Much had been made of Eric Gagne being deposed as "closer" for the Milwaukee Brewers, at least temporarily. He is out because he simply couldn't string together 3 outs consistently enough without allowing runs to score. There are some reasons to think that he might be able to be better at doing that than he is at the moment, but we'll save that for another discussion.

What we are left with at the moment is the dreaded Closer By Committee. Manager Ned Yost called on Salomon Torres (whose  numbers aside from runs allowed are actually not that different from Gagne's) to pitch the 9th on Sunday. Yost had a backup plan ready, and when Torres allowed two of the first 4 batters he faced on, Yost called on lefty specialist Brain Shouse to get the last out. He did so, after allowing a predictable single to the last right hander on the St Louis bench.

Obviously, it isn't an ideal situation for a team to be left without a closer because the man expected to fill that role failed. Still, the idea of mixing and matching relievers to get the final outs of close games isn't as crazy as the adherents to the LaRussian bullpen would have us believe. Teams got along fine without designating a certain one pitcher to pitch the 9th inning with a lead of 3 or fewer runs for over a century.

The Brewers do have several useful bullpen arms to turn to in this crisis, and they should be able to convert leads at a reasonable rate. Eventually, though, the team is probably going to want to look for a proven "closer" to pitch the 9th if Gagne cannot resume his duties. Why? I'm not even really sure, other than to say I think they need to get another quality arm, one capable of dominating hitters fairly consistently because the current crop is useful, but not intimidating.

I would like to see the Brewers have someone capable of missing a lot of bats and not walking too many guys in the bullpen by mid summer, and I don't think that person is really out there yet.