A Closer Look - May 5, 2007

This week we start with Tom Gordon heading back to Philly to have his painful right shoulder examined. The Phillies say that Gordon will not be with the team this weekend in San Francisco. We are early in this process and no one is making any guesses at this point about Gordon’s long-term prognosis. We will of course keep you up to date in our Daily E-Mail Reports.

Meanwhile Brett Myers would seem to be the Phillies’ first option although Geoff Geary and Antonio Alfonseca are dark-horse candidates as well. Charlie Manuel has not come out of his bunker to give us a clue as to who he will have the save opps to at this point. 

Myers would seem to be the guy until we are told otherwise and he should not be unowned.

Elsewhere this week we head to Atlanta where their closer landed on the DL this week. Bob Wickman struggled over last weekend in Colorado, blowing one save and nearly blowing another. Once he realized he couldn’t pitch through his upper back strain he reported his injury to the club. 

The Braves are left with Mike Gonzalez and Rafael Soriano to share the save opps in Wickman’s absence. Gonzalez has appeared to be a closer in waiting for a couple of years now but command has been an issue.

He sports a 10.3/9 K rate with a nice and tidy 0.49 HR/9. He has a career .212 OBA but his career WHIP swirls around 1.25 due to his 4.3/9 BB rate. 

Mike has managed to be effective with that command (2.33 career ERA) but it has made managers reluctant to hand him save opps. From a manager’s standpoint, there is nothing worse than a ninth inning walk in a close game. 

This year all of those indicators have slipped. Mike is walking 6.1/9 while his K rate has slipped to a symmetric 6.1/9 in his first 10.1 IP of the year.

This is why the closers role will be a job share with Rafael Soriano. Soriano comes from the M’s where he was very effective in 3 of the last 4 seasons He carries a nice resume of peripherals as well. His career K rate is 9.23 with an 0.8 HR/9 and a .214 OBA. He has shown more command than Gonzalez with a 2.85 BB rate. Soriano too, has been less than sharp to this point this season. He has walked 5 in his 12.1 innings of work (3.6/9) but a scarily good .201 OBA on BHIP has kept his overall OBA down to .168. 

Last nights Braves win over the Phillies failed to clarify this picture. Soriano pitched a scoreless ninth to collect the save but Gonzalez was used in a hypercritical application in the 8^th, facing Ryan Howard and Chase Utley. He fanned both.

Both will get their shot but it is possible one will take their chance and run over this week and next. I just don’t have a great guess as to which one is more likely to do that. I would lean towards Soriano due to his superior command. Wickman should return when eligible and he should return to the closer role. Both of these pitchers may see primary closer duty at some point in their career, but barring a more serious injury to Wickman that is unlikely to happen this year.

Elsewhere Henry Owens closed out his second save opp with a perfect ninth inning on Monday. He remains the first option in Florida. 

Brandon Lyon picked up a save on Sunday as the D-backs rested Jose Valverde after three saves on three consecutive days. Lyons is Plan B for the D-Backs when needed.

Octavio Dotel threw a side session off of a mound yesterday and he is targeting mid-May as an ETA if all goes well. 

Armando Benitez was not available out of the pen for the Giants last night due to a sore knee. If you own Benitez you should keep close tabs on Brad Hennessey right now as a possible replacement if Armando’s knee issues escalate.

The Red Sox declared Jonathan Papelbon unavailable last night after his laborious, and ultimately unsuccessful outing against the A’s on Tuesday. There are murmurs in Boston about Papelbon’s health after Tuesday’s appearance, which featured an obviously lifeless fastball. Even though Papelbon worked on Sunday, the Sox were off on Monday and there was no reason for him to be tired at all. The fact that the Sox would not come back to him on next day seems to say they have concerns as well. This bears watching for now.