Milwaukee Brewers Blog - Between the Green Pillars : Eric Gagne

How should Eric Gagne be used?

Ryan Topp — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:50:00 GMT

Eric Gagne is on his way back to the Brewers, ready or not. Since going on the disabled list over a month ago, Salomon Torres has firmly grasped the 9th inning role and manager Ned Yost has said that Gagne will not be getting it back upon his return. Which leaves the question: what will Gagne's role be with the team when he returns?

Gagne's rough start to the season, where he blew 5 of 15 save opportunities and racked up a 6.98 ERA, coupled with his disastrous second half with Boston last year, has a lot of people convinced that he is without value. There may come a time when the Brewers best move would be to just treat his 10 million dollar salary for this year a "sunk cost" and just part ways with him. I don't think it's time to go that route just yet, though.

Last year at this time, Gagne was having a successful, comeback season as closer for the Texas Rangers. Then he went to the Red Sox, and in about two weeks he had managed to work himself out of having the opportunity to pitch in close games. That lasting impression caused many to pan the Brewers acquisition of him in the offseason. The fact that he is less than a year removed from being a reliable option coupled with the fact that he is only 32 years old makes it reasonable to hope there is something left in the tank. His rehab starts at AAA Nashville were a mixed bag, the first solid and the second pretty bad.

It is reasonable to assume that something like his second appearance in AAA is still in the cards as a possible outcome in the majors at this point, which means he will have to be used carefully. That brings us back to the question of how the Yost should use him. Gagne's performance to this point of the season pretty much demands that if he is going to be brought back, that he be used only in non-critical game situations, at least until he proves that he has turned a corner. Sure, there might come a time when Yost is forced to use him in a key situation in the event that the rest of the bullpen is unavailable, an extra inning game for instance. In that event, Yost will have to bite the bullet and give him a shot.

If Gagne cannot establish himself as a semi-reliable option within a few weeks, then the team will need to just eat the remainder of the contract and bid Gagne farewell. Given the commitment they have made to him financially, it is in their best interest to see if they can't get some value out of him.

The One That Got Away

Ryan Topp — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:58:00 GMT

I know that I'm posting quite a bit on the bullpen lately, but that has been the major issue with the Brewers so far and so that's what there is to talk about. Many of the moves that General Manager Doug Melvin made shore up the bullpen in the off-season have had success, albeit of varying degrees. Salomon Torres has been very good and both Guillermo Mota and David Riske have been mostly successful with a few rough outings that inflate their numbers a bit. The Eric Gagne signing has, however, been a fairly unmitigated disaster to this point. There has been a lot of talk and analysis of the fact that the Brewers let Fransisco Cordero take the larger offer from the Reds, but not as much talk about the other options the Brewers had besides those two.

The other veteran closer on the market last winter who had fallen on harder times recently was Troy Percival. At the time he signed with the Rays, there was talk that he was down to Milwaukee and Tampa Bay in his decision making process. Percival is doing in very well in Tampa Bay. So far in 16 innings this year, Percival has a 2.25 ERA, a .563 WHIP, a 15/2 K/BB ratio. Sure, two of his seven hits allowed were round trippers, but he's saved 10 of 12 opportunities and worked 12 totally clean innings in 16 tries. Compare that to Gagne who in 18 2/3 innings has a 6.27 ERA, a 1.875 WHIP, a 18/14 K/BB ratio. He's converted 9 of 14 save opportunities and has only 6 clean innings worked in that whole time.

What's worse is that Percival signed a 2 year contract for 8 million dollars with a possible 4 million in incentives. Sure, the fact that Gagne is only signed for a year is great, but it's for more than the 8 million that has to be paid to Percival. If he winds up pitching well for the Rays this year, they will get him at a relative discount for next year and still pay only a little more for two years than the Brewers paid Gagne to struggle this year.

It may be that Percival just wanted to go to Tampa Bay and the Brewers were a second option that he never seriously considered. Still, at this point it looks like Melvin should have rolled out the red carpet and made an offer that Percival couldn't refuse to try to lure him to Milwaukee. Assuming they still would have signed Riske and made the trades for Torres and Mota, it's hard to argue that they wouldn't have a signifigantly better bullpen this year with Percival than with Gagne.

Closer by Committee

Ryan Topp — Mon, 12 May 2008 04:29:25 GMT

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.

What's in Store for Gagne?

Ryan Topp — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:13:00 GMT

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.

Gagne not throwing the changeup enough

Ryan Topp — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 08:00:35 GMT

Back when the Brewers signed Eric Gagne last December, Keith Law who writes for Scouts Inc on ESPN.com noted the following about his time in Boston:

...There wasn't anything wrong with his stuff: his four-seamer was mostly 92-94 mph and his "Vulcan" changeup was still an outpitch, 82-85 mph, with tumble and fade.

The problem was pitch selection: He barely used the change, throwing mostly fastballs, even in obvious changeup counts (e.g., 1-2 to a left-handed hitter). Because his fastball is straight, hitters can time it if they know it's coming. The responsibility for pitch selection can fall on the pitcher or the catcher, depending on the team. But at some point, Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek or pitching coach John Farrell should have altered the pitching plan, or Gagne himself should have started shaking Varitek off when Varitek leaned too heavily on the fastball. None of this happened, and the results were predictably bad...

Law was at the Brewers game on Thursday and along with some interesting observations on Manny Parra and Alcides Escobar (which you'll have to pay to read, sorry) Law updated his scouting report on Gagne, and it doesn't sound good:

• Eric Gagne threw in yesterday's game and continued a disturbing trend that started when he went to Boston last summer. Gagne faced four hitters, and went to two strikes on three of them. He threw two fastballs and one curve, but did not go to his changeup, his out-pitch during his dominant years with the Dodgers. His refusal to use that pitch in obvious changeup counts causes two problems. One, hitters can sit on his fastball, which he throws at least 80 percent of the time, and which has little movement. Two, it's a sign that he doesn't trust his change, which no longer has the great tumbling action it had when he was in L.A.; it's an above-average pitch, but he's not going to miss many bats with it. The Brewers are looking to Gagne to be their closer, but his stuff isn't going to produce the strikeout totals and quick innings most teams expect from that role.

Law's take on the Gagne's changeup seems to have darkened a little and with it, the overall outlook has taken a hit. We can hope that Gagne just isn't using the change much, and there have been reports this spring that he is one to work on pitches in spring and doesn't use his whole arsenal. But this makes it sound like he simply doesn't have a strikeout pitch anymore. If that is true, he probably will struggle at times in the closers spot.

There are no shortage of potential candidates for the job, including Derrick Turnbow, David Riskie, Salomon Torres, Guillermo Mota or maybe even Luis Pena or Seth McClung before the year is out. But all of those choices come with big question marks and Gagne has the longest track record of success in that role. If Gagne does need to be removed, it certainly will lead to plenty of criticism of the 1 year, 10 million dollar deal he signed this offseason.