Stat of the Day

There have been 4 grand slams in the National League this year. 3 of them have been served up by the Mets bullpen, including last night's no-doubter by Nats SS Felipe Lopez, who had a career high 6 RBI.

As Requested

Last night, in anticipation of a rain storm, Joe Girardi kept scheduled starter young Ian Kennedy in the bullpen, replacing him with long reliever Brian Bruney. This sort of move is not unheard of. The reasoning behind it is to “save” Kennedy’s start. If he had started and then there had been an extended rain delay after only a couple innings, it would have then been unwise to return the young arm to the game. Most pitchers, especially 23 year old pitchers, are likely to hurt their arms if they allow them to cool for a long time then return them to action. Some pitchers are even adversely affected by their offense having an exceptionally long half inning at bat (especially in the AL – lazy bastards).

That being said, if Kennedy had started and there had been a long rain delay, Girardi probably wouldn’t have let him continue after the delay and would have to then relieve him anyway, wasting his start. If the game had been called, his start also would have been wasted, obviously. Girardi didn’t want to waste a few of what are going to be carefully monitored Kennedy innings.

I don’t see anything wrong with this move. As it happened, there was no rain and Kennedy ended up coming in in relief late in the game anyway, pitching three fairly ineffective 3 innings, giving up 2 runs and only throwing 32 of his 52 pitches for strikes. This is the part I don’t understand. If you’re going to save the start, save it! Bringing him in late in the game against Zach Greinke, who pitched a great game, doesn’t make much sense to me. I didn’t watch the game, so I don’t know how much Kennedy had actually been throwing and whether or not he ruined himself for starting tonight. Maybe Girardi was looking ahead to the Boston series this weekend and was thinking about matchups there. But in that case, wouldn’t he just have started Kennedy anyway?

Managing pitching to win today versus managing pitching to win tomorrow: an interesting dilemma that the old Joe had issues with. It will be interesting to see how the new Joe handles these sorts of things going forward.

Being a former catcher he must know the psychological impact that bringing a young starter in in relief late in the same game he was scheduled to start must have. That’s for a later post, I suppose. I just hope Joe knows what he’s doing.

In the mean time, formerly 0-7 Detroit pulled it together for their first win, against Boston and overhyped Jon Lester. Papi continues his dismal start, going 0-4 and dropping his BA to .091. I was taking delight in this last week but am now forced to wonder if he’s hurt. Something must be going on with him that we don’t know about.

Tonight: Marlins at Nats. Forecast: beautiful, 67 at game time. Tickets: None yet, will buy at box. Pondering infield gallery, will take pictures. Bonus: free curly W and schedule magnet.