Seven. That's how many saves Twins closer Matt Capps has blown this season. To put that in perspective, Pittsburgh Pirates closer Joel Hanrahan has given up a total of seven earned runs thus far this season. That's as many earned runs as Matt Capps has blown saves. The sad fact for the Twins is, sitting six games out of first place, they can ill-afford to lose any ground, especially when it's a game in hand. With Matt Capps closing, those games are subject to losses.
Ron Gardenhire made the right decision on Saturday, opting to remove Capps from the closer's role after his pathetic outing on Friday night, in which he gave up a two-run home run to Kansas City's Eric Hosmer in the top of the ninth inning with two outs to give the Royals a 2-1 victory. What bothers me, however, is how Gardenhire went about doing it, proving to me that he is more interested in coddling his players than actually making good decisions.
In his post game press conference, Gardenhire defended Capps to the end, almost acting as though this blown save was a rare occurrence. Gardenhire was quoted as saying:
"The young man's a very good pitcher and our closer. We give him the ball and we have all the trust in the world in him. He didn't get it done tonight, that's all that happened."
Really Ron? He didn't get it done "tonight", as if this is something startling or shocking? Friday night was his seventh blown save, which leads Major League Baseball. This isn't anything new. This has been happening...regularly!
"We scored one run tonight. In defense of him, we scored one run, we had plenty of opportunities to score more runs. Everything gets thrown on the closer. Sure, he gave it up at the end, but a lot of people misfired, too."
Should you have scored more than one run? Absolutely! There were plenty of chances to do so. That doesn't excuse a closer from doing his job! As a closer, your responsibility and duty to the team is to ensure that the lead you're given, whether it be one run or three runs, is safe and protected. That's your job! It doesn't matter if the score is 1-0 or 10-9. You are placed in that position to close out the game, hence the name "Closer". What Gardenhire failed to realize in making that statement was how ridiculous it actually sounded. That's like a football head coach whose place kicker missed three field goals saying "The kicker takes all the rap, but we had plenty of chances to score in the red zone, so we shouldn't have lost this game 3-0." That all might be true, but the kicker's only job is to KICK FIELD GOALS (and extra points, but that's a different thing). Whether the team scores or not does not change his job description.
For the Twins to save their season, this change absolutely had to be made, and unfortunately, it was made two weeks too late. Now that it's been made, the Twins should feel a little more comfortable with those tight leads once again.
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