It appears that once again, our bullpen is a major weakness on this team. We have definitely seen improved starting pitching this year (which was another weakness last season), and the bats are starting to wake up a bit....but we can't hold a lead.
Last year, we had 28 save opportunities blown (according to the official team page). This year, we've already had five blown opportunities - in only 21 games. Basically an eighth of the way through this season, we're on pace to blow 40 saves. Ouch.
A lot of this problem has been attributed to the injury of our new closer Octavio Dotel. After showing pretty good stuff in Surprise, Dotel was injured and placed on the DL at the beginning of the regular season, and has yet to see any game time in 2007. Another major blow to the pen came with the injury of John Bale, a lefty setup man.
Some good news/bad news - First the good: We finally have a timetable on the return of both pitchers. Now the bad.........it's not until mid-May. Hopefully the starting pitching can keep doing their job for another month, getting the team into the sixth and seventh innings of most games and not making this team rely on it's shaky pen as much. Once these two return, it could help the rest of the guys a lot, as they will all fall back into places they are probably more comfortable with....which will hopefully translate into a better late inning look for our pitching staff the rest of the way in '07.
Other than that....looking forward to seeing Greinke go today, hoping he shows the ability to bounce back after one horrible start and one so-so start....he needs to show that kind of resiliency at the big league level before he can take the next step to becoming a top of the rotation guy.
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