We seriously need to consider another closer at this point

[Bradysburns]

Welp - I am not sure what Buck will do, but I suspect if we need a closer in the next game, it might not be JJ for at least one game.

I don't think we need to replace JJ as closer. But we do need to give him a break.

I love Buck's loyalty - but, errrrr, Jimbo needs a breaky.

Plus, I don't see any sensible replacements anywhere. Maybe someone in the minors?

[Specman]

You make a lot of sense

[brianod]

Bottom line here is that we need another option for the bullpen. Too bad Bundy is hurt. Some think JJ is done and should be moved. Some think we should continue to run him out there with a short leash. Nobody thinks we should continue to leave games up to him with no-one warm at this point. Problem is that with Strop and JJ imploding at the same time, we don't have enough options. It's time for DD to go out and get a quality arm.

[tilgaham]

After the game, I went and took a nap. I simply did not want to come and share my opinion without a clear head. At this point, Jim Johnson simply does not have any command of where his pitches are going. In my opinion, he needs to be pitching the 7th and 8th innings until he can string together a few straight good outings. I think Buck did JJ a huge disservice by having him pitch today, after having pitched quite a bit the previous two days, so part of me wants to believe it was just fatigue, but we can't afford to figure out the answer to that question in the 9th inning anymore.

Disgusted.

[eddie83]

Just remember ONE thing. It doesnt matter what you or I or anybody on this board thinks. It ONLY matters what Showalter thinks, and he is LOYAL

to a fault with his veterans. He will stay with his veterans virtually without contradiction. I realize they are all veterans in the pen at this point, but

Buck will NOT make a change with JJ until JJ says he cant go or unless there is something physically wrong.

For this reason(although admittedly Garcia was so-so in his last start) he will stick with pitchers like Garcia over young pitchers and even send the

younger pitchers back to the minors after 1 poor start(see: Steve Johnson, Zach Britton, etc).

Buck is very much a "veterans" guy, and 'ousidet of the box' thinking isnt his calling card.

You could see after the leadoff double to Encarnacion after having him at 0-2, that Johnson was coming up high or out of the strike zone again.

He refused to use ODay and got Patton warming up way too late in my opinion(not that Patton has been any great shakes either).

I dont know if he was just protecting his player, but when Thorne asked if he would use Johnson tomorrow, Buck said "sure".

Really?

After 2 straight outings and something like 57 pitches?

Johnson should NOT pitch for at least 3 games and even then, in low pressure situations. He just doesnt have his command right now, and

everyone around the league knows it.

Garcia is here because we were going to lose him because he could opt out. They are trying to buy as much time as possible with him. Once he is gone, he is gone. The other pitchers have options, there is a huge difference there. And neither one was doing great when the team went with Garcia anyway.

He hit Manny second this year to start the year. I would bet my life he pushed hard for him to be brought up last year to play third. He used Strop in a lot of big spots last year when he wasn't a proven pitcher. I think the veteran part is a little overstated. Buck isn't going to tell Davey Johnson whether or not JJ is available tomorrow and why should he? One of his strengths is not overworking the bullpen and he said-after the game- he wasn't going to O'Day today.

[crawjo]

But it's important. And what does the best arm have anything to do with this? Johnson is the worst arm right now and you're advocating sticking with him. I think that's poor thinking. The bottom line is that Johnson shouldn't be pitching with the game on the line until he's worked through his issues. O'Day and Hunter are the two best guys to pitch in important situations until Johnson gets himself right. Sticking with Johnson for the next save situation is terrible management.

You might be right that O'Day is "more valuable" in a setup role, but that doesn't mean Johnson should continue closing with the way he's throwing. All of the work O'Day will be putting in ahead of Johnson will all be wasted every time Johnson coughs up leads. What good is a great setup man to preserve a lead if your terrible closer loses it?

All of the late inning roles are important. Johnson should not be pitching with a lead (or in any meaningful situation) for at least a week or two, or at the very least until he shows he's improved his command and results by throwing several scoreless innings.

And if he hadn't snagged that comebacker with his bare hand, a play that almost always goes wrong, Hunter would have coughed up the lead before Johnson got a chance. I'm not interested in figuring out which pitcher has had the best season to this point, I'm interested in figuring out which has the best chance for success in the ninth inning from today going forward. Johnson was fine yesterday, he was terrible today.

I'd be all about pushing Johnson to the back of the line if I thought we had better options. But Hunter is not it. O'Day could be it, but we don't have enough matchup relievers for the late innings. Matusz could be it, but he's our best matchup lefty.

This team is already short on effective relievers. I don't know if you've been watching much recently, but it's not just Johnson who has been having trouble lately.

[crawjo]

Honestly I wonder if our best closer right now might be Kevin Gausman. But I wouldn't do that to him because I want him to be a starter. But he seems like exactly the type of arm you could throw into the ninth inning with a lot of success.

[brianod]

Sounds like panic, and who is available anyway? Steve Johnson can be good in the bullpen. He can replace Strop. No one else is going anywhere.

Sounds like panic? Have you watched the last week of games? It's time to make some sort of move. We need another pitcher or two. I might not be the brightest person in the world but we need a starter that can go 7+ innings and we need a late inning arm to give us more options then we currently have.

[Norfolk orioles]

Just not true. A typical closer is successful about 80-85% of the time. JJ was running over 90%. What do you expect perfection? That's too high. You have to accept the fact that sometimes they fail. And now that the law of averages has caught with JJ, it means he should see success ahead.

We aren't a playoff team unless JJ succeeds. He's the best option. I don't see Hunter, Matusz, or O'Day reaching the needed 80-85% level.

Actually while he started the season 14/14, he blew two tie games and took the losses. Adding in the 4 of 5 blown saves and 2/4 against the Yankees, he's 17 for his last 25.

That's 68%. And several of those have been epic losses.

Now please, explain to me why I should be more interested in the 50/50 from last year than I should be in the trend from the playoffs last year and so far this year?

[Norfolk orioles]

Since I can't edit I'll just add this. Strop was dominant for a stretch last year too. And then he looked good in the WBC.

None of that mattered when he started to get lit up.

Johnson is in the exact same spot and people keep acting like he isn't.

He's not a closer. He doesn't have closer stuff. Unless you have Kimbrel or a mo Rivera cutter, you shouldn't face all lefties out of the pen with a 1 run lead (what Johnson faced from Toronto when he blew the first save).

I'm sorry, that is simply setting someone up to fail. Play the matchups, you have a much better chance that way. Johnson is a contact pitcher.....when he can't locate consistently, he is in big time trouble. Hence the 4 blown saves. To magically expect him to start locating again is folly right now, especially if nothing changes. People kept hoping strop would break out and he never did. Johnson is struggling, do we just keep throwing him out until his arm falls off from having to throw 30 pitches to get threw an inning?

Teams are no longer chasing his stuff outside or low, they know he's struggling because its high profile. The fact is, no one relies more on trying to get guys to chase than Johnson. He sinks the ball and tails that fastball in. If guys spit on those pitches outside the strike zone and he has to come in, even lite hitters like Kawasaki and hitting bullets.

That's not going to change just because the date on the calendar has.

[crissfan172]

Wow...page 15 before I even got home. Impressive.

[J.D.]

There seems to be two obvious problems here.

J.J. isn't getting it done right now. He can't control his secondary pitches, so batters are sitting dead red and crushing his fastball all over the park.

The Orioles don't really have another option to fall back on.

You could use O'Day for a bit, but if you take him out of that fireman role, you have to slot someone else there. And who is that going to be at this point? Hunter could slot there, but he came awfully close to imploding today as well. O'Day himself had a fairly poor outing rather recently as well.

So, who else? Patton's not an option. McFarland's not an option. It HAS to be JJ. For this team to be successful, JJ has to figure this out and move through it. That might hurt, and it might mean some more blown saves along the way, but if this team is going to be in contention, JJ has to get right. There's just not another pitcher with his stuff and track record that can slot into the bullpen in his place. And who's to say that, if you move JJ to the 7th or in mop up, he won't be just as bad there? You still have to figure out a way to replace what he did last season and the first half of this one. And that human being simply does not exist within the organization.

This isn't JUST a case of Buck being stubborn (certainly, he can be). This is more a case of being in a position of having to ride your guy out, because if he doesn't turn it around, the team's going to be significantly worse off for it. Maddon is doing a very similar thing in Tampa right now with Rodney. He HAS to, because if Rodney isn't right, the ripple effect through the bullpen is devastating enough to begin with.

The entire bullpen has taken a step back this year, save for O'Day (and even then, he hasn't been quite as sharp). That makes Buck's game management skills look worse in comparison, and it puts him in a difficult spot of trying to make up for three guys in a seven man bullpen having rough stretches right now. You just can't overcome that as a manager in any meaningful way. Ideally, you fix that by getting starters into the seventh... but that isn't happening right now. The pitching is dragging the team down to an extent, and it's going to take them working through it or making a trade to fix that problem.

In the meantime, I have a feeling a good deal of patience is going to have to be exercised. This likely won't be J.J.'s last blown save this year. It might not even be this week. But keep in mind the big picture here. If J.J. can't put it together, this team is in much more trouble than it appears to be. It's never as easy as just swapping out your closer.

[Norfolk orioles]

It also needs to be stated emphatically that this isn't all on the bullpen.

They have been completely overworked so far this season because our starting pitching has failed time and time again to get deep into games.

How many 7 inning starts have we have this year? Probably not even double digits.

How many 8 inning starts? 1? 2?

And while eveyone is thrilled Gausman was called up, the last thing we need right now is another 5-6 inning starter who's on a pitch AND innings limit. That doesn't help the bullpen at all.

In all honesty, the majority of the blame for this season falls on Duquette for not strengthening the bullpen at all!

He traded away lindstrom, he traded away Ayala, he let Saunders walk, and we signed guys like Garcia, Jurrjens, Hendrickson, etc. to take their place.

Standing pat on offensive and starters during the offseason is one thing, but to bring in no real new fresh talented bullpen arms and just hope that a pen with a ton of miles on it from last year will give you the exact same production is rather silly.

And Dan got a ton of credit for last year, but I'm starting to wonder how much of it he really deserved. All of the big trades, like getting Davis, jones, Tillman, drafting machado etc. were all macphail.

If this season goes down the tubes (not saying it will, just saying if), a great deal of that will fall on DD for not bringing in real pitchers to bolster this team and instead relying on guys who were longshots to even be mediocre contributors.

So yeah, buck deserves blame for staying with Johnson too long, but as some others have pointed out, there aren't a lot of great options right now.

That lays squarely at the feet of DD.

[luismatos4prez]

In all honesty, the majority of the blame for this season falls on Duquette for not strengthening the bullpen at all!

He traded away lindstrom, he traded away Ayala, he let Saunders walk, and we signed guys like Garcia, Jurrjens, Hendrickson, etc. to take their place.

Standing pat on offensive and starters during the offseason is one thing, but to bring in no real new fresh talented bullpen arms and just hope that a pen with a ton of miles on it from last year will give you the exact same production is rather silly.

And Dan got a ton of credit for last year, but I'm starting to wonder how much of it he really deserved. All of the big trades, like getting Davis, jones, Tillman, drafting machado etc. were all macphail.

From Wikipedia:

Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along effect or creeping determinism, is the inclination to see events that have already occurred as being more predictable than they were before they took place.

[russ snyder]

Just remember ONE thing. It doesnt matter what you or I or anybody on this board thinks. It ONLY matters what Showalter thinks, and he is LOYAL

to a fault with his veterans. He will stay with his veterans virtually without contradiction. I realize they are all veterans in the pen at this point, but

Buck will NOT make a change with JJ until JJ says he cant go or unless there is something physically wrong.

For this reason(although admittedly Garcia was so-so in his last start) he will stick with pitchers like Garcia over young pitchers and even send the

younger pitchers back to the minors after 1 poor start(see: Steve Johnson, Zach Britton, etc).

Buck is very much a "veterans" guy, and 'ousidet of the box' thinking isnt his calling card.

You could see after the leadoff double to Encarnacion after having him at 0-2, that Johnson was coming up high or out of the strike zone again.

He refused to use ODay and got Patton warming up way too late in my opinion(not that Patton has been any great shakes either).

I dont know if he was just protecting his player, but when Thorne asked if he would use Johnson tomorrow, Buck said "sure".

Really?

After 2 straight outings and something like 57 pitches?

Johnson should NOT pitch for at least 3 games and even then, in low pressure situations. He just doesnt have his command right now, and

everyone around the league knows it.

There is no doubt that Buck is loyal. I'm pretty sure that he's known around the league as a players manager, and as such he's never going to throw his guys under the bus. I don't think that Buck was protecting Johnson in his response to Thorne's question. I think that Buck was making it clear that Johnson is his closer right now. I disagree with your notion that Jonson should not pitch for at least three games. The odds are that the orioles are going to need to close out a game within 48 hours and Johnson will likely be on the mound. Further, IMO he and the team will be much better off when he converts a couple of saves in a row. Leave the low pressure situations to guys like McFarlane.