May 19, 2005
Out in the Kolb
Danny Kolb is no longer the closer for the Atlanta Braves.
“We’re going to put Kolb in the middle somewhere for a while and let him work on some stuff,” Cox said before the Braves’ game against San Diego. “We’ll do the closing by matchups and whoever’s rested and things like that.”
Smoltz goes into the rotation, pitches great, but has just a 3-3 record because:
- His run support is bad.
- The bullpen has pitched poorly, posting a 6.53 ERA in Smoltz's starts. Kolb has blown two saves in games Smoltz pitched and has allowed 6 ER in 3 1/3 innings in those games.
Kolb has walked more than he's struck out, and he's not striking out that many. He's never been a strikeout pitcher, but he's already walked more than he did all last year. He's pitching more like he did in Texas than he did in Milwaukee. According to this article, he's not listening to Mazzone.
Kolb hasn't yet come around to the Mazzone mantra - work off the fastball and change speeds. The fastball is fine, but the rest is still a work in progress.
Mazzone has taken some tentative steps toward developing an off-speed pitch that Kolb will be comfortable throwing. The longtime pitching coach has no complaints about Kolb's 90-plus mph fastball, mixed in with the occasional slider.
My question is, why isn't what worked for him last year not working for him this year? Is this a case of a pitching coach trying to mold a pitcher to the coaches style, when what the pitcher throws works just fine? If any Braves fans have information on this, I'd love to hear it.
Posted by David Pinto at
07:45 AM
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I may be wrong, and I'm too lazy to check the numbers, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that Kolb's success last year was at least somewhat the result of luck--that he allowed a lot of balls in play. Didn't strike people out. Should have had a higher ERA.
Ok, fine, I'll look at some numbers. Looks like he struck out 21 last year in 57.1 innings. Not really what you want from a closer. He walked 15, which, as you point out, he already has surpassed this year. He gave up 3 home runs last year, which is good, but only 1 so far this year, so that's not the problem. No unearned runs so far this year. He had 50 hits last year in 57.1 innings, and this year it's 18 in 16.2 innnigs.
Oh, here's something. Looks like his G/F ratio is down from 3.49 last year (highest of his career, by far), down to 1.87 (lowest of his career.) His career average is 2.96.
So, he's giving up flyballs (but, strangely, not home runs), walking a lot more people, and still not striking that many out. (I'm still too lazy to figure out BABIP).
I agree. Pitchers who do not strike batters out are bound to get into trouble. As you said, it's the law of averages.
He himself said a week or ten days ago that last year he was putting his fastball right where he wanted to, and this year he can't locate it at all...
I wonder if the GB/FB is trying to tell us that he's striking out the "wrong" guys as a consequence-- K-ing the highball swingers and losing DP and FC at the bottom of the zone, turning them into FO and SFs...
