Terry Bevington went to the mound to make a pitching change and, of course, was booed. This was last Friday, and as usual he had allowed de facto pitching ace Jaime Navarro to labor too long, into the eighth inning, even though Navarro had squandered an early 2-0 lead and then let the Texas Rangers go back in front after the White Sox rallied to tie it. Now Navarro had done it a third time, allowing a leadoff double and a one-out single in the top of the eighth to send the Rangers ahead 6-5. Navarro was booed when he came off the field, though the fans immediately behind the dugout gave him a polite round of applause, and Bevington was booed again as he departed, with little support even from the loyal dugout cadre. It didn’t help the manager’s cause when Chuck McElroy, the relief pitcher the Sox got in exchange for former leadoff man Tony Phillips, surrendered a two-run homer to the first man he faced, Lee Stevens, sending the Sox to an 8-5 defeat and dropping their record to 51-50, three and a half games behind the first-place Cleveland Indians in the American League Central Division.
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Even so, I would insist that Bevington is hurting the team, and that his use of pitchers is foremost among his crimes. Simply counting the number of relief appearances doesn’t indicate how he uses his bull pen. Bevington has been prone to let his starters work too long this season yet quick to make additional changes once he goes to the bull pen. As a result he’s used an average number of relievers despite being slow to remove his starters. A cursory look at the statistics seems to bear out this impression. An average starter pitches, what, about six innings? Navarro and Wilson Alvarez, the team’s two top starters, average closer to seven; they’re on a pace that would see both pitch more than 250 innings, which would be a career high for Navarro and a career high by a large margin for Alvarez. James Baldwin is also averaging more than six innings a start, and only the oldsters Doug Drabek and Danny Darwin have been nursed along at a more reasonable five. By working Navarro, Alvarez, and Baldwin hard early in the season, Bevington makes it less likely that they’ll have their best stuff down the stretch, even if the Sox are able to stay close to the Indians.
Navarro’s average outing of almost seven innings needs to be put in context with his atrocious 5.14 earned run average. Navarro has not only pitched heavy innings this season, he’s pitched heavy innings even when he wasn’t effective. A “quality start” is commonly defined as giving up three runs or fewer in six innings–a liberal standard that calls it “quality” when a pitcher amasses a 4.50 ERA. By that measure Navarro’s had but 9 quality starts in 22 outings this year. What, then, constitutes a late hook by the manager? I’ll call it staying in to give up five runs or more in five innings or more. By that standard, Navarro’s had seven late hooks this season, giving up nine runs in seven innings (twice!), seven runs in eight innings, seven runs in seven innings, eight runs in five innings, five runs in six innings on opening day, and, last Friday, seven runs in seven and one-third innings. And that’s not counting the four games in which he was just plain bombed and couldn’t make it through the fifth.
Yet it was general manager Ron Schueler who supplied this team with its weaknesses–Bevington included–and Schueler who ignored most of them during the off-season, even after last season made them manifest. As I wrote earlier this season, the exchange of ace pitcher Alex Fernandez for slugger Belle actually made the Sox less of a contender than they had been. Compare that move with what the Giants did last winter, trading Matt Williams to the Indians for Jeff Kent, a poor substitute for Williams at third, and–here’s the tricky part–middle reliever Julian Tavarez. Tavarez and free-agent acquisition Doug Henry (whom the Sox or anyone could have had for a song) have strengthened the Giants’ pitching across the board.
