A handful of decades after Tony La Russa established the modern closer role, Tony La Russa has to deal with the side effects of the modern closer role: the excusing of failure in non-save situations.
It's always struck me as such an obvious design flaw in the job description, at least since I started devoting time to actually thinking about it. The highest-paid member of the bullpen is also somebody who is half-expected to crumble when the scenario isn't exactly to his liking. A closer who fails in a four-run game (or a tie game) because it wasn't a three-run game (or a one-run game) is a pilot who is liable to crash the plane when the skies aren't a specific level of threatening. If it's more than excuse, then it's an indictment of the training.
La Russa deployed that logic Saturday night after Liam Hendriks' rough 10th inning against the Yankees, which came two innings after Craig Kimbrel gave up a go-ahead homer in a tie game.
“What I saw with Kimbrel and with Liam, those are not save situations, right?” La Russa said. “Not that they can’t get the outs. You’ve got to give credit to the guys that got the hits. But that’s not their classic. Whether it’s the eighth inning with the lead or the ninth inning with the lead, I’m not making excuses for them, it’s the truth. And they both could’ve gotten the outs and the guys put swings on them. Those are not save situations and I hope the next time that you see them take the mound, we have the lead.
“We had a chance to win. The score is what it is and you send your best guy out there. And it’s Kimbrel, he’s in a tie game. You understand that that’s an adjustment and they can adjust. But you’re not going to not pitch them because we’re not ahead. It’s the reality of the competition. At times, you do what you had to do, not what you want to do. We wanted to win the game, so it didn’t work out.”
At its heart, this logic is short-term avoidance that's hardened into a set of assumptions over time. It's easiest on everybody -- manager, team, fans -- if the closer is understood to be reliable. After a game such as Saturday's, La Russa's immediate concern is to answer the most pressing question ("What the hell happened out there?") without disrupting the confidence in the template everybody wants. A no-comment invites comments from the outside, and you can't brush away every bad game with a shrug without looking negligent, so the non-standard closer appearance presents an opportunity to blame something besides the person.
There are two problems with this particular usage:
- Hendriks blew a traditional save situation his last time out.
- La Russa has kept Hendriks out of numerous high-leverage situations because they weren't save opportunities
One of those games was against the Yankees. It's the one where Hendriks walked the only batter he faced to force home the winning run. The shaky version of Aaron Bummer loaded the bases before Hendriks entered the fray, and La Russa said it's because Hendriks might've been needed for the 10th.
Another game was the finale of the first series of the season, when Matt Foster gave up a walk-off homer in the ninth while a warmed-up Hendriks stood idle in the pen. La Russa's reasoning?
"It’s a tie score. The best you’re going to do is, if you get three outs, you’ve still got to play the 10th. And you could make the closer get six outs," he said. "It just didn’t make sense. [...]
"Liam, if we had taken the lead, he was coming in, obviously. If we’re home, it’s different. He gets three outs, we can win it. Only thing you can do is be certain about him getting six outs, maybe win it. I don’t think that’s a good move."
One could argue that all of those games came on the road, but the White Sox had a walk-off victory over the Rays on June 16 where Evan Marshall threw 30 pitches in the ninth and Ryan Burr pitched the 10th. Hendriks had warmed, but only for a save situation in the ninth that dissolved. Two days later, the White Sox lost in walk-off fashion to the Astros 2-1, and Hendriks didn't pitch because he was being saved for a save.
So La Russa has played a part in the establishment of this environment. Of course, one of the reasons NL Central teams hated the Cardinals is because La Russa often acted as though his teams didn't do the things they did. It's not surprising to see La Russa deploy selective memory for his own purposes here. He may as well make use of his law degree somehow, but since there's no threat of perjury, it's up to the audience to replace the batteries on their smoke detectors.
As La Russa, Hendriks and the White Sox try to stave off a second bullpen confidence crisis this season, they should have the freedom to experiment, and freedom to fail. As uncomfortable as it is to watch Hendriks give up 11 homers over 50 innings, he may as well try to work out the kinks while the White Sox have an 11-game lead. If the Sox have to shift to Kimbrel, they should give him time to find the fatal flaws in his game. La Russa is right to say that save-situations-only mindset needs to be shed by October, so they may as well start now, even if they had ample opportunities to establish that earlier.
Ideally, the Sox would be free to rotate between both as situations dictate, but the tyranny of the save situation can turn an attempt to establish fluidity into confidence-free flailing. It's a tricky situation that La Russa has had to navigate before, so I'm inclined to give him some room to operate, while retaining the right to roll my eyes at his reasoning.
(Photo by Jeffrey Becker/USA TODAY Sports)
