(Photo by J. Meric/Getty Images)
To sort of quote the infamous Chris Crocker: Leave Jonathan Papelbon alone!
Maybe I would be better off by not listening to sports talk radio in my car, but somehow or another I get roped in to listening to it and seem to become infuriated by callers. I’m not sure what it is about segments of the Red Sox fan base, but everything is always greener elsewhere. And whatever isn’t working; the best thing to do is get rid of it.
So as it pertains to Jonathan Papelbon, I want to say give it a break already. 2010 was the first year that his ERA matched closely with his xERA. He is a Jekyll and Hyde closer with increasingly extreme first half/second half splits.
But he still is a dominant end of the bullpen arm that will save 35-40 games in the pressure cooker of Boston. Did he blow eight saves last year? Yes. Did you know that Billy Wagner and Jonathan Broxton blew seven saves last year?
According to ESPN.com, Daniel Bard blew seven (I didn’t realize that) and no one is talking about axing him. In fact everyone wants him to be the closer. (I say everyone loosely)
Papelbon is coming back next year and it very well likely may be the last year for him as a Red Sox. I really hope it’s not a season marred in finger-pointing and second-guessing from Red Sox fans as he wraps up a great Red Sox run, but I can almost guarantee it will be. Of course it will be flamed by the Boston major media as the Sox will presumaby have three other closer-level relievers in the bullpen.
When a baseball player struggles in the first half of a season and then turns it on in the second half, he is often credited less for his season based on perception of his bad start. The converse is true for fast starters. Their reputation for the year is buoyed by early performance.
The problem for Papelbon was that he finally gave up a run in the playoffs of 2009. The ALDS ended terribly with Papelbon in the crosshairs of blame. For the first time in his postseason career he gave up runs in the playoffs and did so in a devastating fashion – to end a series.
BOOM. Blame game.
Prior to that game Papelbon went 26 straight innings of postseason play without a run. In that run included a 2007 World Series.
Then of course to start 2010, he plays with some mechanical stuff and struggles for the first half. He was throwing little softer and using more sliders. The HRs allowed went up as the flyball rate spiked to 53% and everyone was ready to crucify him (again I say everyone loosely).
In the second half he went back to throwing the ball harder and using more fastballs. The K/9 spiked to 12.5 after the All-Star break but his ERA ballooned to over 4.00 on the back of a 38% hit rate.
Look a little deeper and you’ll see his xERA in the second half was a tidy 2.89.
Papelbon’s approach and skills are bouncing around a little bit right now and you can complain about his $12 million dollar salary, but people need to get real here on Papelbon and not run him out of town after he has been the best closer over a sustained six-plus seasons that we have seen in a long time. When he stabilized the closer role and helped follow-up on Keith Foulke’s run, he was a savior. Now he’s washed up and overpaid because of a bad first half in 2010?
Again, yes the skills are bouncing around but he’s historically been a ~20 RAR pitcher with good health and a bulldog mentality.
Let’s enjoy the last leg (arm) of the Papelbon-era and stop with the wishful thinking of running him out of town.