Melvin stakes out his ‘bullpenning’ territory
For all of the grumbling over cheapskate ownership, the decrepit Coliseum and the endless search for a new ballpark, the A’s are unassailable on the field. Confounding one of the most time-tested traditions in the game, they’re on their way to the postseason with a crumbling, ever-dwindling rotation.
So when relief pitcher Liam Hendriks started Tuesday night’s game against the Yankees at the Coliseum, breezed through three quick outs and was
hastily removed from the game, there was no proper response but, “Wow. Those zany, unstoppable A’s.”
Just one glitch, and quite a rarity: The A’s didn’t hit. The Yankees pulled out a 5-1 win against an Oakland team that had scored 28 runs over its previous four games. No worries there; the Yankees have been among the best teams in baseball all season. The real story is Oakland’s solution to its parade of sore-armed pitchers.
It’s not an original notion, and there’s no guarantee that manager Bob Melvin is that crazy about it. But these are desperate times for the A’s staff. They’ve had 10 starters go on the disabled list, five of them lost to Tommy John surgery. It’s the type of ongoing disaster that would send most teams into a dreadful tailspin — and somehow, the A’s cast aside every setback.
How is this possible? As Melvin joked before the game, “We’ve got like a hundred guys in the bullpen.”
One night, they will all take the mound. One pitch at a time, perhaps. It’s called “bullpenning,” and it’s looking like a fixture in the A’s stretch-drive plans.
The A’s haven’t yet run out of starters. They still have Edwin Jackson, Trevor Cahill, Mike Fiers and perhaps right-hander Aaron Brooks, acquired from Milwaukee on Monday. But they used pitchers in Saturday’s 8-7 loss to Seattle (a game also started by Hendriks), and eight more Tuesday night. In keeping with the utter madness of it all, it was Daniel Mengden, who fancies himself a starter, turning in the best performance (allowing just one hit in 42⁄3 innings).
You wonder what this must be like for Melvin, learning on the fly as he ponders the unorthodox. Stimulating? Exasperating? “Good question,” he said. “It’s kind of new territory, but I don’t mind. We’ve been pretty good about spreading guys around, keeping certain guys available. We know there will be some bumps in the road, but I think we’ll be a little bit better prepared for it every time.”
The A’s pitchers aren’t about to complain — whining about
is strictly off-limits on this classy roster — but some of them must find it awkward, settling into uncertain roles after working within a set routine.
“I don’t think it’s the easiest thing in the world to do, and it’s not the most efficient thing to do,” said catcher Jonathan Lucroy. “(Management) might disagree, and that’s fine. At this point, we’ve got guys on the shelf and we have to keep the other team off the board. Gotta do what we gotta do.”
Has it reached the point where Melvin charts out the next week or so, isolating certain games for bullpenning? “Not yet,” he said. ‘It’s pretty much day-to-day.”
The concept isn’t entirely new. Back in 1993, managing an A’s club gone sour, manager Tony La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan devised a plan that saw pitchers work two or three innings at a time and/or get removed after 50odd pitches. Some of La Russa’s starters, notably Ron Darling, spoke out in disgust, and the experiment lasted less than a month — a bit overboard for its time.
Switch now to this season, third week of May, and Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash starting a game with ex-Giants reliever Sergio Romo. “It was all about the first inning,” Melvin said, “with the first five guys in the Angels’ lineup all right-handed power hitters. And it worked. Tampa Bay does it a lot, and they’ve had success.”
This can’t be good from a fan’s standpoint, especially one familiar with Oakland history. This is the franchise of Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Dave Stewart, Bob Welch and the collective ascent of Barry Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder in the early 2000s. There’s a certain magic to the classic pitching matchup: Blue against Jim Palmer, Mike Norris against Ron Guidry, Stewart facing Roger Clemens. It’s the very essence of the game’s appeal. A parade of relief pitchers means longer games, and as KNBR’s Brian Murphy tweeted this week, “There is no argument in the world to tell us this makes baseball a more enjoyable game.”
As they turn to innovation in a season of great promise, the A’s can’t worry about that.