Coming to a close

I don't get excited by spring training. After all, it's likely quite warm in Arizona and Florida while we shiver under blankets and shovel snow. I'm jealous, not excited.\nWhat does excite me is discussing baseball philosophy. No sport produces more easily understood, measurable numbers, and no sport relies on so much conventional wisdom, much of which is incorrect.\nOne of those bits of wisdom is the notion that a club needs their one best relief pitcher, or "closer," to finish off games when the team is ahead. Closers are commonly used only in the ninth inning and only in save situations -- when a team is ahead by three runs or fewer or if the tying run is on-deck.\nBoston Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein, who, at 29, is the youngest GM in MLB history, apparently thinks differently. (That he is six months younger than the person writing this column makes me jealous, not excited.) Epstein let his closer Ugueth Urbina walk as a free agent, unwilling to pay his salary even though Urbina saved 40 games last year and even though Urbina took a significant pay cut-- from $6.7 million to $4 million -- with his new team, the Texas Rangers. (That's the same amount of money for which the Cubs signed their closer Antonio Alfonseca, who had 19 saves last year, and Alfonseca got a $450,000 raise.)\nEpstein believes in a simple bit of common sense that has eluded most baseball people for decades now: Sometimes, the most important outs of the game don't come in the ninth inning.\nFor instance let's say you are a manager, and your team is playing the Kansas City Royals. Your team is hanging on to a one-run lead, it's the seventh inning, two men are on base with one out, the next two batters are sluggers Carlos Beltran and Mike Sweeney and it's clear your starting pitcher is tiring and you need to bring in a reliever. Who do you bring in?\nMost managers would bring in a middle reliever to bridge the game to the closer. I don't understand why you wouldn't bring in the closer right then. These are important outs to get, and the next two hitters are the Royals' two best. Get these two outs and you might not have to face Beltran and Sweeney again. Remember, if your middle relievers were great pitchers, they would be starters or closers, not middle relievers. Meanwhile, managers will put in their closer to get guys like Rey Ordonez out in the ninth, as if it takes special talent to get a light-hitting shortstop out.\nMeanwhile, Epstein and the Red Sox will go with a bullpen-by-committee system with right-handers Ramiro Mendoza, Mike Timlin, Bob Howry and Chad Fox and lefty Alan Embree all getting chances to save games. Only Timlin has more than 50 career saves in that group. The pitcher in the game will match up with hitters based on career success and handedness -- rightys against rightys, leftys against leftys -- only.\nTeams that follow the formulaic path just because everyone else is doing it are wrong. That is why I tend to have less sympathy for "small-market" teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates and the San Diego Padres who have great closers like Mike Williams and Trevor Hoffman, respectively, but who remain bad year after year. (The Padres announced yesterday that Hoffman will be out until at least July with a shoulder injury, muddling things further.) These teams often sign or keep these closers because some unwritten rule says they have to have one while ignoring more important holes on their team. With the Pirates, it's a center fielder; with the Padres, it's a second baseman.\nAfter this, the next rule of thumb that teams can dispel is the notion that a closer must pitch only one inning. Managers like to limit them to one inning because they might be needed tomorrow. The theory goes: why use them for two innings in one game when they can be used for one inning in two games and have an impact on twice as many games? What managers forget is that tomorrow might be a 10-1 blowout and the closer won't be necessary. In other words, worry about tomorrow's game tomorrow.\nInstead of relying on one ace reliever, look for the Red Sox to take the hot hand and get him in the game in the seventh or eighth inning and either finish the game or hand the ball to a lesser pitcher once the opposition's lesser hitters come up. Look for the Cubs to keep trotting out the lousy Alfonseca with the game on the line because somebody declared him the closer.\nAs a Cubs fan, I'm not excited.