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| David Robertson |
The Sox won, 2-0, on Tuesday as Miguel Gonzalez came off the disabled list to fire 6.1 innings of shutout ball. Jose Abreu backed him with his 23rd home run of the season.
A fourth-run eighth inning Wednesday lifted the Sox to a come-from-behind 7-4 win. The Sox trailed, 4-3, entering the inning. Abreu singled and scored the tying run on a double by Justin Morneau. Avisail Garcia delivered a go-ahead RBI single, and Tyler Saladino and Adam Eaton tacked on RBI hits.
But here's what I didn't like about this series: Closer David Robertson pitched four straight days.
What is the point of that?
This is September. The rosters are expanded. There are plenty of other relievers available. The Sox are out of the pennant race. While Robertson is one of the few reliable relievers the Sox have, there's no reason to be pushing him this hard in relatively meaningless games.
Robertson blew a save Sunday in an extra-inning win over the Minnesota Twins. He pitched a 1-2-3 10th inning in Monday's loss to the Tigers. And he picked up his 34th and 35th saves of the season in games Tuesday and Wednesday, although he was shaky in both outings.
Knowing that Robertson has two years and $25 million remaining on his contract, I would not be doing anything that puts extra wear and tear on his arm. If the Sox were pushing for a playoff spot, you could justify the workload. However, that's just not the case here.
The Sox need to protect their assets and make sure they have a healthy Robertson going into the offseason.
This overuse is yet another reason the Sox need to move on from manager Robin Ventura. He just doesn't seem to have a feel for what is going on.
A valid question that no reporter from the 3 major papers mentioned in their articles.
ReplyDeleteThe bigger question is why Robertson is still on the team. An organization with its finger on the pulse would have moved this guy when there was a market and ate 7 or 8 million. Even the lowly Padres had the sense to move Kimbrel - they only got 4 B/B- prospects but it was the right thing to do. And they knew when to cut bait on Shields as well.
Kenny Williams is veteran-happy even though Melky is the only one he acquired in the last 5 years that didn't wind up being a bad overpay. I consider Kenny to be pulling the strings on MLB acquisitions and trades - Hahn (and most GM's nowadays in the "VP Of Baseball Ops" era) is merely doing the grunt work and running media interference. I call him Kenny Pulford for the obvious similarities in m.o. and results.
Unfortunately, the Sox beat writers don't often ask the tough questions that fans want answered.
ReplyDelete