Jason Motte and the Two Inning Save
After a 3 1/2 hour rain delay, the Cardinals and Giants resumed play last night with St. Louis holding a 3-1 lead after seven innings. Mike Matheny had already used Trevor Rosenthal, Edward Mujica, and Mitchell Boggs in relief, so he needed to get six outs to secure the victory and only had his closer available from the group that is generally entrusted to hold leads. Joe Kelly, Fernando Salas, and Marc Rzepczynski were available if he wanted to play the match-ups, but instead, Matheny just told Motte that he was going to get six outs instead of three.
For Motte, this is actually becoming the norm in October, and he’s proving to be pretty good at it.
Last year, Motte appeared in 12 playoff games, and in three of those, he was brought in to protect a lead before the ninth inning began. This year, he’s entered in the eighth inning in three of his five playoff appearances (including the wild card game). And, despite the idea that closers aren’t comfortable being asked to pitch in a different role in October, Motte is six for six at holding postseason leads when he enters the game in the eighth inning. In those six games, he’s pitched 9 1/3 innings, allowing just one run, one walk, and recording five strikeouts. And, because Motte just pounds the zone with strikes, these longer outings haven’t really stretched his pitch count to uncomfortable levels.
In those six outings, Motte has thrown 106 pitches, or an average of 17 pitches per appearance. In the regular season this year, Motte threw 1,125 pitches in 67 games, an average of 17 pitches per appearance. If he had lousy command and put a lot of guys on base, this might not work out so well, but as a strike-throwing fly ball pitcher who gets quick outs, Motte is essentially the perfect multi-inning closer. He can get four to six outs and expend less energy than many relievers can in getting three, and there’s no reason to limit Motte to three out duty when he has the skills and ability to be effective for more than three outs.
And, while Mike Matheny might bunt too much for my tastes, he deserves a lot of credit for preparing Motte for this role during the regular season. Motte entered the game in the eighth inning seven times during the regular season, recording four or five outs in each instance. The Cardinals won all seven games, as Motte didn’t allow a single run and only put five guys on base in 10 innings pitched during those outings. All told, the Cardinals are now 10-0 when Motte enters the game in the eighth inning this year.
Of course, the argument can be made that giving your relievers heavier workloads — at least in terms of getting outs — in October isn’t as likely to show up on the day you extend them, but in their next appearance after getting stretched further than they’re used to. So, let’s look at Motte’s results in his next appearance after recording more than three outs this year.
May 15th: Three days off after throwing 33 pitches, 1 IP, 1 R
May 23rd: One day off after throwing 23 pitches, 1 IP, 0 R
May 30th: Four days off after throwing 25 pitches, 1 IP, 2 R
June 6th: One day off after throwing 23 pitches, 1.1 IP, 0 R
June 9th: Two days off after throwing 20 pitches, 1 IP, 0 R
June 23rd: Five days off after throwing 29 pitches, 1 IP, 0 R
July 4th: Two days off after throwing 13 pitches, 1 IP, 0 R
July 20th: Three days off after throwing 16 pitches, 1 IP, 0 R
July 26th: No days off after throwing 22 pitches, 1 IP, 0 R
August 31st: Three days off after throwing 12 pitches, .1 IP, 2 R
September 7th: Three days off after throwing 31 pitches, 2 IP, 0 R
September 9th: One day off after throwing 20 pitches, 1 IP, 2 R
The obvious thing to note here is that Motte was only asked to pitch the day after recording more than three outs once — he struck out the side in recording that save on July 26th, by the way, and then threw a scoreless inning on July 27th as well. However, while you might think that all those days off hurt the Cardinals by not allowing them to have their closer available in a follow-up game, there was not a single game where Motte threw multiple innings and then was given the day off while a replacement took his place the next day. In every single situation but one, the team either lost due to an early deficit or won by a margin that didn’t require a closer. The one outing — June 20th — where they won a game by fewer than three runs following a multi-inning appearance from their closer, Jake Westbrook threw a complete game.
Only once all season was Motte needed in a game after which he threw more than one inning, and not only did he pitch that day, he pitched the next day as well, and he racked up a couple of saves in the process.
This is why you don’t worry too much about the next game with closer usage in the playoffs. Quite often, the next game doesn’t even require a closer, and when it does, the act of getting four, five, or six outs isn’t so taxing that you can’t ask him to resume his normal role as three out closer. And, because of the scheduled off days in playoff series, you know you’d never have to ask him to pitch more than three days in a row.
Motte’s already thrown four innings over three days during the regular season, and showed no ill effects from that sequence of appearances. If you just looked at his total runs allowed in outings following a multi-inning appearance — his ERA was 4.97 in the 12 games we listed above — you might think there’s some evidence of fatigue, but four of the seven runs he allowed came after having three or more days off, making it tough to argue that he was worn down after recording multiple outs several days prior.
Matheny probably doesn’t want to have to use Motte in the eighth inning of every game, but the fact that he’s willing to do so with some frequency is a boon to St. Louis’ playoff chances. By aggressively inserting his closer into games where his team has a chance to win, he’s maximizing the innings he’s getting from his best reliever, and in turn, giving the Cardinals their best chance of advancing in the World Series.
By not just saving Motte for the ninth inning, Matheny is deploying his closer as a legitimate relief ace. He might be a rookie manager, but this is what good October bullpen management looks like.
Agreed, though with Crawford, Blanco, and pitch hitter coming up, a tag team of Rzep and Salas would have been defensible. There’s a decent chance Motte could have been on pitch 30 and facing Sandoval/Posey in the ninth as the tying or winning run. Then this doesn’t look so good.
In other news, Allen Craig was removed from the game in the 7th in a double switch. Matheny still has work to do if he wants to be a good in-game manager.
Yes, and if the Giants had been more patient at the plate, they would have increased the chances both of a game-tying AB and of a tired Motte tonight.
Motte is a strike thrower. He’s not going to walk a lot of guys. Better to look for a pitch and swing away, even if it’s early in the count.
Huh. I’d say that without the double-switch, the hard grounder in the 9th quite possibly goes skittering past Allen Craig, making Panda, and then Posey, the tying run at the plate.
Switching Matt Carpenter from his weaker to stronger defensive position, while simultaneously placing a better defender in right field seems fairly inspired to me.
Someone mentioned Mariano R., and I think that’s apropos.
Matheny appears to have learned from Torre’s brilliant usage patterns of Rivera. (You try it in-season, see if it works. If it does, you’ve got a playoff edge, with a 4, 5, even 6-out closer if needs must.)
Your definition of “good October bullpen management” hasn’t been tried in 5 years, and that was with Mo Rivera. Before that the last post-season 2 inning save was BY Kim, and it ruined his post-season.
Kim threw more than 60 pitches and was visibly on fumes. I certainly hope nobody would call Brenly’s bullpen management in that series “good,” and I wouldn’t indict the entire concept of the two-inning save off it.
It’s funny how the same author who roasted Joe Girardi for not paying attention to platoon splits and allowing Raul Ibanez to hit against a lefty pens an article mere days later praising a manager for letting a righty reliever pitch two consecutive innings when there were matchups to be made.
I’m just going by B-R game logs, and I’m new at this, so correct me if I’m wrong, but…
In the 8th Motte faced three consecutive lefties (one of whom was a pinch-hitter, granted) with a two-run lead in a playoff game (read: high-leverage situation) with, say, Marc Rzep…Scrabble available to pitch.
Motte vs. lefties, career: 116 OPS+
Scrabble vs. lefties, career: 69 OPS+
So the value of pitching your “closer” for two innings instead of 1 or 1.1, (which is, what, a noble thing to do?) outweighs the advantage to be had by leveraging a lefty-on-lefty matchup for at least two of those six batters? This is “what good October bullpen management looks like”?
Matheny does deserve credit for this move but, overall, his bullpen management hasn’t been strong. I wonder if he didn’t feel forced into this move because of the fact that he’d already used Rosenthal, Mujica, and Boggs prior to the rain delay.
Matheny was too slow to go to Rosenthal and then needlessly removed him in favor of Mujica in the 7th, burning a reliever he might have needed had the game gone extra innings. It actually worked out well because if he hadn’t used Mujica, I don’t think he’d have used Motte for the 2 inning save.
Additionally, given Lynn’s struggles in the rotation but the fact that he can be very good in short stints, Matheny should’ve treated game 5 as a bullpen game. He should have planned on Lynn for 2-3 innings, Kelly for 2-3 innings, and then Rosenthal for an inning or 2 before getting the game to the other guys. Instead, Matheny stubbornly held onto the hope that Lynn could get the team 5-6 solid innings. He should have pinch hit for Lynn with the bases loaded in the 2nd inning and turned the game over to Kelly. Not only would the Cards have been much more likely to score in the 2nd but they’d have been much more likely to limit the damage that came in the 4th. Instead, the Giants put a 4-spot on the Cards in the 4th and the game was over.