Plenty left in the tank
Veteran Darren Oliver a welcome addition to Jays’ bullpen,
DUNEDIN, FLA.— The Blue Jays are commonly perceived as a very young major league team. However, one area that has a veteran feel is the one area of any club where experience and the ability to handle adversity, to bounce back from one day to the next, is most important — the bullpen.
All things being equal, the average age of the Jays bullpen on Opening Day will be 32. If the season was to start right now, that relief corps would include Sergio Santos, 28, Francisco Cordero, 36, Jason Frasor, 34, Casey Janssen, 30, Carlos Villanueva, 28, Luis Perez, 27, and the elder statesman of the group, Darren Oliver, 41. That’s the type of bullpen demographic winning teams have recently tried to assemble, especially when you combine it with a younger rotation. No guarantees.
“You can have veterans in the bullpen, but you still have to get people out,” Oliver said when asked if savvy always works. “Just ’cause you’ve got veteran status, you still have to go out there and make your pitches. If it works, yeah, people like to look at that as being key for everybody.”
Oliver is an unusual case study in that his last six seasons as a reliever have arguably been his best six seasons. He has already retired from the game once. Following a mixed-bag career as a starter, the Kansas City native spent all of ’05 in the minors, then shrugged and tried to call it a day. But the Mets came calling and he was converted to a lefty specialist where he has thrived.
“It kind of happened when I just took to relief pitching full-time,” Oliver recalled. “A lot of things have to work in your favour. I was on some good teams. We were playoff teams, so obviously you’re going to have good offence, you’re going to have some good pitching, good defence. All that kind of comes into play. You definitely have a lot more fun out there playing when you’re winning and when you’re having fun on a good team, it makes playing a lot better.”
The amazing thing about Oliver’s last half-dozen seasons is that, as he pointed out, he has gone to the post-season six straight years — with the Mets in ’06, the Angels ’07-’09 and the Rangers the past two years, advancing to the World Series. Having the streak reach seven is a long shot.
“There’s no question, this is a pretty good team here,” Oliver countered. “There’s pretty good talent out there, so maybe I’ll be like that good luck charm. Who knows? Time will tell.” The Jays bullpen, as it is currently constructed, lends itself to role playing, in terms of certain situations of the game that each pitcher can expect to be used. At the end of last season, Farrell issued a mea culpa for the way he handled his relief corps, insisting he’ll be better and more communicative this year. Oliver, for one, does not see that as something his manager need apologize for. “As bullpen guys, we complain when we pitch too much and we complain when we don’t pitch enough,” Oliver said. “So, it’s a tough job . . . “You’ve got seven guys down there and if everybody’s throwing well, you may not know when you’re going to get into games. He can go to anybody. Hopefully that stuff’s going to be the reason guys are complaining, because everybody’s pitching well. Most times when the team’s winning and you’re having success, you know when you’re going to go in. But when the team’s struggling, you really don’t know what to do, so hopefully we’re not having that happen too much this season.” Oliver said there is no specific reason as to why he ended up signing with the Jays, an organization about which he knew little. But the reliever market was saturated with bullpen closers and left-handed setup men and, as an aging veteran, he knew how quickly the window could close. “I would say every year it’s difficult,” Oliver said of free agency. “When you’re not the top tier freeagent guy, the superstar, I would say try to sign before Christmas. The longer you wait . . . it’s just tough to find work.” In fact, after back-to-back losing World Series efforts, there were even moments following last season in which the father of two boys, aged 11 and 9, was not sure he wanted to continue. But he ended up agreeing with the Jays before Christmas. “I’m sure if you really asked some teams, they might have been thinking that I was going to retire,” Oliver said. “I was thinking that myself. I’m not going to lie. But once I decided I still wanted to play, you want to go somewhere where you’re wanted and where you have a chance to win. I’m feeling good playing and competing, so why not. As soon as you walk in the door, it’s like, ‘Here we go.’”
At the end of last season, an experienced left-handed reliever is something the Jays insisted they needed and the truth is they don’t get much more experienced than Oliver. Plus, of course, the man is on that unlikely six-year postseason roll that the Jays would love to see come up sevens.