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POLL: Who Do You Want As Your Closer in 2009?


Old#5fan

Who Should the Orioles 2009 Closer Be?  

169 members have voted

  1. 1. Who Should the Orioles 2009 Closer Be?



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Since you seem to love to point out problems I will point out one with you and that is you cannot handle anyone disagreeing with you unless they use some sort of statistical norm or measurement. You allow no tolerance for any kind of opinion or interpretation of something other than your own method. In essence, you are as intolerant as you accuse me of being.

As an example, I don't give a hoot if statistically Chris Ray walked less batters per inning in 2007 than Sherrill in 2008. I personally do not like Chris Ray as a closer. I think he is scared of the top hitters in the game and nibbles too much. Do I have stats or empirical evidence to support this no, nor does it matter to me. However, I see it first hand with my own two eyes. I also think he is wild in the strike zone by throwing HR balls down the heart of the plate, which is not going to show as lack of control in the almighty and glorified statistics that some of you seem to live and die by. Sherrill doesn't have this as much of an issue.

I think Sherrill goes after hitters and doesn't fear anyone. Ergo, I fail to see how anyone would prefer Ray. Now this entire reasoning makes no sense to you, because it cannot be measured. However, it doesn't necessarily make my viewpoint invalid. This is a problem I have with posters like yourself, and to top it off you love to throw out the negative rep., merely because you don't like my "method" of looking at something.

In this instance, at least, I really have no problem with what you are saying, though I don't agree with your conclusion. Ray and Sherrill both have strengths and weaknesses and if Sherrill's approach makes you feel more comfortable, that's a valid opinion so far as I'm concerned.

To me the bigger question for 2009 is who is healthy and throwing well. Ray missed the whole year recovering from surgery, and Sherill's season was cut short after his performance had deteriorated significanty. You might prefer the Sherrill of April - mid-June 2008 to the Ray of April - July 2007, but really we don't know which Sherrill and which Ray is going to show up this Spring.

Among other things, Ray was much better in 2006 than in 2007, and I believe (but can't prove) that his worse performance in 2007 was at least partially due to the fact that he was slow to reveal that his arm was hurting. If the Ray who shows up next year is the 2006 version, I'd prefer him to Sherrill. If he's more like the 2007 version, then it depends on how good Sherrill is looking.

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No, but I think the overall presence of posters on the OH are very intelligent baseball fans. I find it hard to believe they would not prefer Sherrill who made the allstar team as a closer last year over Chris Ray, who quite frankly I doubt would close for any other team in the division or even make the ML roster of the Rays, Sox, or Yankees.

Making the ALL-Star team is not a measure of a players ability, its a measure of either 1) their popularity or 2) their perceived value to their team in the event the team doesn't get at least one player voted to the AS team by the fans.

Let's remove names and awards and just ask this - which of the following do you want as your closer:

32 year old lefty with career 3.96 ERA, 1.294 WHIP and 35 Saves

or

26 year old righty with career 3.19 ERA, 1.185 WHIP and 49 Saves

Given no other information, I'd think a huge majority of people would take the younger guy with more saves and better stats. And this doesn't even consider the fact that Sherrill posted a 4.73 ERA and 1.50 WHIP in his only year as a closer and is seemingly far more valuable pitching as a situational lefty.

When you also consider that our bullpen could either be:

Setup - Johnson ®

Setup - Ray ®

Closer - Sherrill (L)

OR

Setup - Johnson ®

Setup - Sherrill (L)

Closer - Ray ®

Why wouldn't you choose option B where you have excellent options from both sides of the mound at your disposal instead of an option that leaves you without matchup flexibility in the 7th & 8th innings?

Of course all of this presumes that Ray will be fully recovered from him injury, but if that's the case, it's hard to imagine NOT using Ray as the closer.

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In this instance, at least, I really have no problem with what you are saying, though I don't agree with your conclusion. Ray and Sherrill both have strengths and weaknesses and if Sherrill's approach makes you feel more comfortable, that's a valid opinion so far as I'm concerned.

To me the bigger question for 2009 is who is healthy and throwing well. Ray missed the whole year recovering from surgery, and Sherill's season was cut short after his performance had deteriorated significanty. You might prefer the Sherrill of April - mid-June 2008 to the Ray of April - July 2007, but really we don't know which Sherrill and which Ray is going to show up this Spring.

Among other things, Ray was much better in 2006 than in 2007, and I believe (but can't prove) that his worse performance in 2007 was at least partially due to the fact that he was slow to reveal that his arm was hurting. If the Ray who shows up next year is the 2006 version, I'd prefer him to Sherrill. If he's more like the 2007 version, then it depends on how good Sherrill is looking.

Actually, I thought this was in the news somewhere. I seem to remember that the manager and front office were not real happy with him because he revealed it after he was getting beat around all the time.

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Making the ALL-Star team is not a measure of a players ability, its a measure of either 1) their popularity or 2) their perceived value to their team in the event the team doesn't get at least one player voted to the AS team by the fans.

Let's remove names and awards and just ask this - which of the following do you want as your closer:

32 year old lefty with career 3.96 ERA, 1.294 WHIP and 35 Saves

or

26 year old righty with career 3.19 ERA, 1.185 WHIP and 49 Saves

Given no other information, I'd think a huge majority of people would take the younger guy with more saves and better stats. And this doesn't even consider the fact that Sherrill posted a 4.73 ERA and 1.50 WHIP in his only year as a closer and is seemingly far more valuable pitching as a situational lefty.

When you also consider that our bullpen could either be:

Setup - Johnson ®

Setup - Ray ®

Closer - Sherrill (L)

OR

Setup - Johnson ®

Setup - Sherrill (L)

Closer - Ray ®

Why wouldn't you choose option B where you have excellent options from both sides of the mound at your disposal instead of an option that leaves you without matchup flexibility in the 7th & 8th innings?

Of course all of this presumes that Ray will be fully recovered from him injury, but if that's the case, it's hard to imagine NOT using Ray as the closer.

Easy, I will gladly tell you. I don't like a player who starts out promising and then immediately regresses which is Ray. I want a guy who gets better each year. I would agree with you if he had looked as good in 2007 as he had in 2006 but I seriously believe that the 2007 Ray is the real Ray and 2006 was an abberation or lucky season for Ray. He really reminds me a bit of a right handed John Parrish who when he has command is great but when he doesn't is simply all over the place and you cannot have that sort of unreliability as a closer. In fact, Ray reminds me somewhat of Dennis Sarfate only a slightly milder version.

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Actually, I thought this was in the news somewhere. I seem to remember that the manager and front office were not real happy with him because he revealed it after he was getting beat around all the time.

I think you are thinking of someone else. I recall Ray specifically being quoted as not blaming his dropoff in performance on his injury. Why he would deny such a convenient excuse if it wasn't true what he was saying?

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I think you are thinking of someone else. I recall Ray specifically being quoted as not blaming his dropoff in performance on his injury. Why he would deny such a convenient excuse if it wasn't true what he was saying?

Because baseball players, like most men in general, prefer owning up to their mistakes instead of passing blame elsewhere...

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Because baseball players, like most men in general, prefer owning up to their mistakes instead of passing blame elsewhere...

So you are inferring he lied when he was saying his dropoff wasn't due to his injury?

Or are you saying what he is saying was true? Because if it is true, than that mean he just plain pitched like crap which is not good.

I tend to believe that to his credit he wasn't lying, which meant he had a dropoff in performance because he just didn't pitch well.

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So you are inferring he lied when he was saying his dropoff wasn't due to his injury?

That would be my assumption. Either he lied or he somehow convinced himself that it was a coincidence that he pitched like crap and then was found to have a serious injury.

Whatever the case, it's highly likely that the injury caused the performance drop. If I had a penny for every major leaguer who hid an injury or convinced himself he'd just "pitch through a little discomfort" I'd be a rich man. Most major leaguers are confident to the point of thinking they're indestructable.

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That would be my assumption. Either he lied or he somehow convinced himself that it was a coincidence that he pitched like crap and then was found to have a serious injury.

Whatever the case, it's highly likely that the injury caused the performance drop. If I had a penny for every major leaguer who hid an injury or convinced himself he'd just "pitch through a little discomfort" I'd be a rich man. Most major leaguers are confident to the point of thinking they're indestructable.

Even so, it would have made more sense to me if he had just said that he knew something was wrong but didn't realize the injury was impacting him so much.

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So you are inferring he lied when he was saying his dropoff wasn't due to his injury?

Or are you saying what he is saying was true? Because if it is true, than that mean he just plain pitched like crap which is not good.

I tend to believe that to his credit he wasn't lying, which meant he had a dropoff in performance because he just didn't pitch well.

Again he really didn't pitch like crap in 2007.

2007's aren't too bad either when you compare his Actual Saves vs. Save Situation stats. Looks like he had 4 bad outings that really skewed his overall stats. Take away those 1.2 innings and Ray's ERA drops from 4.43 to 2.16.

 I Split         G   GS GF  W  L  S CG SHO   IP    ERA   H   R   ER HR  BB IBB  SO HBP+-+------------+---+---+--+--+--+--+--+---+-----+------+---+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+  in Saves      16   0 16  0  0 16  0   0  16.1   0.55   4   1   1  0   6   0  21   0   in Sv Situ    20   0 19  0  4 16  0   0  18     6.00  12  13  12  3  11   2  23   1   in non-Sv     23   0 18  5  2  0  0   0  24.2   3.28  23   9   9  2   7   0  21   1 

1.2 bad innings means he pitched like crap? What about the other 23 innings when he was lights out? I'll take a guy who has a 2.16 ERA in 93% of his innings.

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Again he really didn't pitch like crap in 2007.

1.2 bad innings means he pitched like crap? What about the other 23 innings when he was lights out? I'll take a guy who has a 2.16 ERA in 93% of his innings.

That really isn't all that many innings and you cannot arbitrarily "take out" those bad innings or four bad outings because they happened and hurt the team.

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Furthermore, when looking at his Career Stats Ray has pitched a total 149.1 innings giving up a total of 59 Runs. In games where he recieved the Loss he has pitched 11.2 innings and allowed 30 runs.

Take away those blow up innings and Ray has thrown 137.2 innings and allowed 24 runs which translates to a 1.53 ERA.

I think we can come to the conclusion that when Ray is good he is very good and when he is bad he is very bad. The key though is that he is very good about 92% of the time. So more than 9 times out of 10 when Ray gets the ball he has gotten the job done.

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The other hand is that you shouldn't ignore the 23 innings where he was lights out.

Maybe I am asking to much but I want more out of a closer who when he is good is very good and bad very bad. I want someone reliable all the time with only a rare failure. Ray failed too many times in those 20 something innings for me to be happy with him. Maybe I just have higher standards when it comes to a closer.

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