Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
Write Derek at drksmart @ gmail.com
Write Phil at phil.bencomo @ gmail.com
Remember how maddening it was to see Mike Remlinger getting killed by nearly every lefty he'd face? Well, now that he's battling for a spot on the Braves roster, it seems Rem finally figured out it was an issue that needed correcting.
Since Mike Remlinger left Atlanta after the 2002 season, he's added a few pounds and a few shades of gray hair. But the change that is going to help him make the big-league roster is the addition of a breaking ball that he never had to use during those successful years he previously enjoyed with the Braves.
[snip]
During Remlinger's 2002 season, his changeup made him even more effective against right-handers than he was vs. left-handers. With the curveball, Cox could feel even more comfortable using Remlinger in any situation.
"We always used him against righties," Cox said. "If the curve is going, we can do anything [with him]."
Beyond noting that 40 seems a little old to be toying with a new pitch, I was going to say something snarky about how Rem was used while in Chicago, but I looked at the breakdown of his batters faced, and his misuse wasn't as egregious as I remembered.
During his last three years under Cox (Retrosheet doesn't have splits for handedness until the 2000 season), he faced righties 70.4% of the time. While under Baker, it was 61.6%, and while he did, indeed, face more lefties in Chicago, one can at least see in that ratio that Baker appears to have had a glimmer of understanding about his strengths and weaknesses, which is about seventeen glimmers more than I would have credited him with before looking at the numbers.
Makes sense, although part of my point is that I'd expected to see more of a LOOGY tendency with Rem under Baker based on how I remembered him being used.
However, what that would shoot down is the idea that Baker was consciously using Remlinger's platoon splits to his advantage, instead implying that he was doing nothing other than using him as he would any one-inning reliever with no discernable platoon split, and that idea certainly jives with the lack of purpose I'd recalled in his use. Thanks for thinking of that, because that concept obviously flew right by me.
scareduck,
Good to know, although I hate to use ESPN if I can avoid it. Still, for that sort of thing it might be impossible, so thanks for the resource workaround.
I think the reason why it seemed Remlinger was so mis-used is that many times (probably around 40% of the time), Remilinger would be brought in to face a lefty, which is a rate far too high when his splits are considered. That, and Remlinger gave up a monster home run to Jim Edmonds in his most memorable appearance of 2005.
Comment status: comments have been closed. Baseball Toaster is now out of business.