More Blown Saves

The season-long trend of blown saves continued Thursday night as there were five in twelve games finished as of this writing (The Angels/Mariners and Giants/Padres games are still going as these words are typed). That means saves were blown in 42% of the games in the books for the night. Four of those teams lost games they were winning, meaning that 33% of the games featured a team that was winning and lost the game.

For the record, the blown saves occurred for:

• Kansas City - They lost because of the bullpen in a Greinke start and that lucky son-of-a-gun, Pavano, won again.
• Tampa Bay - But they still won because Oakland's bullpen was bad too.
• Pittsburgh - A blown save cost them the game.
• Florida - Another loss that should have been a win.
• Houston - Oswalt was a wizard stranding runners all night. His manager fixed that by bringing in a reliever to make sure those runs scored late in the game. Remember that Houston is faring less than 50% in save opportunities.

Some notes about the above:

In Tampa Bay, this is going to be a problem unless they can find an answer. The Fan has watched Wheeler pitch on several occasions and the guy has nothing. His fastball is straight as an arrow (just like Farnsworth's) and any success he's had has been a fluke. Meanwhile, the Percival experience has to end. The guy has the heart of a lion, but the arm of T-Rex. He gave up three more runs tonight.

Trey Hillman either has the worst luck in picking his relievers or he is just really bad at it. Greinke was sailing along and the Royals were winning, 3-2. Greinke had give up eight hits in his six innings, but he still struck out eight. Hillman brings in Horatio Ramirez, who entered the game with his ERA already sitting at 5.74. He had, to the point of this appearance, already given up 26 base runners in 15+ innings. Oh! But he's a lefty and it was a matchup thing. Well, it didn't work out. Two runs scored and the game ended up an 8-3 rout.

In the Pittsburgh game, Snell had given the Pirates a decent game and left after six innings with the score in the Pirates' favor, 4-3. The Pirates bring in Tom (ScoresAMany) Gorzalanny, who promptly gave the game away. The pitcher, who had a decent 2007, was bloody awful in 2008 and had only pitched 1.2 innings since he was called up from the minors. You're going to give a guy like that the ball in a big situation? Man.

The bullpen situation this year has been amazing. There are going to be a lot of starting pitchers who start 33 games only to have 20 decisions or less. It's been a bloodbath all over the league. One of the reasons that the Yankees and the Brewers have been on a roll is that their bullpens settled down. The entire league has to figure out how to do that same thing.

P. S. The Giants closed out the night with another blown save.