On Tuesday night during the 9th inning, I was all set to write an entry here talking about how Gagne was mixing his pitches, using his breaking and off-speed stuff effectively (though he was getting help from blue, but more on that later) and not over relying on the fastball. I was even starting to chart the pitches off of the MLB.com Gamecenter to make the point. Then, of course, he grooved a fastball to Corey Patterson and he got just enough on the ball to get it into the picnic area in right field. So that was out.
It came out today that Gagne actually shook off Kendall to throw that fastball, when Kendall had called a change. According to Gagne, this was a mistake:
"He called a changeup and I shook him off, so that's going to teach me a little bit," Gagne said. "It's one of those things where you think you know everything in baseball, but you learn something new every day.
So we can hope that he'll learn from this and trust Kendall more. That would certainly help him, but will that be enough?
Home Plate umpire Laz Diaz had a very bad night calling balls and strikes on Tuesday. He was all over the place and extremely inconsistent. He called several very off-the-plate pitches as strikes that I cannot imagine Gagne getting on a consistent basis, especially on the road. On many nights, he would have found himself in serious trouble throwing the balls where he was.
So while last nights particular issue may have been Gagne's lack of trust in his catchers pitch call, there is a deeper control issue that bodes poorly for Gagne having enough success getting outs to stay in his closer role.