Baseball Brunch: Sometimes Relief Solution Is Closer Than It Appears

Every Sunday, MLB FanHouse empties out its notebook in Baseball Brunch.

A week ago Sunday night, Mariano Rivera earned his 500th save. Which should make us realize a few things about closers:

• The truly great ones are the those who can sustain it for a long time. Getting 40 saves a year for 12 years would still leave one short of 500.

• Even getting to the second tier isn't easy. Only 18 players have had as many as six 30-save seasons: Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, Lee Smith, Billy Wagner, Troy Percival, John Wetteland, Dennis Eckersley, John Franco, Jason Isringhausen, Robb Nen, Jeff Reardon, Todd Jones, Jose Mesa, Roberto Hernandez, Randy Myers, Rick Aguilera, Tom Henke and Todd Worrell.

In other words, the shelf life for a typical closer is a short one. They can burst onto the scene – and flame out quickly (right, Mr. Gagne?)

• But it also means that teams can find short-term solutions for the ninth inning any number of ways.

Take, for example, the Cardinals and the Mariners. They opened the season with hard-throwing youngsters as their closers: Jason Motte and Brandon Morrow, respectively. Meanwhile, they were also carrying in their bullpen a guy on his third or fourth organization.

And now those guys -- Ryan Franklin and David Aardsma -- have become closers.

Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu remembered seeing Aardsma pitch for Boston last year and thinking to himself, "electric stuff."

A former No. 1 pick of the Giants out of Rice, Aardsma had bounced from San Francisco to both Chicago teams to Boston.

"He's got a big arm," Seattle general manager Jack Zduriencik said of Aardsma, whom he acquired in January for minor-league lefty Fabian Williamson. "And he had big-league experience. When we got him, we said, 'Hey, this is a power arm that could fit in the bullpen.' Would the guy emerge as a closer? Well he had all the qualities to do it.

"I didn't look at it and say this is our closer."

But when Wakamatsu saw Aardsma during spring training, working on drills alone in the bullpen at 8:30 in the morning, he realized Seattle might have latched onto something.

"It's all in there," Wakamatsu said. "How do you massage it? How do you get him to buy into ... that they're that good?

"So did I believe that this guy could close games? Absolutely, even in spring training. The rest was working him into that role."

What Aardsma, 27, didn't have when he got to spring training with the Mariners was a single big-league save. And a 6.59 ERA in the Cactus League was the result of trying to prove to his new team he could be their closer.

"I wanted it so badly, I was trying way too hard," Aardsma admitted. "I was way too focused on getting the closer's job instead of being focused on getting guys out and just doing my job."

Wakamatsu had noticed during a two-inning save in April that Aardsma didn't seem any different while pitching the ninth inning than he looked in the eighth. And when Morrow imploded on back-to-back days at Texas, May 13-14, Aardsma was handed the closer's role.

Since then, Aardsma is 14-for-15 in save chances, with 30 strikeouts, a .184 average allowed and a 1.25 ERA in 21 2/3 innings.

Morrow credits Wetteland (Seattle's bullpen coach), pitching coach Rick Adair and "performance coach" (aka, psychologist) Steve Hecht with helping him concentrate on process instead of results and not letting his last pitch – good or bad – affect the next one.

"You can put too much pressure on yourself," Aardsma said. "You can get too focused [and think] 'I just need one more out.'"

"That philosophy changed me: 'Who cares?' That's how I am able to be a closer, is that change."

In fact, Aardsma has gotten to the point where he insists closing is harder than setting up.

"Once I found the point where I didn't care any more, " he said, "I found the final out – you just don't realize it's the final out.

"I'm having the time of my life."

Franklin seems to be as well.

"I really wasn't waiting for this role," Franklin said. "This role just kind of came about. I've just kind of taken it in stride and continued to do what I've done the last couple of years."

Not having spent the money over the winter for an established Tony La Russa-type closer, the Cardinals went to spring training looking for one. And when the regular season opened, the first crack went to Motte.

But Motte blew a save chance Opening Day, and Chris Perez wasn't up to the task either. By the middle of April, La Russa turned to Franklin, 36.

"Opening Day we gave it to Motte and it didn't work out," said La Russa, the Cards' manager. "But all along we knew we had Franklin as one of the guys that we were going to work in. And he had the most experience. As it turns out, he's taken over."

Said Franklin, whose five-inch goatee fits in with the other wild facial hair on the team: "I knew there was a chance but I wasn't, you would say, fighting for it. I knew that if I came in and threw well, they knew what I could do from years past. I was coming in to be a set-up man, seventh or eighth inning. If something happened, I'd get to go in that [closer's] role, but it didn't matter to me."

The Cardinals signed Franklin in January 2007 as a free agent. At that point he had 106 starts, 141 relief appearances and a 41-57 record with a 4.35 ERA.

St. Louis put him in the bullpen that season, and last year, in the two periods Isringhausen was out – mid-May to mid-June and mid-August until the end of the season – Franklin replaced him as closer. In those stretches Franklin was a combined 10-for-12 in save chances.

"And there wasn't any difference with him pitching the ninth as opposed to the eighth or seventh," La Russa said, "which is a difference with some guys."

Now Franklin has 20 saves, more than doubling his career total, with a 0.84 ERA.

As La Russa said, the key has been to not change just because he's trying to get outs 25-27 instead of 22-25.

"It really is the same," La Russa said. "You get the first hitter, then the second hitter, then the third hitter. But some guys get spooked by it."

Said Franklin: "The last couple of years I've treated the eighth like it was the ninth, the last three outs of the game.

"[Some people think when you close] you've got to get hyped up. The only crazy thing I've done is grow this thing on my chin."

Overheard and Understood

• One AL official's theory: Only small deals before the July 31 non-waiver trading deadline but perhaps some major moves after. Because of the economy, the thinking goes, teams will be less willing to put waiver claims on players in August, so trades will be possible. And by then, there will be a clearer definition between contenders and non-contenders.

As for the current market, Cincinnati and Milwaukee are seeking bats (right-handed for the Reds, in left field or third base) and lots of teams are looking for bullpen help.

"If you have relief pitching," one team executive said, "you're getting calls."

That executive expects some teams on the fringes of contention to try to dump salary rather than take a shot at the pennant race – also because of the economy.

"Owners, if they can save couple million dollars, they're going to do it," he said.

Chart of the Week
Cleveland relievers have issued 145 walks in 82 games, putting them on a pace for 286 walks. That would be the eighth-highest total of all time:
Team	Relief BB
1996 Tigers	347
2000 Pirates	343
2004 Diamondbacks	295
1999 Mariners	295
2008 Orioles	292
1999 Devil Rays	287
2008 Rangers	287
Source: STATS LLC

• La Russa has done one of his finest managing jobs – contending while using 15 rookies, nine of whom had never played before in the majors – but remains unsigned beyond this year. One friend of La Russa's expects him to stay on in St. Louis but said there remains tension between La Russa and team chairman Bill DeWitt Jr., who has instituted a "Moneyball" style of management.

• According to the Elias Sports Bureau, last week's Red Sox-Orioles series marked the first time a team led by four runs in the eighth or later, blew the win and then the next day made the same comeback against the other team.

• Elias also reports that this is the first year since 1988 when two former MVPs had hitless streaks of 25 or more at-bats. That was Mike Schmidt and Cal Ripken in '88 and Jimmy Rollins and Dustin Pedroia this season.

• One scout said David Ortiz is currently a "20-22 homer guy." That's a far cry from the 40-plus he averaged his first five years in Boston but also an improvement on the evaluations earlier this season. Now, the scout said, Ortiz is able to catch up to good fastballs on the inner portion of the plate, something he couldn't do in April and May.

• Ichiro Suzuki had 44 hits in June, the 20th time in his career with 40 or more hits in a calendar month. The last AL player with 20 40-hit months was Lou Gehrig.

• Houston must have a bunch of guys who don't like to go out on the road. The Astros went into Saturday's game at San Francisco with a 9-6 record in away day games.

• The Yankees' Joba Chamberlain had 16 no-decisions in his first 25 career starts, a big-league record. Mac Suzuki had 15 no-decisions in his first 25 starts (for Seattle and Kansas City, 1998-2000).

• The Padres' current rotation is Chad Gaudin, Josh Geer, Josh Banks, Walter Silva and Kevin Correia. Total big-league wins: 58, or 34 fewer than Jake Peavy. But San Diego has been playing the first-ever all-second-generation-major-league outfield of Scott Hairston, Tony Gwynn Jr. and Will Venable.

• Atlanta's Tim Hudson, working back from Tommy John surgery, is scheduled to begin a minor-league rehabilitation assignment July 19.

• White Sox lefty John Danks has a brother, Jordan, who is an outfielder in Double-A for the White Sox and a sister, Emily, who will be attending Ohio State on a volleyball scholarship. Their father, John, was a four-year basketball letterman at the University of Texas.