What do the Tigers have to gain by sticking with embattled closer Joe Nathan? Dunno. There's a comments section. We were kind of hoping you'd help us on this one.
The Detroit Tigers are a good, flawed team. Good because their 25-man roster is peppered with some of the best talent in baseball; flawed because their bullpen is bathtub toast. Joba Chamberlain has been excellent, but the rest of the bullpen has been a drag, especially closer Joe Nathan. To remedy this problem, the Tigers traded for closer Joakim Soria. With that, the Tigers fixed one of the more obvious problems in baseball.
Except that Nathan is still the closer.
Nathan will remain closer, Dave Dombrowski confirms in email.
— Jason Beck (@beckjason) July 24, 2014
There is value in continuity. There is value in showing a clubhouse -- and possible future members of the team -- that loyalty and second chances exist with the organization. There is value in being patient and waiting for previously great players to be great again. None of this explains Nathan. This is a bizarre show of faith.
The evidence against Nathan is strong. His velocity is down from where it was two years ago. His fastball had the same start-slow/finish-strong dynamic that it did last year:
via FanGraphs
The game-to-game trajectory is trending up, same as last year, but that's not automatically a good sign. The American League has had a year to adjust to a slower fastball and slider from Nathan, and they've done it. Batters are swinging at fewer pitches out of the strike zone. They're swinging at fewer pitches in general. When Nathan is in the strike zone, more batters are making a lot more contact than they have over the last three years. To adjust, Nathan is throwing fewer pitches in the strike zone and his walk rate would be the highest since becoming a full-time reliever in 2003.
One last important piece of evidence that things won't get better: He's 39.
The only piece of evidence that suggests he can pitch well again? Well, he's done it before. This is the same evidence a team can use to justify a Joba Chamberlain signing. It can also be evidence in support of a Rob Dibble signing. At some point on the Chamberlain/Dibble spectrum, you have to assume that past history is not necessarily predictive of future success. Nathan is closer to Dibble's age than Chamberlain's, so expecting him to pull out a victory against age in extra innings is unrealistic. Age is 10,393-0 in extra innings since baseball started in the 1800s.
Three scenarios:
Scenario #1
Nathan is moved out of the closer's role. He's brought in for lower-leverage situations until it's clear that he can be trusted again.
Scenario #2
Nathan continues to be dreadful, reaching a point where everyone in the clubhouse -- including Nathan -- would make the switch to Soria.
Scenario #3
Nathan is his old self again, and the Tigers are three bullpen aces deep.
A possible problem with the first scenario is that Nathan checks out mentally and/or the veterans in the clubhouse get upset about the treatment of a perennial All-Star. It's hard to imagine Nathan acting like a pouting 22-year-old in that situation, just as it's unlikely for the clubhouse leaders not to understand the rationale of the move. They've had to watch the games, too.
A possible problem with the second scenario is for the Tigers to cough up games that they might need at some point, if not for the division then for an extra game or at Comerica Park in October.
There are no problems with the third scenario! It's just exceedingly unlikely to happen.
Nathan's been written off before. As a young starting pitcher with the Giants, he shredded his shoulder. When he came back, here's what he did in Triple-A:
| Year | Age | Lev | ERA | G | GS | IP | H | HR | BB | SO |
| 2001 | 26 | AA-AAA | 7.29 | 31 | 17 | 108.2 | 136 | 24 | 70 | 54 |
| 2002 | 27 | AAA | 5.60 | 31 | 25 | 146.1 | 167 | 20 | 74 | 117 |
That's a player who gets removed from the 40-man, if he's lucky. Usually, that player is on the open market, hoping for a chance to play overseas. Nathan was a remember-that-guy anecdote you were going to share with your buddies in 2014. Instead he's on the fringes of the Hall of Fame, ranking eighth all-time in saves even though he wasn't a full-time closer until he was 29. Money would have been lost betting against Nathan, and lots of it.
The only good news with the arrangement is that Soria gets to be a fireman of old, pitching when the Tigers need him, facing the best hitters in the desperate situations instead of facing 7-8-9 in the ninth inning because of the "closers pitcher the ninth" tautology. The Tigers are playing a dangerous game, though. Nathan costing the team one, two, three, or more wins could still be a huge deal, even if the Tigers are acting like it isn't.
The worst-case scenario might be Nathan pitching just well enough to keep his job before he gets to the postseason, his arm heavier with 65 more innings than he started the season with. The Tigers have boxed themselves into a commitment to use Nathan as long as he isn't throwing glass vases in the garbage disposal. Nothing about this makes sense, and almost every possible road is fraught with peril. And dingers. And losses.
Unless Nathan returns to the form he had last year. that is. Good luck, Tigers. Almost every piece of evidence suggests you'll need it.
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