So You Have A Closer Who Cannot Close

It should have been all but a given on Sunday, April 11. The Twins had taken a commanding 6-0 lead over the docile Mariners after Byron Buxton annihilated his fifth homer of the season. Matt Shoemaker was dealing, the bats were electric, Max Kepler was doing Hot Girl ****, and the mood was nothing short of a college house party; the kind of which actually could exist before the pandemic. But, well, you all know how this story went. The Mariners slowly clawed back and before anyone could finish their Surly, eight unanswered runs were on the board.

There is never a singular culprit when it comes to such an implosion. The offense had suddenly lost any ability to score in the later innings for yet another uncomfortable time. Shoemaker decided that hanging off-speed pitches might be a good idea against major league hitters (friends, it is not) and gave up four runs almost as quickly as I could make my sandwich that afternoon (the sandwich was pretty good). Perhaps his sins would have been more remembered if he was not immediately tossed from the game. I’m sure the umpire forced him to throw such terrible sliders.

But no one player was the target of outrage more than Alex Colomé. The closer blew yet another lead by giving up the game-deciding three-run-homer to Kyle Seager. People were furious. Rightfully so, I suppose. The team had paid a not-insignificant amount of money for the righty with the idea that he would be capable of consistently netting late-inning outs; 6 ⅓ innings later and some Twins fans would rather see Kevin Jepsen or Matt Capps on the mound in the ninth inning. In his first few outings as a Twin, Colomé has given up four earned runs with three more unearned runs tacked on top of that total. Considering that those unearned runs came following an error by the man himself, it’s fair to say that Colomé has been personally responsible for an astonishing seven runs over just six-and-a-third innings pitched. Not good.

Closers have failed before. Even the great Mariano Rivera blew over 40 regular season games over the course of his career. The act of bungling the end of the game is baked into the very nature and existence of the reliever role. The problem lies in how a team deals with someone in the middle of one of these cold streaks. The team must accept that the player is not up to his normal standards while still sending him out to play in his original role. Why? Because the only way for a struggling reliever to get out of one these funks is to unquestionably prove that he is still capable of performing at the most stressful level. Getting outs in the sixth inning of a blowout does not help. Nailing down a close game in the ninth does.

There is more to the issue than just this, however. What if the reliever continues to fail? No team would keep sending out a struggling arm long after he has conclusively shown a lack of closing ability. That would be, quite literally, the definition of insanity. This is especially true on a team like the Twins that already possesses other relievers who are capable of filling the role of closer.

There is no solid answer to this problem. Pitching is too abstract to set performance benchmarks one way or the other. Colomé is well on his way to losing his role but such a move should not be made anytime soon. His position as a late inning arm should be relinquished in favor of innings going towards a tandem of Taylor Rogers and Hansel Robles only if he continues to fail over a longer sample. If it has been adequately determined that Colomé can no longer net crucial late-inning outs, his role should look more like that of Cody Stashak-a useful bridge-type of arm who only pitches late in the game when all other options have been exhausted.

I do think, knowing how the Twins have reacted to previous relievers such as Fernando Rodney and Blake Parker, that it will be a while until this happens. The team showed a great deal of patience with both arms as they faced similar trials as Colomé. That places any timeline regarding a change in use for the all-star in late May or June with any earlier movement coming only when his struggles go nuclear. Some may think that we are already at that place but that simply is not true. Just four relievers have thrown 10 or more innings. The sample is entirely too small.

Colomé did somewhat get back on the horse the other day. He punched out a pair of batters in a scoreless inning of work but a ringing double off the bat of Christian Arroyo showed that he still had work to do. Patience will be the key word for the Twins. If they opt to react quickly and move Colomé out of a late-inning role, they will only be limiting the potential relief options they have for such an occasion. Such a show of no-confidence would also only disenfranchise the reliever who otherwise holds a strong track record of performance.

Letting Colomé work through his struggles, as brutal as they may be, could potentially allow him to figure it out again and aid the team in the future as they try to win yet another division title. At the end of the day, the team needs to find out without any doubt whether or not Alex Colomé can continue to be an elite high-leverage arm and that will only come with sticking by his side through the mess.

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