Soxput faith in Workman
Bullpen ace aims to reduce walk rate
FORT MYERS — Shaved heads, ZZ Top beards, wild sprints to the mound. Name an attention-getting idiosyncrasy and chances are there was at least one closer who embraced it as part of an image intended to portray pitching on the borders of insanity.
Randy Myers routinely wore combat fatigues, stocked his locker with hunting knives and neutered hand grenades. He rocked from side to side on his jog to the mound. John Rocker started a full-on sprint as soon as the bullpen gate swung open. Al Hrabosky, the Mad Hungarian, wore a Fu Man Chu beard and swung his left arm back and forth as he glared in at the catcher’s signs.
For decades, quirkiness was as much a part of a closer’s costume as a Hawaiian shirt is for aging men trying to minimize the paunch.
Then along came Mariano Rivera, widely regarded as the greatest closer of alltime. Other than “Enter Sandman” playing on the Yankee Stadium loudspeakers, he had no signature. He was the antithesis of the
“look-at-me” athlete. Everything from his jog to the mound, to his easy delivery to his efficient pitching created a new model for closers: Let your results do your talking.
It worked so well for Rivera that zany closers have become the exception, no longer the rule. One thing hasn’t changed about the role: Not everybody with a lively arm is built for the pressure of the ninth inning.
“It takes a different type of mentality to allow a guy you think can be a closer every year,” Red Sox interim manager Ron Roenicke said. “They’re going to give it up at times and lose a ballgame and then how are they the next day when they bounce back?”
The only way to find out is to hand a pitcher the ball to protect a lead in the ninth on a regular basis. Once the Red Sox did that with Brandon Workman late last season, they discovered that he showed the same dominance as in any other inning. Opponents posted an outrageously weak .166 slugging percentage against him. More numbers of dominance: 10-1 record, 1.88 ERA, 104 strikeouts in 71-⅔ innings. And the lone negative: 45 walks.
From Aug. 5 on, Workman saved 11 games in 13 opportunities. He finished the season with 16 saves.
“Workman has the mentality to do that,” Red Sox interim manager Ron Roenicke said. “So that allows us to believe he can go out and do it for an entire season.”
A year ago, the Sox entered the season with a closer-by-committee approach, which didn’t work.
“Last year, I didn’t know if my role was going to be on the team or not so; it’s definitely nice knowing I probably will make the team,” Workman deadpanned. “Being a closer is kind of the job everybody wants in the bullpen. I wanted that from the time I became a reliever.”
Early returns indicate Workman is more suited to the role than a Texas Longhorn from another generation with the Red Sox, Calvin Schiraldi.
To hear Workman tell it, here’s what he did to change once he became the closer: nothing.
“It’s really not that big of an adjustment. It’s still pitching and trying to get three outs,” Workman said. “It’s still pitching. It’s still getting three outs, whether it’s the seventh, eighth or ninth.”
If he were closing in another era, Workman might sport a mullet or shaved head and somersault his way from the bullpen to the mound, the opposite of a Workman-like approach.
Improving upon last season by trimming his walk totals without allowing hitters to make more solid contact won’t be an easy juggling act to execute, but he’ll try.
“There is still a lot of room to improve, in my opinion,” Workman said. “I walked a lot of people. Some of them were good walks that I didn’t mind. Some of them were bad walks that didn’t need to happen. That’s something I’ll be looking to tighten up this year.”
Roenicke also referenced “good walks.”
“Sometimes those are good walks. Sometimes he’s pitching around a guy and I think both he and (Matt) Barnes know when it’s a time when I really don’t want to go after this guy as much,” Roenicke said. “So some of those walks are, I don’t want to say they’re by design because if they’re too much by design I might as well just walk him intentionally and not let him waste four pitches or five or six. With those guys, they have a pretty good idea of what they want to do and who they want to face.”
The negative impact of walks extends beyond a free base.
“The pitch count is what concerns me more,” Roenicke said. “It would be great if those guys can have some games where they’re one inning and have 10 to 15 pitches instead of always in the 20s because if you’re always in the 20s then I have to back off on you somewhere. If you’re really efficient with your pitches you can go out there a lot more often.”
Overall, Roenicke is genuinely optimistic about the prospects of the bullpen. A year ago, the starting rotation was the source of Sox optimism, the bullpen a major concern. The injurytorn rotation imploded, and once Workman settled into the ninth-inning role the bullpen was better than anticipated. Now the thin rotation qualifies as the glaring hole on the roster.
In other words, in forecasting baseball seasons, it pays to consult the wisdom of Joaquin Andujar, philosopher/former pitcher for the Astros, Cardinals and A’s, who said: “There is one word in America that says it all, and that one word is, ‘You never know.’”