February 14, 2006
Relief Strategy
Buck Martinez announces the United States roster for the World Baseball Classic this afternoon. The squad will be heavy on relief pitching:
Other strict regulations apply on pitchers, including how many days of rest they must have based on how many pitches thrown.
All of this means that smart hitters will be taking a lot of pitches against the best starters. If Roger Clemens is having trouble throwing strikes or Roy Halladay or Dontrelle Willis are a little wild, they might have trouble making it through three innings in the opening rounds.
With that in mind, Buck Martinez, manager of Team USA, said he would put a premium on relief pitchers when he announces his final 30-man roster today at a 1 p.m. news conference. All 16 teams in the first-of-its-kind tournament announced their preliminary rosters of up to 60 players last month. They aren't required to submit their final 30-man rosters until five days before their first game, which for the United States will be March 7 at Chase Field against Mexico.
Team USA officials, however, have said they are eager to build excitement and give their players plenty of time to prepare.
With a great setup man and closer, major league teams like to talk about a seven-inning game. I guess in this tourament, US opponents might be facing a four inning game.
Posted by David Pinto at
08:18 AM
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4 inning game - ain't that the truth.
Imagine this - Doc Halladay gives up 4 runs in 1.1 IP and gets yanked. Buck can potentially trot out Gary Majewski to get out of the jam, then use Chad Cordero for an inning, Mike Timlin for an inning, then matchup for the next 2 innings with Huston Street and Brian Fuentes, then use Joe Nathan, Huston Street and Brad Lidge to hammer down the end game.
If all else fails, he's got Jake Peavy as a long man. It just doesn't seem fair.
Didn't mean to throw Street in their twice, I meant to put Scot Shields in their somewhere. My bad.
The flip side of this pitch count thing is that we're likely to see something of a Little League strategy employed. Remember the "take the first strike" philosophy some coaches had? I can see teams trying to get deep in counts just to drive superstars like Pedro or Clemens out of the game early. If that happens, it will make this "classic" a farce.
I love the concept of this tournament, but all of the odd rules could make it tough to watch.
Listening to Martinez nearly every morning on XM, he feels that relief pitching is a strength of the Americans, and that is also one of the reasons why he is going heavy on relievers.
