Blake Murphy Sports Writing

Title: The Perils of Captain Hook
Date: May 3, 2007
Original Source: The On Deck Circle
Synopsis: I was not a fan of Toronto Blue Jays’ Manager John Gibbons. Looking back, criticizing a manager for his handling of Josh Towers and Victor Zambrano seems unfair, and this clearly should have been aimed at the General Manager.

Like I’ve been saying for a few years now, John Gibbons is an idiot.

While I don’t mind him, overall, as a manager, he has consistently shown he has a distinct inability to manage a pitching staff. Whether it be his well earned nickname “Captain Hook,” the displeasure of members of his pitching staff (Ted Lilly, Scott Schoenweis), the poor development of young arms in-season (Shaun Marcum, Jason Frasor), or his extremely questionable decision making, Gibbons has shown that a career as a journeyman back catcher does not make you a haven of pitching knowledge.

I’m not going to go into detail about all of these issues (there is a Jays interim review coming soon from me), I will focus on one recent decision that has me stumped: Pulling Josh Towers out of the rotation in favor of Victor Zambrano. I wanted to write this piece before the move went into effect (last night) so as to not have it biased by the actual results, but alas, moving back home and settling in has been more time consuming than I originally envisioned. Nonetheless, here is my breakdown of the move.

Like I’ve been saying for a few years now, John Gibbons is an idiot.After Josh Towers was roughed up for five earned runs over four and two thirds innings on April 27 against the Texas Rangers, John Gibbons announced his intention to insert Victor Zambrano into the rotation in the place of Towers, moving Towers to the bullpen. I immediately disagreed with the move for three reasons: Josh Towers has a confidence problem already, Zambrano is a better bullpen option, and statistics.

When a pitcher with a notorious confidence problem has one bad outing, giving him the hook from the rotation is probably not the best idea to improve future performance. Towers started the season off with two great outings (including a 7.2 inning, 1 unearned run performance against the strong hitting Tigers), had one mediocre outing, and was then yanked after his first poor outing. Towers struggled last season to deal with his two demotions to Triple-A Syracuse, and admitted this offseason that it crushed his spirits and confidence. In spring training this year, Towers performed well but consistently hinted at his worries of a short leash this season. If you’ve ever seen the movie Mr. 3000, the Japanese pitcher tells Stan Ross (Bernie Mac), “I’ve had a few bad outings in a row, and if I don’t pull my head out my ass, they will give me the shoe,” citing this as the reason for his recent poor performance, and I think Towers has a similar mentality (albeit, with better English). Towers’ troubles have always been that he lets mistakes pile on; he usually starts games strong but has one horrid inning in his poor starts. Just one. Clearly, Towers’ main issue is with settling down after a mistake and taking his outing pitch-to-pitch, he needs to focus on his next pitch rather than his last mistake. Giving Towers the hook just four starts into the season when he hasn’t even performed poorly to this point has to have shaken his confidence even more, and possibly limited his starting potential for the rest of the season.

Additionally, Victor Zambrano is much better suited for the bullpen. I cannot fathom the logic behind yanking a starter with a 110 pitch limit for one with a 65 pitch limit. If you don’t expect Victor to be able to go past the 4th or 5th inning, the logical move is to leave him in the long relief role a little longer and build up his arm strength in bullpen sessions and simulated games. In the mean time, Towers would have the chance to shake off his one poor start and right the ship, something he did very well in the 2005 season (although, he was given a chance in 2005). On top of this logic, Towers has almost no bullpen experience, and Victor is a journeyman with a wealth of bullpen experience in a variety of roles. Towers had 15 career relief appearances to Big Z’s 84. Towers is exclusively comfortable as a starter while Zambrano is happy in any role. Towers’ confidence could be easily shaken by the move, Zambrano could use more time to build up arm strength. From the perspective of roles and ability right now, the move made no sense. If Gibbons was that worried about Towers, the logical move was to keep him on a short leash during his starts and have Zambrano prepared to throw the four or five innings he would if he started out of the bullpen in relief.

Statistically, Josh Towers was not even struggling. At the time of the move, Towers was 1-3 with a 4.70 ERA in 23 innings while Zambrano was 0-0 with a 5.06 ERA through 5.1 innings. Towers was pitching better (although Zambrano does have only a small sample to draw from) using the traditional measures of pitcher success. On top of this, Towers was performing well on some non-standard statistics. Through four starts, Towers had struck out 21 while walking just four, for the best strikeout to walk ratio on the team, even better than The Doc. K-BB ratio is traditionally a strong indicator of how well a pitcher is commanding the strike zone. While he had given up four home runs in four starts, he was still giving up more ground balls than fly balls (and as many strikeouts as fly outs, too). My point here isn’t that Zambrano can’t start, it’s that Towers wasn’t performing poorly enough to warrant the hook.

So let’s take a look at what we have: Towers isn’t performing poorly, Zambrano’s arm isn’t ready for a starter’s workload, and both pitchers only have to lose from the move.

Like I’ve been saying for a few years now, John Gibbons is an idiot.