Free Press Staff Writer
June 23, 2008 01:35 am
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The won-lost stat took a few readers of last weeks’ column by surprise: Kyle Lohse is 8-2.
Lohse? Kyle Lohse? The former Twin whose tenure in Minnesota is remembered more for the dents he put in a clubhouse door than for the quality of his pitching? The guy who seemed destined to become a baseball vagabond — waived by the Twins, sold by the Reds, allow to walk by the Phillies and signed by St. Louis in the middle of spring training? That Kyle Lohse?
Yes indeed. He won his ninth game Friday; only three pitchers in the National League have more wins this year.
Chalk up another successful pitcher-recycling project for Tony LaRussa and Dave Duncan, the manager and pitching coach respectively of the Cardinals. They’ve been together since 1983, and their uncanny ability to coax production out of pitchers deemed washed-up or failures has been a key to their longevity.
A partial list of such cases:
Floyd Bannister. The lefty had a career mark of 51-68 when LaRussa and Duncan added him to their White Sox rotation in 1983. He responded with a 16-10 record.
Dave Stewart. He had bounced around — Dodgers, Rangers, Phillies — but once LaRussa-Duncan got him, he blossomed. Four straight 20-win seasons and a 76-61 record with Oakland.
Mike Moore. An innings-eating stalwart for a really lousy Mariners franchise, he had a 66-96 record in seven years for Seattle. In four years with LaRussa-Duncan, he went 76-61. Then he went to the Tigers and went 29-34.
Storm Davis. His career opened strong with the Orioles in the early ’80s, but he was a mere 11-19 before landing with Oakland. He went 35-14 for LaRussa-Duncan in two seasons, went to Kansas City as a free agent and washed out.
Andy Benes. Another innings-eater on bad teams, he was 76-77 before landing with LaRussa-Duncan. With them, he went 28-17.
Chris Carpenter. Went 49-50 with Toronto; in St. Louis, 51-19.
Ron Darling. He fell on hard times with the Mets, going 26-31 in three season before landing with the A’s. First year with Oakland, 15-10.
There are more. Jeff Suppan. Jeff Weaver. LaMar Hoyt. All starters who had more success with LaRussa-Duncan than they did before or after.
Lohse fits into this pattern. Like all those others, he has a good arm. He’s been around. And he hasn’t been particularly successful.
So how do LaRussa and Duncan do it? How do they turn mediocre results into success?
The details probably differ with each pitcher. In the main, they preach the same things the Twins do: Two-seam fastballs. Throw strikes. Change speeds. Get ground balls.
There’s one thing I suspect LaRussa and Duncan demand more emphatically than the Twins do: Pitch inside. If you see “highlights” of a brushback war on SportsCenter, odds are the Cardinals will be one of the teams involved.
Lohse, in a USA Today article last week, implied that he was simply more willing to listen to advice this time around.
LaRussa and Duncan haven’t fared as well with young pitchers as they have with the retreads. They’ve had a good number of well-regarded young pitchers, but the only rookie they’ve successfully established as a major-league starter was Matt Morris, and even he had to overcome career-threatening arm injuries. Others — Alan Benes, Donovan Osborne, Chris Young, Brett Burns, Rick Ankiel — ran afoul of arm miseries of various types.
But give them a castoff veteran, and they can work some magic.
Edward Thoma is a Free Press staff writer. He can be called at 344-6377 or emailed at ethoma@mankatofreepress.com. He also has a baseball blog at www.mankatofreepress.com/ethomabaseball
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