More talk about pitchers

When the Twins announced the Jim Thome signing last week, Bill Smith (the general manager) indicated that  Carl Pavano was going to spend the weekend making his decision and that saga was likely to be concluded Monday or Tuesday.

Matt Capps: The $7.15 million set-up man
(if all goes well).

That's on hold, we are told now, because today (Tuesday) is the deadline to exchange arbitration numbers. That's a big day for all front offices as they deal with the likes of (in the Twins case) Matt Capps, Delmon Young and Francisco Liriano.

That Pavano can be put on a back burner suggests, again, that he's returning. If he had decided to sign elsewhere, no back-burner is needed.

In other pitching developments:

* Jon Rauch landed with the Toronto Blue Jays (one year, $3.75 million, with a 2012 option). Brian Fuentes signed with Oakland (two years, $10 million). That cleans out the four rated free-agent relievers from the 2010 season. Jesse Crain, Matt Guerrier, Rauch and Fuentes combined for 45 percent of the Twins bullpen innings, according to Aaron Gleeman; I would have thought it more, but Fuentes hardly registers, and Rauch's workload was limited.

Matt Capps has been retained; his $7.15 million is probably more than the Twins had penciled in, but he's back. He closes if Joe Nathan isn't ready, he sets up if Nathan is ready.

The absence of a deep established bullpen brings to mind a story from the early days of the Civil War, when William Sherman heard Abraham Lincoln, after being briefed on the North's problems, say, "Well, I guess we'll manage to keep house." Sherman was not impressed by what he deemed a lack of urgency in Lincoln, but events proved Abe right. The Twins knew the four relievers were departing; we shall see if Ron Gardenhire, Rick Anderson and company can keep house without them. I suspect they can.

* That the A's forked out that kind of money for an overqualified LOOGY/underwhelming closer startled me. Billy Beane is known for trying to exploit market inefficiencies, and one of them has long been the tendency to overpay for saves. Beane has certainly constructed an imposing bullpen, with Andrew Bailey in the ninth and Brad Ziegler, Michael Wuertz, Fuentes and Craig Breslow available to mix and match.

* The Yankees are reported to be sniffing at the decaying corpses of Kevin Millwood and Freddy Garcia to fill out their starting rotation. Such a signing would be akin to the Twins past pattern of signing the likes of Ramon Ortiz or Sidney Ponson; the idea is to fill a gap for a few weeks while a prospect marinates a bit longer in the high minors or until a better option emerges on the trade market.

I find it hard to believe that the Yanks would rather go with a washed-up vet than give Joba Chamberlain a clean shot at the rotation.

Too good to start, too talented for the 'pen

This is the rule about relief pitchers, even the best ones: They are failed starters.

Maybe they lack usable secondary pitches. Maybe they break down under the strain of 100-pitch outings. Maybe they're too emotionally wound.

If they could start, they would. The White Sox, back in the mid '70s, had a couple of young hard throwers who had had success in relief. Paul Richards, who had been a genius manager in the 1950s as a builder of pitching staffs, was back in the dugout after a couple of decades as a general manager, and he moved Terry Forster and Goose Gossage into the rotation, because they were his best arms and his best arms belonged in the rotation.

As a relief pitcher in 1975,
Gossage struck out 130 batters
in 141.2 innings; as a starter the
following year, 135 Ks in 224
innings.

Forster went 2-12, 4.37; Gossage went 9-17, 3.94. And that was that for them as starting pitchers. Forster is remembered now, if at all, for David Letterman's gibes about his weight — the fat tub of goo — but he was a very good reliever for more than a decade. Gossage is now in the Hall of Fame, and if you're going to put relief pitchers in Cooperstown, Gossage is the place to start — but he was a failure as a starter.

That's the rule. One can find exceptions here and there — Dave Righetti, Joakim Soria – but the rule holds. Mariano Rivera became a reliever after having Tommy John surgery. Joe Nathan moved to the pen after getting hurt. The Twins tried hard, really hard, to find a starting pitcher in LaTroy Hawkins'  talent and never found it. (Baseball history, at least the part before pitching staffs got split between starters and relievers, is riddled with guys like the Hawk —  check out Si Johnson and Milt Gaston as examples.  Great arms, bad teams, lousy results.)

These guys thrive in the bullpen because it's less demanding. They can succeed without a change up, or simply keep their joints attached,  for 15 pitches at a time.

But here's a odd trend developing, and Joba Chamberlain (referenced in my previous post) is a harbinger of it.

Chamberlain was a revelation in 2007. The big guy burst onto the scene with 24 relief innings, 0.38 ERA. The front office imposed "the Joba rules"  — usage limits — to keep manager Joe Torre from burning the kid out. He was going to be their next star, the rotation anchor of their future. But first, they wanted to win this year, and they needed a big arm in the pen.

Things have gone down hill from there. Chamberlain's ERA has gone from 0.38 to 2.62 to 4.75 to 4.40. General manager Brian Cashman this winter essentially wrote him off as a starter, and the Yankees don't trust him as a late-inning option right now either.

Consider the Texas Rangers and Neftali Feliz. Or the Cincinnati Reds and Ardolis Chapman. Or the White Sox and Chris Sale. Three young power arms, all stuffed into bullpen roles to help the here-and-now rather than develop as starters in the minors.

From this perspective, it's silly. They're be far more valuable as successful starters than as successful relievers, because 200-plus innings is more valuable than 60 or fewer. But as their teams saw it last season, and most likely this season as well, their immediate impact is too tempting to delay the gratification.

And they may be right. Chapman may not be able to develop his secondary pitches. Sale's delivery may be too risky for heavy use. The Rangers aren't about to ship their Rookie-of-the Year closer back to Triple A to master a change up, and as defending AL champs aren't likely to opt for on-the-job training for Feliz as a starter. Even Chamberlain — as controversial as the use limits put on him have been, he did have a history of arm problems in college.

The Twins are not immune to this thinking either. Remember: They resisted using Johan Santana in the rotation because Ron Gardenhire so loved having that extra power arm in the bullpen. What a wasted resource that would have been.

There are enough failed starters around with which to build bullpens. Let the most talented ones fail as starters first.

Joba Chamberlain and Francisco Liriano

The Monday print column is about Francisco Liriano and the continuing question: Should he be a starter or a reliever?

A similar long-running dispute exists with the New York Yankees and Joba Chamberlain (left).

Should he be a starter or a reliever?

As with Liriano, Chamberlain has a history of arm issues. Injuries caused him to drop into the supplemental round of the 2006 draft.

The Yankees have bounced him between bullpen work and the rotation and limited his innings as a starter in an explicit effort to protect his arm.

The Yankees had one rotation slot open this spring; Phil Hughes is emerging with that job. Chamberlain is back in the bullpen, and while general manager Brian Cashman says Chamberlain is a starter without a starting job, there are others in the organization who say Chamberlain should be a relief pitcher, period.

Two significant differences between the two situations:

• The Yankees don't have a closer vacancy staring them in the face;
• Chamberlain not only has bullpen experience, he has better MLB numbers as a reliever than as a starter.

The Yankees have taken a great deal of Internet (and broadcaster) criticism for their handling of Chamberlain. Some of that criticism comes from old-school types who pretend young pitchers aren't particularly vulnerable to overwork. (Bert Blyleven isn't the only such dude with a mic in front of his face.)

Some of it, oddly enough, comes from the same people who rip Dusty Baker for savaging young starters. And we've seen this before with Liriano; in 2006, there were voices complaining that the Twins should have opened the season with Liriano in the rotation.

The man pitched 120 innings and blew out his elbow. Starting him in April wasn't going to keep him healthy either.

There's no obvious answer to the conundrum. A pitcher is only useful if he pitches; and if he pitches too much, he's likely to get hurt, and then he won't be useful.