Cardinal fans were offered another reminder this week of just how important a quality closer is to a team’s success and at the same time, were left confounded by a question that baseball people have been trying, unsuccessfully, to answer for years:
Why is it that a good pitcher, somebody who throws strikes and has had success pitching at other points in the game, has trouble pitching the ninth inning?
“For whatever reason there are only a handful of guys who can pitch in that inning successfully,” said manager Mike Matheny. “Just because he has good stuff doesn’t necessarily mean he can come in and close out a game at this level.
“There’s not really a model of what you can follow to see if a guy can do it, you just kind of have to check it out. Sometimes your feet are held to the fire, forcing you to try something.”
That was exactly the situation the Cardinals found themselves in earlier this year. After Mitchell Boggs struggled to take the place of the injured Jason Motte, Matheny turned to Edward Mujica – without really knowing for certain if Mujica – who had been nearly perfect for the Cardinals pitching mostly in the seventh inning the last two months of last season -- would be able to handle the role.
That’s the biggest dilemma for a manager who needs to try to find a new closer, for whatever reason – the only way he knows if somebody can do the job is to give him the chance and hope for the best.
Even if a pitcher has closed successfully at other levels, in college or in the minors, that is not a guarantee he can do the job in the majors.
Mujica had earned four saves in 312 career games in the majors before Matheny put him into that role for the first time on April 18, at Philadelphia, when he got the final four outs, while also giving up two hits, in a 4-3 Cardinals win.
Mujica has been perfect since, converting 17 consecutive save opportunities, the second longest stretch to open a season in franchise history.
So why has Mujica been so good at the job when Boggs, and others, failed
“I think he has a similar attitude to what I had in 2011, and that’s just go pitch,” said Jason Motte, who earned all of the Cardinals’ 42 saves last year. “Don’t think about it, don’t worry about it. What’s the point? Worrying does no good for anybody. It’s pointless. It’s not going to change anything.”
Motte has had many conversations in the past few years with Cardinal Hall of Fame closer Bruce Sutter, who earned 300 saves in his career. Sutter had that same attitude, trying not to overanalyze what he was doing when he was on the mound.
“Bruce was saying ‘you wake up every day knowing that if you go out there the game will be on the line,” Motte said. “If you win the game you will probably be on the mound, and you could be out there and be the one who caused the loss. It takes a different kind of person to be able to have that role and still go about your day in a normal way, knowing what might happen at the end of it.”
Motte still remembers blowing a save on opening day in 2009. He didn’t really get another solid opportunity to close for more than two years.
“Once that happened I didn’t really think about anything other than just go pitch,’” Motte said. “Last year it was pretty much the same thing. If I have a bad night, just get me back out there tomorrow and I’ll put up a zero.”
That’s the attitude that a closer has to have, said another pitcher who has done that job for the Cardinals.
Adam Wainwright had only had four save opportunities, blowing two of them, as a rookie during the 2006 season before Tony La Russa moved him into that role shortly before the playoffs began in place of Jason Isringhausen. In the postseason, when the pressure is even greater, Wainwright was a perfect 4-for-4.
He agrees with Motte that the worst thing a pitcher can do while on the mound in the ninth inning is think about the situation he is in.
“It’s the only inning that you let creep into your mind about wins and losses,” said Wainwright, whose only previous experience closing games came in high school, in games in which he was not the starter.
“If you do a good job you most likely win the game and if you don’t do a good job you most likely lose the game,” Wainwright said. “Some people can let that affect their mindset and their confidence going forward.”
The other difference in the ninth inning, Wainwright said, comes from the opponents, who also know the game is almost over.
“The other team is really locked In and working pitch to pitch and really grinding out at bats because they know this is their last chance,” he said. “Sometimes teams will kind of coast until that last inning and then say all of a sudden ‘we’ve got to go now.’ All of the pressure is there and the guys who are really successful in that role are the ones who can really simplify things and just go out and make pitches the same way.”
Wainwright is definitely a student of the “keep it simple” philosophy of pitching; believing that thinking about more than the next pitch he has to throw is when a pitcher starts to get himself into trouble.
“You have to keep things simple and make pitches, whether you are in the first inning or the last inning,” he said. “All of these guys are capable of it, if they just keep it simple. If you start worrying about what the fans are thinking or what the manager is thinking and all that kind of stuff, you take the focus off making the pitch, and that’s when you lose ground.”
It was Mujica’s unavailability that caused the problems last week, because he had pitched four games in a row. Matheny also could not go to Trevor Rosenthal that night, creating a perfect storm that swallowed Boggs.
“That was a night we needed to score a lot of runs,” Matheny said.
Matheny is hopeful there will not be many days the rest of this season when neither Mujica or Rosenthal is able to pitch. Even though Rosenthal has only one save in his career – at rookie level Johnson City three years ago – Matheny said he would not hesitate to give him the ball for the ninth if Mujica could not pitch.
That is the only way he can find out if Rosenthal can do the job.
“There are so many different makeups, the high-strung guys, the laid-back guys,” Matheny said. “I don’t think there is one common model as far as personality goes, it’s just that some guys are more successful at it.
“I’ve seen guys who come right at people, and others who pitch around the zone and take advantage of hitters’ aggressiveness. There’s not just one theory. (Mariano) Rivera throws 90 percent cutters. Chief (Mujica) is out there throwing all splits. Motte throws high heaters, (Trevor) Hoffman all straight changeups.
“Usually what you see is a guy whose stuff is just different, and that’s what you see in Trevor. I would have no problem going to him in the ninth because of what he has shown us.”
Except that Rosenthal has yet to show what he can do in that final inning.
Matheny knew he had it easy last year when he didn’t have to think about handing the ball to Motte for the ninth. This year, he and Cardinal fans both know the decision has not been that simple.
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