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Closing The Deal

As reported yesterday (espn.com), the Rockies will make Shawn Chaconthe defacto ace of their 2003 staff, their closer in 2004. The Rockies will follow a growing baseball trend made famous most recently by the dominating success of the Braves' John Smoltz and the Dodgers' Eric Gagne.

Smoltz, as you'll recall, was a terrific starting pitcher before arm injuries and necessity led him to the bullpen. He won the NL Cy Young in 1996, the last of six consecutive Cy Youngs awarded to Braves (Tom Glavine won in 1991, with Greg Maddux taking home the hardware from 1992-1995). As a precursor to his conversion to closer, Smoltz pitched in relief of Kevin Millwood in Game 6 of the 1999 NLCS against the Mets. With the Mets trailing by three runs in the top of the 7th, Mike Piazza launched a three-run, opposite-field bomb that tied the game at the time. The Mets went on to blow two leads after that before finally succumbing on a bases loaded walk by Kenny Rogers in the 11th.

While Smoltz made the successful transition from great starting pitcher to great closer, Gagne took a different road. Not that he didn't turn into a great closer, which he did, as his 2003 Cy Young award might attest to. As a starting pitcher, however, he was quite bad. He posted ERAs of 5.15 and 4.75 in 2000-2001 while pitching in one of the best ballparks for pitchers. His two biggest problems as a starter were walks and the longball. He gave up around four walks per nine innings, which will get you into a lot of trouble when you consider his propensity for taters. In 253 innings in 2001-2002, Gagne gave up 44 homeruns, which comes out to more than 1.5 per nine innings.

Gagne the closer and Gagne the starter were almost polar opposites in regard to these two categories. Gagne the closer handed out less than two walks per nine innings, around half of his alternate-universe counterpart. That, however, pales in comparison to his home run differential. As a closer the past two seasons, Gagne has surrendered 8 homeruns in 164.2 innings, or 0.43 ding-dongs per nine innings. Gagne the starter gave up almost four times that amount!

Closers have a huge advantage over starters for two main reasons, both of which are related to the amount of time they spend on the mound. When you're a starting pitcher, a baseball game is much like a marathon for runners (or a love-making session for Sting). They are not afforded the luxury of blowing their proverbial wad right away, as they are expected to pitch 6 innings or more. A pitcher whose fastball may top out in the mid-nineties may be forced to throw most fastballs in the low-nineties to preserve energy and arm strength for his entire start. Breaking balls that might typically have more bite or cut may flatten out more often because of overuse. Closers, on the other hand, are the baseball-equivalent of the two-pump chump. They're in, they go full-throttle for an inning, and then they hit the showers. They are at a significantly lower risk of wearing out because they pitch for such a short period of time each game.< br />
The other natural advantage that closers have is that, since they typically only pitch an inning per game (particularly nowadays), batters have much fewer opportunities to get accustomed to them. In an average game, each batter will see the starting pitcher around three times, which gives them time to study their delivery, their tendencies, and get their timing down. When it comes to facing a team's closer, the batter has no such luck. Particularly with the unbalanced schedule, teams in other divisions or the other league will likely only see a particular closer once or twice per season. Plus, a good closer may only see 3 or 4 batters per appearance, so there's certainly no guarantee that a batter will even get to face that pitcher.

Pitchers with good stuff who struggle as starters stand a good chance of becoming decent relievers or, in some cases, great closers. What does all this mean for Shawn Chacon? Well, much like Gagne, Chacon has been a pretty mediocre starting pitcher. He got a lot of press early in 2003 because he went 11-4 before the All-Star break. Of course, he had a 4.27 ERA in those starts and walked 40 batters in just over 105 innings. He went 0-4 with a 5.68 ERA after the break, and people stopped talking about him. True, he pitched his home games in the third-worst park for pitchers (that's right, Kauffman Stadium and Olympic Stadium were actually worse). Unbelievably, Chacon was a good deal better in Coors Field than he was on the road. His ERA was almost half a run better at home (4.38 to 4.86). One of the main reasons for his mild success this season was that he kept homeruns to a minimum, after giving them out like candy the past two seasons. What makes this turn of events more ridiculous is that he actually had a lower ground ball to fly ball ratio this season than in the previous two. That is to say that he gave up more fly balls but was probably lucky enough that not too many of them cleared the wall.

For his career, Chacon has a lofty 5.10 ERA, a K/BB ratio of 1.43 (not good), and a HR/9 of 1.36. He is only 25 years old, and could show improvement. That being said, I don't think this is a terrible move by the Rockies. If he completely tanks as a closer, he certainly won't be the first. However, if the Rockies end up with a 9th-inning stud on their hands, there will be plenty of nay-sayers eating crow.