What do you do with a problem like Nolasco?
The Twins once again saw a comeback fall short. It seems like we've had a lot of that lately. On the one hand, it's a lot better than just rolling over and losing. It shows some spirit, and some fight, that we haven't seen in recent years, and that's a good thing. On the other hand, it still counts as a loss in the standings, and we've seen far too much of that in recent years.
When Nolasco was pulled after only two innings, I wondered if that was an indication that the Twins were losing patience with him. In the past, he's been give the chance to regroup after a rough start, although the start to this game was rougher than the others he's had. Gardy's post-game comments indicate a loss of patience with Nolasco as well.
It's a tough problem, really. I look at Nolasco's record, and I'm sure the Twins do as well, and I see a pitcher who for a few years now has been a solid major league pitcher. Not a superstar, not an ace, but a good pitcher. But then I look at this year, and I see a guy who's been one of the worst pitchers in the league. He leads the league in hits allowed an in earned runs allowed. He has an ERA of 5.90 and a WHIP of 1.62. To put it bluntly, he's been terrible. And the season's more than half over, so it's hard to call it a small sample size fluke any more.
The first thought, when you see a guy who was good and then suddenly isn't, is that he's playing through an injury. If he is, he's either hiding it from the Twins or the Twins promised not to say anything, because no one has given any indication of an injury. If Nolasco is hiding an injury, he needs to stop it right now, because he's not doing himself or the ball club any good by pitching through it.
If he's healthy, it becomes a trickier problem. Do you keep running him out there every fifth day in the hope that he'll become the pitcher he was? The problem with that, of course, is that he's not showing signs of getting better. Yesterday excepted, he has, as we've said before, made a series of "almost good" starts which would seem to indicate that he's not that far away. But he doesn't seem to be getting any closer. If he's going to pitch the way he has been, giving up two runs for every three innings he pitches, you're basically throwing every fifth game away by running him out there.
Do you send him to the bullpen? There are a couple of problems with that, too. One is that, barring a trade, you're going to be paying him for three and a half more years. You're paying him to be a starting pitcher, so you'd like to see him starting. Also, he's never been a reliever, and it's not necessarily an easy transition to make. Plus, it's not like the Twins have a lot of guys to choose from to replace him. On the current big league roster it's pretty much Swarzak, who the Twins have shown no inclination to take out of his long relief spot, or Deduno and His Magical Zoomball. Deduno might not be any worse than Nolasco at this point, but it's hard to see him being a lot better, either. They have some guys doing well in Rochester, but Trevor May is injured, they appear to think Alex Meyer isn't ready yet*, and Kris Johnson is thirty and so not really a long-term solution.
*I'm not indicating disagreement with that thought.
Do you just take him out of the rotation temporarily, have him miss a couple of starts in the hope that he'll get straightened out? That seems like the most likely possibility. With the all-star break coming up, he could take a few weeks out of the rotation and only miss two or three starts. The problem with that, of course, is that there's no guarantee that it will help. Unless you have some idea as to what the problem is, it's hard to see how going to the sidelines is going to fix it. Maybe it will, but unless there's a plan for what he needs to work on, this seems more like a hope than a strategy.
That's the problem, really. I don't hear anything from Gardy, from Rick Anderson, or from Nolasco himself, that would indicate that any of them know what the problem with Nolasco actually is. I don't claim to know what it is, either, but it's not my job to figure out what it is. It is the job of the people mentioned above to figure it out. I hope they will. There has to be a reason Nolasco went from what he was to what he is. It would be really helpful if that reason could be found.
In the mean time, the games continue. The Twins now go out west, to Seattle, where the games start about when I'm getting ready for bed. Kevin Correia, who did get himself straightened out after a poor start, goes for the Twins. It's time to start that season-ending seventy-five-game winning streak! We'll just have to settle for 114-48!