Bobby Valentine Has Managed Bullpen Brilliantly, Can’t Be Faulted for Saturday Relief Collapse

by abournenesn

Aug 5, 2012

Bobby Valentine Has Managed Bullpen Brilliantly, Can't Be Faulted for Saturday Relief Collapse

Editor's note: NESN.com is going to tell the story of the 2012 Red Sox in Bobby Valentine’s words. Each game day, we will select the best Valentine quote that sums up the day for the Red Sox.

There are a few things Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine can be criticized for this season, and many more throughout the course of his managerial career. However, in 2012, the way in which Valentine has deployed his bullpen does not fall under that category.

On Saturday evening, after Clay Buchholz came off the mound having allowed just a single unearned run and ready to turn things over to a vaunted bullpen, everything seemed to be going according to script. Then, when Andrew Miller couldn't find his control and Pedro Ciriaco picked him up with his first major league home run, that script seemed to turn to a Hollywood concoction — until it turned into a horror film, that is.

The bullpen, quite frankly, failed on Saturday. Granted, it wasn't given the widest of margins to work with, but Miller clearly didn't do his job in issuing two walks and yielding a walk without recording a single out. Give credit to Alfredo Aceves for picking up the situational lefty and mitigating the damage to a single run, which would set the stage for Ciriaco's dramatic longball. However, that credit wouldn't last long.

Given a fresh inning to work with and a two-run lead, it was Aceves who couldn't hold the lead, not Valentine — despite the fact that many are already second guessing the skipper for not bringing in newly acquired lefty Craig Breslow to face Joe Mauer with two out and two on. Aceves is the team's closer, and you do not take your closer out of the game with two outs and a lead in the ninth inning unless he's showing a complete lack of control.

Bobby Valentine Has Managed Bullpen Brilliantly, Can't Be Faulted for Saturday Relief CollapseThat's an easy way to show a lack of confidence in your supposed bullpen ace, and a fast way to start a team controversy. Moreover, Aceves is a former starting pitcher, and shouldn't be thought of as the typical one-inning-only closer.

"I was trying to get through that eighth inning with the least amount of damage," said Valentine after the Red Sox' heartbreaking 6-4 loss to Minnesota. "I thought that [Aceves] had a chance at keeping the damage at a minimum. … I thought it worked perfectly. Then in the ninth, it's a closer with two outs and two strikes on the hitter. It's easy to thnk about bringing in someone else. I've never seen [Breslow] in that situation."

Clearly, Valentine is trying to wrangle the second-guessers a little bit, but he also makes a valid point in that bringing in someone to relieve a closer with two outs in the ninth inning is a tall, tall order. Again, at that point the game was Aceves' to win or lose — you don't name someone as your closer only to pull them in a tough situation with the game on the line.

Throughout the season, it's been Valentine's managing of the bullpen — finding the right guys to fill in the right roles, specifically — that has been nothing short of brilliant. Prior to this season, likely no one in baseball thought of Miller as a situational lefty, Aceves as a closer or Vicente Padilla as a shut-down setup man. However, with his hand forced, those are the roles Valentine saw for his guys, and they've filled those roles far, far better than ever could have been expected.

With two on and two out protecting a lead, there is no decision — you stick with your closer. If you need to blame someone for the loss, blame Miller for his loss of control or Aceves for his inability to hold a two-run lead. Those are individual, isolated failures to execute.

Just don't blame Valentine, not when it comes to the bullpen.

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