Mauch's Minnesota firemen

Between the time I decided on the topic of the Monday print column and its actual composition, the great Joe Posnanski posted this essay on roughly the same theme, using John Hiller's brilliant 1973 to examine the issue of "leveraging" relief ace use.

Posnanski's piece suggests the one-inning closer was actually Pete Rose's invention, not Tony LaRussa's. I think LaRussa's use of Dennis Eckersley was more influential than Rose's use of John Franco. The timeline is pretty much the same; Pos says 1987 with Rose/Franco, and LaRussa made Eckersley a full-time closer the next year.

Either way, in both cases, I think the managerial rationale for one-inning was to hide the pitcher's vulnerabilities. Franco was left-handed; Rose had in previous seasons split the late-inning work with an eye to keeping Franco from facing right-handed hitters in crucial situations. (I lived in the Cincinnati fan base in 1985, and I know Ted Power was Rose's preferred late-inning guy that year over Franco). Eckersley threw from a low angle, and left-handed hitters were forcing him out of the starting rotation when he came to Oakland.

Limited exposure worked for those two, in part because they weren't being asked to work out of other pitchers' jams. They had long runs as one-inning closers, and Eck, of course, wound up in the Hall of Fame.

Pos also lists a number of "firemen" of the 1970s and early to mid '80s, pitchers who would enter early or late as the situation warranted. And I was struck by the number of them connected to Gene Mauch, who managed the Twins 1976-1980.

• 1976: Bill Campbell went 17-5 with 20 saves in 167 relief innings for the Twins. 
• 1977: Tom Johnson went 16-7 with 15 saves in 146.2 innings.
• 1978: Mike Marshall, 10-12 with 21 saves in 99 innings, (Only 99 innings because he didn't appear in a game until May 15.)
• 1979: Marshall again: 10-15 with 32 saves, 142.2 innings, 90 games (still the American League record for appearances)
• 1980: Doug Corbett, 8-6, 23 saves, 136.1 innings

It was Mauch, in Montreal, who made Marshall a workhorse relief pitcher. He worked for Mauch 111, 116 and 179 innings in 1971-73. Then he was traded to the Dodgers, where he had his famous 106 games, 208 relief innings season in 1974.

My recollection had been that those big years were followed by a sudden implosion, But in truth, Campbell had almost as good a season in 1977, this time with the Red Sox, and lasted in hte majors 10 years beyond that, with two 100-inning seasons in his 30s. Corbett was very good again in 1981, then declined; he had an eight year career. Marshall's career was something of a yo-yo, but he lasted into his late 30s.

Johnson is the real implosion of Mauch's Minnesota firemen. He had the one big year, had a poor season in 1978, and was done as a major league pitcher.

A history lesson: Collusion and 12-man pitching staffs

The Twins Geek, John Bonnes, on Sunday had a post puzzling over who the 25th man on the 1987 Twins postseason roster was.

The answer, which I am old enough to know, is: Nobody. In 1987 -- and in a handful of surrounding seasons -- there was a "gentleman's agreement" among the teams to go with just 24 players on the active roster. Officially, they could have 25; nobody did.

It was part of the sorry collusion episode, in which the owners, led by then-Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, sought to undermine the collective bargaining agreement with the players union. Most prominent was the agreement not to pursue other team's free agents.

The collusion attempt proved costly in a variety of ways. The players union won massive damages in three grievance hearings. The stiff penalties prompted two rounds of expansion, as the owners sought to recoup the losses by dunning outsiders. The episode also further poisoned the waters for future labor talks, helping set up the strike of 1994.

Now the teams are required to have 25 players on their active roster.

But the effects are still evident on rosters. Follow me here: For years teams typically carried 10 pitchers and 15 hitters. Managers in the late 1980s, forced to trim a player, universally opted to keep 10 pitchers and 14 position players.

After four years of that, they'd become accustomed to that size bench. They had gotten used to the limitations of five (in the American League) bench options, had become used to making sure they had at least one Swiss Army knife of a multi-position player on hand.

And when the de facto rosters expanded, Tony LaRussa -- of course -- used the 25th spot for an extra pitcher. Memory tells me he initially used the slot to carry a Rule V selection; eventually he used to add somebody he actually wanted to use. He won. Other teams followed his example.

Tony LaRussa: Father of the expanded pitching staff

Perhaps the expansion of pitching staffs would have happened anyway. There were other influences, in particular the rise of pitch counts, and certainly the expansion didn't stop at 11. But LaRussa's realization in 1990 that he didn't need that 15th position player got the ball rolling.

Now there are managers suggesting that rosters should be expanded to 26 players -- which, if it should happen, would probably mean 13-man pitching staffs.

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.