All-Baseball.com, part of MVN All Baseball. All the Time. Brought to you by the Most Valuable Network. all-baseball cub reporter transaction guy ... baltimore chop July 07, 2004 19 to 21 by ruz This week in the 19 to 21 newsletter, John Shiffert looks at pitchers moving between the bullpen and the starting rotation, including Danny Graves, Derek Lowe, and Byung-Hyun Kim. #29, July 6, 2004 By John Shiffert At first glance, this looked like another one of those What Were They Thinking Of? trades. After all, Bedrock had been the Phillies closer for three plus years, setting franchise records for career saves (103 since broken by Joe Table Mesa) and single season saves (40 since broken by Wild Thing Williams and Joe Table Mesa) and winning the 1987 National League Cy Young Award and making the All-Star team on the strength of a 5-3, 40 save, 150 Adjusted ERA season. No doubt, the big guy (6-3, 200 pounds) from Methuen, Mass., could pitch. And here he was, going to the Giants for a back of the rotation starter with a funny delivery and a 3-8 career record and an ERA well over 4 (thats Mulholland), another lefty with a funny delivery who had only pitched in six games in the majors (that was Cook actually, he and Mulholland were both pretty good at hiding the ball during their deliveries), and a third baseman with 10 games experience in the majors. Well, as sometimes happens in baseball, there was more to this deal than met the eye. First of all was the trifling matter that the Phillies just had the Greatest Third Baseman in History retire three weeks before this deal. Hence, with no Mike Schmidt after 17 years, they needed a third baseman in the worst way. (Maybe thats what they got, but, were not interested in Hayes.) Second, the Phillies clearly werent going anywhere Bedrosian only had six saves up until June 18, because there werent many games to save and they needed to try and build up their rotation
so how much was a first rate closer going to help them, anyway? | |
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