum shift.  How did Fredi Gonzalez capitalize on this windfall?  He sent freaking Chad Durbin to the mound to pitch the next inning.  As soon as that particular bit of information came over the radio, I tensed up.  Such a move had all the makings of a disastrous Braves bullpen moment, and I knew what was going to happen before it came to pass.  As I held the steering wheel in a death grip, Michale Morse launched Durbin's first pitch into the right field stands.  The Braves lost 5-4.     

On June 12th, Gonzalez pulled Mike Minor, who was (and still is) in dire need of a confidence boost with one out and a man on first in the 8th.  Minor had been mowing down the Yankees for seven innings, and commanded a four-run lead.  Instead of letting him roll, or sending in Craig Kimbrel to get the last five outs (heaven forbid we use our best reliever for more than one inning at a time!!!), Fredi sent a woefully struggling Jonny Venters to the hill.  The next few minutes unfolded like so: single, walk, A-Rod grand slam to tie the game, single, Fredi pulls Venters and STILL doesn't go to Kimbrel, sends Cory Gearrin out there instead, Nick Swisher hits a two-run homer.  Yankees win 6-4.   

And tonight, just now as I was writing this, yet another example manifested.  Our promising young starter Tommy Hanson was in the middle of a superb performance against the lowly Cubs, allowing just one run through six innings of lights-out work.  Now, here's the thing about Tommy: he has endurance problems and generally does not fare well late in games.  Over the last week, Atlanta has been subjected to the sort of  triple-digit heat and drenching humidity that usually waits until August to fully afflict us.  This is the stuff that drove humans to invent central air conditioning because at some point on the thermometer oscillating fans become utterly worthless.  Vicious, implacable summer weather.  The kind that drains the body's energy and addles the mind.  The kind that turns even the most finely-tuned athletes into staggering, dead-eyed versions of themselves.  In other words, precisely the sort of conditions under which one does not send a starting pitcher of questionable stamina back out for the seventh inning.

Actually, I'm going to cut Fredi a little slack on sending Hanson out for the top of the frame.  Before tonight, the man hadn't lost a game since May 28th, and he was clearly in a groove on this sweltering evening.  The problem was leaving him out there after two consecutive singles to start the inning.  I mean, how glaring and obvious a red flag do you need?  Right then, the prudent action was to get Hanson the hell off the mound and send in Eric O'Flaherty or some other competent arm.  Nope, Fredi left him there even as he was clearly faltering.  So of course, Hanson walked Darwin Barney to load the bases and then gave up a three-run double to Luis Valbuena.  4-1 Cubbies, which was still the score when Freddie Freeman flied out to end the game.  Bobby Cox's one fatal managerial flaw is alive and well in the ATL. 

Look, like every Atlanta native, I revere the man.  He wrote out our lineup cards for the entirety of my cognizant life up until a few seasons ago.  But he had a genetic deficiency when it came to when and how to make pitching changes, and I deeply wish Fredi Gonzalez's memory retention of managerial techniques had excluded that particular tic.  I know baseball is difficult and fate is capricious, but in 14 years we only won a single World Series with one of the greatest pitching rotations ever assembled and a lot of heavy bats.  With (mostly) lesser lights on the roster and brutal competition these days, what can we realistically hope for in 2012?  If the answer is going to be anything beyond "a decent regular-season record" then Fredi has to shake those bullpen idiosyncracies.

Fans, on balance, are not anywhere near as knowledgeable as those who have had years of intimate involvement with a sport.  We do, however, have the ability to recognize patterns when they're staring us in the face.  This is one such pattern.

Dear Fredi: if you won't listen to your gut, listen to ours.  Or, failing, that, listen to logic.  Please stop mismanaging your pitchers.  I gotta tell you man, we've danced this two step before and we're beyond tired of it.

Sincerely,

Braves fans everywhere.