[nfbwatlk] Mariners bullish on Putz for good reason

[Mike Freeman]

Mariners bullish on Putz for good reason
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/306337_miller07.html

Mariners bullish on Putz for good reason

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

By TED MILLER
P-I COLUMNIST

PEORIA, Ariz. -- How's that stock portfolio performing these days? Boy, 
that market volatility is a peach, eh?

But wonder if, even during these uncertain times, there was a sure-thing 
investment. Would that be of interest to you?

It's a Mariners 1999 draft pick who efficiently worked his way through 
the farm system (stop wrinkling your nose with skepticism).

It's a closer.

It's J.J. Putz, who, with a brilliant 2006 season, earned a spot on a 
short list of first-flight, young closers that includes Minnesota's Joe 
Nathan, the
L.A. Angels' Francisco Rodriguez and Toronto's B.J. Ryan.

Not everyone is bullish, though. A's GM Billy Beane, who fancies himself 
the original contrarian investor when it comes to closers, is probably 
rolling
over in his smugness. He first introduced the "closers are like volatile 
stocks" analogy. In "Moneyball," writer Michael Lewis paraphrased 
Beane's belief:


"You could take a slightly above average pitcher, drop him in the 
closer's role, let him accumulate a gaudy number of saves, and then sell 
him off. You
could, in essence, buy a stock, pump it up with false publicity, and 
sell it off for much more than you'd paid for it."

Beane's theory would make the Mariners' decision to bypass arbitration 
this offseason and sign Putz to a three-year, $13.1 million contract 
with an $8.6
million club option in 2010 appear unsound. After all, Putz's 36 saves 
last season upped the 30-year-old's career total to 46.

Recent baseball history is full of closers who briefly flashed 
brilliance. For every Mariano Rivera or Trevor Hoffman, there are 10 
closers who flamed out
after spurts of success, either due to injuries (Eric Gagne) or cramping 
brains (Mark Wohlers).

Or sometimes, as Beane reasoned, closers go belly-up because they are 
mediocre pitchers asked to muddle through an overvalued inning, whose 
run of success
wasn't much different than a great weekend playing craps at The Palms.

"It's usually because their stuff isn't real good," Mariners manager 
Mike Hargrove volunteered on the topic of closer flops.

Coffee is for closers. And, frequently, they drink just a cup or two in 
the major leagues. Only 36 players have earned 200 or more career saves.

So why does Putz deserve a buy-and-hold rating?

He throws strikes; see a 104-to-13 strikeouts-to-walks ratio. As a 
bonus, those strikes often cross the plate at 94-to-97 mph or in the 
form of a what-the-fudge,
sinking split-finger pitch. His mechanics are good, so a rabbit's foot 
shouldn't be needed to ward away arm problems. He appears to forget 
adversity easily
and to genuinely enjoy the twisted-shorts stress of entering a game when 
his team is most in danger of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

He also pencils out well with sabermetricians. Nearly all his esoteric 
numbers from a year ago -- from measures of the number of line drives he 
surrenders,
to his ground-ball percentage, to his ERA compared to the league 
average, to his FIP (fielding independent pitching: an attempt to 
measure all elements
of pitching) -- range from good to fantastic.

ESPN The Magazine rated him 68th overall on its fantasy draft board --  
No. 2 behind Ichiro Suzuki among Mariners -- and No. 7 among all 
closers.

There is no reason to believe he can't consistently reproduce last 
year's numbers. Or perhaps even surpass them. Remember: He didn't take 
over for struggling
Eddie Guardado until May 6.

Unless, that is, you feel compelled to recall a cautionary tale like 
Wohlers, whose 100-plus mph fastball mowed down hitters and earned 97 
saves for the
Atlanta Braves from 1995-97, including a clinching Game 6 of the 1995 
World Series.

In the Fall Classic the following year, the Braves were about to go up 
3-1 versus the Yankees when Wohlers served up a three-run home run to 
Jim Leyritz
(all Braves fans just spit) that tied the score 6-6 in the eighth. The 
Braves lost the game, then the series. Wohlers' career, to borrow a line 
from Hemingway,
went bankrupt gradually then suddenly.

But Wohlers always seemed to possess a fragile brilliance. Putz appears 
to own two critical attributes many talented pitchers don't: 1) a short 
memory;
2) a hunger for pressure.

With Putz, there's no flourish. There's no complex thought process. He 
credits Guardado for teaching him that the good or bad of yesterday is 
of no consequence
today. He owns a focused calmness that blocks out the whirling, 
crippling emotions that most mortals would feel knowing that two cities 
with diametrically
opposed concerns are fretting over what you might do next.

"That's the fun part, playing in that pressure-packed environment," Putz 
said. "That's what this game is about. I do feed off it. I like the 
emotion of
it. I like the intensity of it in the stadium."

Of course, he's never pitched in the postseason, a fact that he can only 
do so much to change. The Mariners, after all, must hand him the ball 
and a lead
for him to earn his money. It's difficult to record 40-plus saves for a 
last-place team.

That's part of the problem with investing in Putz. It's not just that, 
as investors are frequently warned, his past performance is no guarantee 
of future
success. It's that his prospects are tied to a risky (in)security like 
the Mariners.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P-I columnist Ted Miller can be reached at 206-448-8017 or 
tedmiller at seattlepi.com.

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