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Helsley has played every other day the past week.
I think Oli was just saving him if we went to the 11th as part of his “strategy.”
Jnevel, then Mo needs to come up with another viable closer at the deadline to compliment Helsley’s unavailability to perform in some close games. Also, Helsley seems to have missed quite a bit of time due to injury in the past.
Romero hasn’t really been all that good the last 2-3 weeks. You can just about say the same about Kitterdge.
Know what’s funny (and very sad)? Redbird fans are so benumbed to Marmol’s incompetence that they sometimes don’t even see the simplest, most glaring managerial gaffes.
I’m not talking about Helsley; that was a gray area decision. I’m talking about Liberatore. The guy hadn’t pitched for a full week, and he’s conditioned to throw 70, 80 pitches if necessary — and yet Boy Genius pulls him after just 20 pitches. Why? So he can insert the overworked duo of Kittredge & Romero. (Entering play today, those two and Helsley each had 39 appearances, tied for 14th in MLB.)
Anyway, in my 50+ years of Cardinal fandom I cannot recall anything like the past two months of Liberatore’s usage. Here’s all of Matt’s pitch counts, in chronological order, since April 28th: 38, 12, 8, 50, 13, 60, 70, 13, 17, 12, 6, 23, 10, 11, 7, 12, 48, 85, and tonight 20.
I doubt if any MLB manager has used any pitcher in such a radically inconsistent manner over the past 30 or 40 years. Instead of regularly leveraging Liberatore’s durability in order to take the innings burden off the best parts of the bullpen, Ollie works him with all the consideration afforded a rented mule — a mule who has zero idea what his role is within the pitching staff.
Any bullpen examples of overwork are entirely the manager’s doing, nobody else’s. Not infrequently Marmol removes starting pitchers 15, 20, even 30 pitches earlier than contemporary convention, regardless of how well they’re throwing…and then he also refuses to employ anything like a longman/swingman, which of course is Liberatore’s natural calling if he isn’t a starter.
But perhaps I should give Marmol the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps, since he never played or managed above A-Ball, he simply doesn’t know the MLB rules. Maybe he thinks it’s not legal to leave a reliever in for 3 or 4 or more innings….
Libby has improved vs RH batters recently. He has brought that poor ops the first couple months, down to a .790 ops (126 ops+) thru yesterday. Noticeable improvement vs righties, but far from league average. After moping up Gallegos mess in the 7th, Libby also pitched a scoreless 8th.
The next 5 batters scheduled are righties and Oli chose Kittredge, a .610 ops vs righties (75 ops+). He recorded four outs, and walked Cutch w/one out in the 10th.
With Reynolds and Cruz up, both who will bat lefty vs Kittredge’s .885 ops allowed vs lefties (145 ops+), Oli chose JoJo who has allowed a .432 ops vs lefties (25 ops+) this season and is our primary lefty in late inning holds.
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In hindsight, with Helsley unavailable, Oli chose to plug in GG early, and push everyone back an inning. He still played the splits with his relievers and all was well until JoJo failed. It happens, and will again, pick a name.I didn’t like the GG decision, I was thinking Libby or the rule5 guy, after Miles. The lefty Tellez homered off Gallegos too. Rather than extend Libby deeper, as Bob liked, I preferred him earlier, but GG and JoJo both failed, and that’s not a good recipe for success.
So, following the splits work over the majority of the situations, but everyone should know that nothing is successful every time. When it does work, it goes without notice. When it fails, the manager is an idiot.
I had hoped to see Mikolas go more than 87 pitches, which I don’t think has been mentioned. He was pulled after the sixth, having worked around a leadoff double in his final inning. None of the starters, including the ace Gray, being able to go deep into games puts pressure on the pen.
Another factor, while less important, is that Helsley is no longer being used for more than the ninth. In prior years, it was not unusual to see him in the eighth. I am not complaining about this, as he has been exceptional and has stayed healthy so far when used this way. I only bring it up to note there are more outs to be picked up by other relievers as a result.
Regarding Liberatore, it is great he can play multiple roles. It would be ideal if every game could follow a set script, and everyone could be used optimally, but that isn’t reality.
The takeaway from last night as I see it is that guys who need to be able to get outs late in the game were not able to execute. It was especially a shame after the much maligned offense got the lead back in the 10th.
Bob Reed
Anyway, in my 50+ years of Cardinal fandom I cannot recall anything like the past two months of Liberatore’s usage.
Brad Thompson immediately came to my mind ~ from 2007-2009. Here is a stretch of his pitch counts: 87 31 78 31 16 80 88 45 – Many similar stretches throughout the 3 years.
Carlos Martinez was atrociously deployed in 2014 as well.
It is not all that unusual. Just last year, here are Woodford’s counts when he returned as a reliever in 2H.
59-21-16-28-50-49-78-50
I’ve long since given up on Liberatore as a starter and have wanted to see what he could do as a one inning guy, putting everything he has into 15 pitches. Although he has not had an extended trial in that role, I think he has generally done well.
All that said, the history of baseball suggests to me that the role of a swing man, to be used in seemingly haphazard fashion as circumatances dictate, is often called for on a pitching staff. I do not sense that it is limited to bad managers or bad teams. But whether it is or not, this team is above .500 despite having a dreadfully inept offense, so I think that criticism of pitcher useage might amount to a quibble.
Good points, bling. The Thompson example cited above was compiled under Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa.
Contrary to popular opinion I really like the potential of Liberatore and would use him in a spot starter, long relief role.
As mentioned earlier, I would not have brought Helsley in Tuesday with the 3 run lead. Libby might have been a good choice there in fact, although he is able to go multiple innings and that is where he brings the most value.
Just because the save stat includes 3 run leads, I would be heasitant to put Helsley in a game with that large of a cushion and 3 outs to get. Our offense does not generate enough runs to give us a lead of more than 1 or 2 runs too often, and thus when you get three we need to take advantage and keep Helsley healthy for those close ones.
Ollie seems obsessed with platooning. Should have left Kitteredge in. So he gets burned with a switch hitter and a lefty swinger.
I agree that he is pulling starters too soon and making poor use of Libratore.And why is Gallegos in a close game anytime. He has been good but not this year. Also I suspect a mid inning change is a little disruptive.
I think Ollie is improving but he is over his head and only had that good first season because of Albert, Molina and Wainwright. The Cardinals should be able to attract a more experienced and accomplished manager.
I agree that it was a gray area whether to use Helsley and Brian reported that he was not available. Don’t know if that was Helsley’s decision or Ollies or even Mo’s.
Ollie continues to mismanage the team resulting in losses! Why was Helsley brought in to pitch the ninth Tuesday night with a 7-4 lead??? As a result you might argue that he was unavailable last night in the tenth when needed most to protect a 4-3 lead and get the win. But no…….. We have to go with Kittredge and Romero who promptly squandered the lead and then lost the game to our division rival Pirates. When will this nightmare of Ollie Marmol and Dusty Blake end?
We go through this every single close game we have. If Hesley is not used everyone grabs the pitchforks. I kind of wish Oli would just start using Helsley every single game until his arm falls off so some of you would realize that a pitcher can’t throw every day.
That’s not the issue. I understand that Helsley can’t pitch every game. The point was that he was not needed Tuesday night with a 7-4 lead going into the ninth. If he hadn’t pitched Tuesday night he could have saved the game Wednesday night as he didn’t pitch Monday night either.
We don’t know that he wasn’t needed Tuesday night. If a different reliever blows the 3 run lead then we have a different problem.
Thanks for the responses, guys. I appreciate the research involved. The specific numbers you provided allows us to compare your examples with this year’s deployment of Liberatore — using means and standard deviations to concretely measure consistency (or lack thereof).
“Brad Thompson immediately came to my mind ~ from 2007-2009. Here is a stretch of his pitch counts: 87 31 78 31 16 80 88 45 – Many similar stretches throughout the 3 years.”
That’s a mean of 57 pitches, and an SD of 29 for Thompson.
“It is not all that unusual. Just last year, here are Woodford’s counts when he returned as a reliever in 2H. 59-21-16-28-50-49-78-50”
In this instance, Jake Woodford has a mean of 44 and an SD of 21. So in each case the standard deviation is almost exactly half of the mean.
Now Liberatore. Mean of 27, standard deviation of 24. So the SD is therefore roughly 90% of the mean, which is a far cry from 50%. Thus, not remotely similar to the Woodford/Thompson examples.
I’ll offer this challenge to any industrious soul reading this. Find any pitcher, any team, over the past 40 years who was used in a manner truly similar to Libby (min. 10 appearances in a stretch), and I’ll gladly send 100 bucks to the charity of your choice. Okay, not gladly. But I’ll do it. I’m defining “truly similar” as the standard deviation being at least 80% of the mean. Good luck.
I too thank those that do the actual footwork to illustrate their point. I’m always willing to change my views if there’s information that proves me wrong. However, I’m frequently either too busy or too lazy to actually do that research. I don’t need research to point out that starting pitchers are worth more than relief pitchers. And I know that Liberatore is only 24 years old. They aren’t going to give up on him as a starter, nor should they. I think they continue to use him like they have for
The rest of 2024, than try to stretch him out ad a starter in 2025.I don’t really think using Liberatore as a swing-man is all that big of a deal. So what that some of his outings are under 10 pitches? Sometimes he’s brought in just to finish off an inning with key lefties coming up. And so what that he had the one really long outing later in the season? Ollie left him in because he happened to be doing extremely well and our bullpen was a bit taxed. That’s what swing-men do. I acknowledge that the long outing involved a lot more pitches than I would have expected him to throw. But what do you want? Should Ollie have taken him out earlier so his standard deviation would be less close to his mean? I think you’re reaching again Bob.
I don’t disagree to your original point that Ollie could have perhaps rode Liberatore to the end of the game a couple nights ago. It was an option. But so was using Kittredge against the right handers coming up. Like I said, I’d have just stuck with Kittredge to the end after he came in. Ultimately, it’s on Romero for not being able to execute. That was his job. If you want to add partial blame on Ollie for having confidence that Romero could be effective against lefty hitters, then I’m fine with that too. But I don’t think it was grievous.
I put full blame on Oil for throwing GG in the 7th, behind by one run. Tellez vs Libby was the matchup.
The home run off GG prevented Willsons’ 2run shot from being the game winner in regulation.
Oli forced GG into a medium lev situation he didn’t belong in. Oli scripted GG pre-game, and Tellez was 2 fer 2 at that point. Bad timing. Tellez is likely why Miles was lifted too.
Maybe Libby fails instead of JoJo? Who wanted GG in the 7th? C’mon, we had Monday off and his bullpen is taxed on Weds? Oli wanted GG to throw, and maybe the FO did too, but that wasn’t a low lev enough situation.
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