Uninspiring

When was the last time we had a closer this uninspiring? A huge, 6'6", 250+ lbs. guy with glasses staring down batters in the ninth inning who's able to intimidate the heck out of other grown men. For about 5 seconds, which is the amount of time before he throws his first warm-up pitch and they realize he throws like a girl.

Sorry, that was rude. No self-respecting girl playing professional baseball would go about their business walking more than a batter every two innings. No self-respecting baseball player, PERIOD, goes and shows up his manager on the mound after getting pulled for walking THREE BALTIMORE ORIOLES in less than an inning. Kevin Gregg. He of the triple-G, double-B, full-of-suck, needs-to-be-traded... thing. He does that. And that's only half of why he's the least inspiring closer I can remember.

Giving BJ Ryan $47MM was moronic. It was, by far, JP Ricciardi's stupidest move. Even if he had stayed healthy all five years, stayed as unsustainably dominant for all five years, he would have pitched 350 innings at most. And although we knew he'd never stay that good and would quickly turn into the waste of money that he was, he at least got people excited for a time, what with his stupid-looking delivery and sometimes-unhittable sliders. Downs after him was a trustable closer because of his groundball tendencies and good walk-rates. Heck, Frasor had that split-fingered changeup going for a while, and even Accardo and Miguel Batista had pretty dirty splitters that could be counted on once in a while.

Gregg? Well, pretty much the only thing you can say about him is he should have a decent chance of getting a double play every time he toes the rubber. Because he's always walking people or leaving hittable pitches up in the zone that even bad hitters will jump all over for singles. And what's his out pitch? It seems like he can't even decide how he wants to get guys out, let alone hit his spots once he's made his pitch selection. He throws (at least) a cutter, 4-seamer, 2-seamer, a curveball, a splitter, and a slider. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a ball with changeup velocity + movement, so I'm not sure if he's thrown that this year, but still: 6 different pitches, all of which he can't consistently throw for strikes or rely on to fool batters to strike them out.

At least he ended the game quickly enough tonight, even if it was by letting the lowly KC Royals whack him around for 3 hits and have a guy on first distract him into a 4-pitch walk.