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On June 17, Juan Rincon's record stands
at 8-3 despite pitching entirely out of the bullpen. He is
tied for second in the American League in victories with Mark Mulder
and Curt Schilling and trails the leader, Kenny Rogers, by just one
win. Despite pitching fewer than half as many innings, Rincon
has twice as many wins as Brad Radke.
This just demonstrates how useless the "win"
statistic really is. Radke gets absolutely no run support and
seems to leave with every game tied. In this way, Rincon can
stroll in from the bullpen, keep the game for an inning or two while
the offense scores one run, and then take credit for the victory.
His teammates have taken to calling him The Vulture, which shows
that even they understand that he is "stealing" wins from other
players.
If Rincon keeps up his current pace (which I
would give a 0.1% chance in happening), then he would finish the
season with twenty wins. However, I would give him a slim
chance of challenging the record for most wins by a relief pitcher
in a single season. The American League record is 17 held by
both Bill
Campbell and
John Hiller,
while the Major League record is 18 held by
Roy
Face of the 1959 Pittsburgh Pirates.
So far, Rincon has yet to allow a run in the
month of June. In fact, his main weakness through the month of
May was his control as he was allowing 6.2 BB/9IP and had a
strikeout-to-walk ratio of 1.8. In June, his BB/9IP has
dropped to 1.3 (although it is just seven innings, so a ridiculously
small sample size) while his K/BB ratio has risen to 11.0.
He throws a hard slider and cut fastball that
both ride in on the hands of a left-handed batter. In this
way, he is effective against all hitters and Ron Gardenhire has
begun to stop taking him out solely to play the platoon advantage.
Of course, the recent struggles of J.C. Romero might also have
played a role in that decision as well.
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