Post by Admin on Jul 31, 2014 20:13:09 GMT
With the Milwaukee Brewers leading the NL Central division for most of the 2014 season, much credit goes to its pitching staff, all the way from the starters to the bullpen, everyone on the staff, with the exception of its Rule 5 acquisition, Wei-Chung Wang, who the Brewers' GM Doug Melvin has made it clear that he wants to keep Wang and develop him for the future pitching staff.
One of the notable pitchers this season is someone who wasn't originally projected not only to contribute this much, but also wasn't even slated for his current spot as closer. When he was re-acquired from the Brewers, Francisco Rodriguez was going to be the eighth-inning set up man for closer Jim Henderson. However, Henderson wasn't looking too good in the spring training exhibition games, and it was learned that Henderson was injured, thus Rodriguez, struggling with a spring training accident of stepping on a cactus, was thrust into the closer role.
Rodriguez has had a hand in over half of the Brewers' 60 victories so far this season. In the Brewers' history, several of their successful closers were bestowed the job out of necessity. Within about the last ten seasons, it includes Dan Kolb, Derrick Turnbow, Salmon Torres, John Axford, and Jim Henderson prior to Rodriguez this season.
Back in 2011, when Axford was closing a club record-setting 46 saves, with 42 straight, his eighth-inning set up man was Rodriguez for the second half of the season. When K-Rod was acquired, the Crew was 49 - 43, en route to its team-best regular season 96 wins. That's 47 - 23 with K-Rod in the bullpen. Even though K-Rod had a micro-scopic earned run average, and lots of strikeouts, he was even more important than his numbers that year. His most important contribution was that he would enter the game in the 8th inning, which allowed ground-ball specialist Kameron Loe to pitch the sixth inning, when he pitched best, and he did pitch his best in the sixth inning, not the eighth, as the Brewers had to put him in that spot out of necessity prior to K-Rod's arrival.
K-Rod's numbers weren't the only thing that helped the 2011 Brewers to its best regular season. It was him being on the team and taking a job that the bullpen was struggling doing, letting the rest of the bullpen going back to what it did most effectively. Those dynamics were reminiscent of the Brewers' 2008 acquisition of CC Sabathia. Sabathia put up killer stats with 11 wins in the second half of the season, and dominated with a low ERA, also pitching on short rest, which allowed the rest of the starting staff to get an extra day of rest, or be saved for a more favorable match up.
Not since Rollie Fingers helped take the Brewers to the playoffs in 1981, and helped propel them in 1982, have the Brewers had such pitchers who impacted them so much as to bringing them to their only playoff appearances.