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How do the Rangers Deal with Bullpen Distress in the Middle of a Pennant Race? Very, Very Carefully

In a pennant race, there are few worse concerns than bullpen distress.

And, now, right smack in the thick of a race for the first playoff trip in 10 years, the question arises: Do the Rangers have a legitimate concern on their hands?

In the last 12 days, the Rangers have six losses. Three of them can be tied directly to bullpen failures. LHP Eddie Guardado has surrendered momentum-changing homers in each of his last two outings over the last week. LHP C.J. Wilson, who had done a fine job as the fill-in closer, got a little too fancy with his pitch selection and lost a two-run, ninth-inning lead at Oakland at the start of the just-completed road trip.

And then there was Friday night. If Wilson had an old-fashioned meltdown 10 days ago, what happened to RHP Frank Francisco could only be described in nuclear terms. Handed a 4-2 lead, needing three outs to give the Rangers the wild card lead and given the benefit of one of the most amazing defensive recoveries ever seen in Arlington in the middle of the inning, Francisco still imploded. David Murphy nearly rescued Francisco by crashing into the wall to chase a ball, fielding the ball as it bounced away from the wall and throwing to Michael Young. Young, momentarily stunned by a logjam of Red Sox on the base paths, still was able to throw home to Taylor Teagarden, who made his own nice contribution by tagging pinch runner Clay Buchholz. And it still wasn’t enough.

Francisco ended up allowing seven hits and six runs in two-thirds of an inning. The most damaging of those hits was Victor Martinez’s two-out, two-strike double on the eighth pitch of the at-bat. Martinez’s double gave Boston the lead and officially made it a blown save opportunity.

Yes, the day after, the whole thing still stings when you relive it.

The Rangers, however, can’t  can’t afford to relive it in their heads or on the field. In the middle of a pennant race, they certainly can’t stop to think about the loss that shouldn’t have been. And who knows if they can recover from one of these, much less two.

The biggest concern in all of this is Francisco. Seemingly invincible in April, he simply hasn’t been the same pitcher since he pitched three days in a row in early May. It led to the first of two arm-related trips to the DL (a third DL trip was the product of a flu/pnuemonia issue). In the first 30 days of the season, Francisco pitched six times on back-to-back days. In the second of those back-to-back outings, he allowed a total of three baserunners – and no runs, it should go without saying – in 5.2 innings. After pitching May 4-6 at Seattle and Oakland, Francisco landed on the DL with biceps tendinitis.

He seems to have never recovered enough to be a reliable closer. Mostly that means he can’ t be counted on to pitch on consecutive days. He’s pitched on consecutive days just three times since. In the second of those outings, he’s allowed at least one baserunner each time, has not completed an inning and has allowed eight runs.

Friday’s outing was so bad, that when a group of reporters (me included), who waited around for Francisco to cool off and work out, started to move towards his locker, this was his response: “I don’t want anybody near my locker, so beat it.”

A mad closer is not necessarily a bad closer, so the fact he was bothered after one particularly painful loss shouldn’t really matter in this discussion. It’s simply a discussion of performance and reliability. The closer must be able to keep hot streaks hot. Good closers are hard enough to come by, but a good closer and an attractive alternative are, well, snow leopard rare.

In this season full of odd developments, the Rangers seem to have a snow leopard on their hands in Wilson, but if they move him to the closer’s role, they lose his versatility to pitch more than one inning and they are still left with a primary setup man who might not be reliable on the second of back-to-back days. It creates a hole somewhere and if you factor in Guardado’s recent struggles there are already some fissures on the front side of the bullpen, too.

For better or worse, the Rangers have to stick with what they’ve got. The roles they developed for this bullpen helped make the bullpen one of the team’s biggest strengths through early part of the summer. If it means they have to hold Wilson to one inning so that he could be ready to close on the second day of a potential winning streak, so be it. If they’ve got to use an unusual piece here or there to keep Francisco from pitching on back-to-back days, so be it. If Wilson is available, give him the ball. If he’s not, maybe Neftali Feliz gets a shot. If need be, you mix and match throughout the ninth. They’ve got to do what they can without creating an over panic situation, but still addressing the fact Francisco probably can’t pitch on back-to-back days.

Teams can’t afford to lose ninth-inning leads in tight pennant races. But they also can’t afford to panic.

The Rangers are balancing in a precarious spot right now. Teetering either way too much could knock them off. Best, for the time being, to stay the course, or at least stick as closely to it as possible.