A bullpen is all about trust, both for the team and for the fans. A manager needs to be able to trust a reliever to put the game away, and the fan needs to trust that the reliever won’t cause more headaches with a late-inning meltdown. An Indians fan spending the ninth inning with Joe Borowski is going skydiving without knowing whether you grabbed a parachute or a parakeet until it’s too late; a Yankees fan spending the ninth inning with Mariano Rivera is awaiting the everyday beauty of watching a simple yet majestic sunset.
The Dodgers are a flawed team, no doubt about it. Their numerous deficiencies – shaky starting pitching, no power, infrequent hitting – might have been enough to bury them in any season and in any division except for the 2008 NL West. But one of the Dodgers’ biggest strengths, both this year and in years past, has been its bullpen. The confidence in having an All-Star closer shortens the game by an inning, and a reliable set-up man shortens it another. Throw in another inning or two by other quality arms and the team only needs 17 or so outs from the starter. The stability of Takashi Saito, Jonathan Broxton, Joe Beimel, Hong-Chih Kuo and others at the back end of the bullpen has helped compensate for the craziness that has been the starting rotation.
With that said, the first two losses of the Cleveland Indians’ first-ever visit to Chavez Ravine stung especially badly. In the first game a ninth-inning rally went for naught as Saito blew the game in the tenth, and in the second game Scott Proctor imploded and Cory Wade lost everything from Garko v. Wade to Roe v. Wade. For a change, the starting pitching was respectable but the bullpen was outdone by the Indians’ much-maligned relievers.
In Sunday’s 4-3 win over the Indians that helped restore order to the Dodgers’ bullpen, this time it was the Dodgers relievers that came up big. Kuo, Beimel, Broxton and Saito allowed a combined one hit and zero walks over the last four innings, securing a win for a beleaguered Chad Billingsley.
Kuo, Beimel, Broxton and Saito. Sounds like a sitcom, or a really weird international law firm. Two Asians, two Americans; two lefties, two righties. A long reliever who’s finally found his niche; a lefty specialist who can also pitch an entire inning; a fireballer who has a closer’s arm but not his heart; and a sly veteran who has a closer’s heart but not the overpowering arm. What a motley crew. These are the Fantastic Four I trust late in the game. If the bullpen door opens and I see Ramon Trancoso jogging in, I know the game either is over, will be over shortly, or has been over for a long time (that is, a game decided by more than seven runs either way).
Meanwhile, the Dodger offense hung a fantastic four on Paul Byrd in the first inning, scoring four times on James Loney’s two-RBI double and Russell Martin’s subsequent two-run homer. They then hung a not-so-fantastic four hits in innings two through eight, recording two hits in each the fifth and eighth and failing to score a single insurance run.
The Dodgers were fortunate many times over on this day: fortunate that the Indians couldn’t break through against the Dodgers’ relievers; fortunate Andre Ethier and Luis Maza completed a key relay to nail the tying run at the plate in the fifth inning; and fortunate that the rest of the division all lost today. In fact, every team in the NL West dropped two of their three weekend games except the division-leading Diamondbacks, who were swept by the Twins. So not only did the Dodgers lose no ground this weekend to the three teams right behind them, they also gained on front-running Arizona. Wow. And I thought the 2006 NL West was bad, when San Diego won the division with a sparkling 82-80 mark. It could be this year that 70 wins might be enough for a first-round sweep by the Cubs.
