On relief pitching

Piggybacking on a recent entry by Bill Liming of Phillies Fan and a "radical idea" of Eric Neel, I firmly believe that you bring in your best relief pitchers when you most need outs. If that means bringing in your "closer" in the 7th inning with one out, so be it.

Say you're up by one. The other team manages to load the bases, and they've got their 3 or 4 hitter at the plate. Managers will typically bring in the set-up man, or perhaps a mid-range reliever here. This makes no sense at all. If the guy at the plate gets a hit, you're suddenly down a run, there's still at least a runner in scoring position, and there's still a good hitter at the plate. You need outs in this situation.

For the Phillies, this would mean bringing in Billy Wagner. Wagner's fastball is in the high 90's (occasionally breaking 100) and he's a strikeout machine. He's not perfect, of course. He's going to give up some hits. But he's a whole lot less likely to give up hits than any of the other relievers the Phillies have. Eight times out of ten, he's going to get out of a jam like this. Strike out both, strike out the first and get the second to ground out, get the batter to ground into a double play, whatever. He's going to get outs.

Then going into the 8th, the opposition will have the bottom of the order coming up to bat, with no one on base. This situation is far less dangerous than the one just described, so it's not as crucial to have your top reliever in there.

Baseball's had a long time to develop conventional strategies. The one that says you save your closer 'til the 9th inning is crap. You save your closer for when your ass needs to get saved.

On a related note: how about the Phillies' Ryan Madson? The kid's got a 0.41 ERA. He gave a clutch performance today for his first career save. You need someone to get outs? Look Madson's way.