BULLPEN BURNOUT : Relief Pitcher’s Star Can Make Rapid Rise, but Then Many Flame Out Just as Quickly

During a ceremony to honor Whitey Ford for winning 25 games for the New York Yankees in 1961, a truck rolled out of center field at Yankee Stadium carrying a giant roll of Lifesavers.

As it neared home plate, out popped relief pitcher Luis Arroyo.

It was an appropriate mode of transportation for Arroyo, who established American League highs for a relief pitcher that season of 15 wins and 29 saves.

But like so many relievers on so many teams before and since, when Arroyo faltered the next season, winning only one game and saving just seven as his earned-run average more than doubled, he left a hole in the Yankee bullpen.

It’s not unusual for relievers, as Graig Nettles said of Yankee teammate Sparky Lyle in 1978, to go “from Cy Young to sayonara. “

With some exceptions--among them Hoyt Wilhelm, Rich (Goose) Gossage, Dan Quisenberry, ElRoy Face, Rollie Fingers, Bruce Sutter, Mike Marshall--few relief pitchers have managed to avoid flaming out quickly.

Very few are effective for as long as a decade.

Most rise and fall like Arroyo, whose nickname, appropriately enough, was Yo-Yo.

Even those who endure seem to experience more peaks and valleys than other players.

Theories abound as to why:

--It’s the mental strain of the position. Not unlike field goal kickers, the best relievers are seldom involved until a game is on the line.

“A relief pitcher is like a safecracker,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said. “Not everybody can go in and crack safes. Most people would be scared to death. You get into enough of those situations and it begins to take its toll.”

Said former Milwaukee Manager George Bamberger: “How many times does a player walk out there and say, ‘Hey, it’s up to me whether we win or lose.’ The relief pitcher does that almost every day.”

--It’s the physical strain of the position. It was the theory of former Dodger Manager Walt Alston that effective relievers, because of their success, are overworked, which leads to adhesions forming in their arms.

Alston believed that the following spring, the reliever would be unable to break down the adhesions, which hardened over the winter. He would start slowly, his manager would lose confidence in him and he would be buried in the bullpen the rest of the season.

Traded in the off-season, he would respond with a big year for his new team, the adhesions having broken down because of his infrequent use the previous season.

Two of the Dodgers’ best relievers of the 1960s, Ron Perranoski and Phil (The Vulture) Regan, had great seasons after the Dodgers traded them.

--Relievers are at the mercy of their managers, who tend to overwork whomever is hot and ignore whomever is not.

Mark Clear, who has been traded twice in an up-and-down career that was up last season, when he had a career-high 16 saves for the Brewers, said banishment to the far end of the bullpen does nothing for a reliever’s peace of mind.

“You try to do too much,” he said. “You try to strike everybody out and you end up doing worse and then you’re on the bench for 10 more days.

“Sometimes, you lose confidence, especially if you’re a younger player. I know I did. You have three or four bad games in a row and you press instead of relaxing.”

Some relievers have arms that need almost to be abused.

Billy Martin, who managed Perranoski in Minnesota, said of the left-hander: “You’ve got to warm him up every day until his arm falls off and then you can pitch him. His sinker isn’t effective until his arm is about dead.”

--Relievers, more often than starters, rely on trick pitches or are strictly one-pitch pitchers. The more they are used, the less effective they become.

This theory is advanced by John Thorn, author of “The Relief Pitcher: Baseball’s New Hero.”

“You can get used to a one-pitch pitcher and you can time his pitches,” Thorn said. “If a batter gets a second shot at him, he’s usually in trouble.”

And if he gets in trouble too often, of course, he’ll be out of a job.

“There’s no player in baseball who bears on his shoulders the responsibility for victory or defeat as much as the relief pitcher,” Thorn said. “When a relief pitcher screws up, it’s very memorable.

“It’s just that baseball games kind of drift along through the early innings and everyone’s perception gets foreshortened and heightened in the last two or three innings, which is when the relief pitcher enters the fray.”

This phenomenon of relievers as flameouts--or one-season wonders--is nothing new.

It goes back almost to the turn of the century, when relievers were known as rescue pitchers and one part-time reliever, Otis Crandall of the New York Giants, was nicknamed Doc because he brought first aid to sick games.

It certainly predates saves, which didn’t come into being until 1960, when they were introduced by the Sporting News, and didn’t become an official statistic until 1969, when all who had relieved before then suddenly had new numbers to add to their resumes.

Some examples:

--Ed Walsh of the Chicago White Sox, both a starter and reliever who led the American League in saves four times between 1907 and 1912, was never the same after the 1912 season, when he became the first pitcher to make 100 relief appearances in his career. His arm went dead in 1913 and he pitched in relief only five times in the last five years of his career.

--In 38 relief appearances for the 1927 New York Yankees, rookie Wilcy Moore was 13-3 with 13 saves and an earned-run average of 2.28, including 12 starts. But he never again had an ERA lower than 3.88 in five more major league seasons. Moore, who was 30-4 as a minor leaguer in 1926, said later that he never recovered from the heavy work load of 1927.

--In 1950, Jim Konstanty of the Philadelphia Phillies led the “Whiz Kids” to the pennant, setting major league records with 74 appearances and 16 relief wins and a National League record of 22 saves.

The only reliever ever to be named Most Valuable Player in the National League, Konstanty reached double figures in saves only one other time in an 11-year career. He was sold to the Yankees in 1954 and saved 11 games in the American League in 1954.

--Joe Black was the National League Rookie of the Year in 1952, when he was 14-3 and had 15 saves for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The following spring, Manager Charley Dressen tried to teach him some new pitches, but Black wound up losing his control.

In his last five seasons, he added only 12 relief wins and 10 saves to his totals and his ERA skyrocketed, reaching a peak of 7.11 with the 1957 Washington Senators.

--Between 1964 and 1974, Jack Aker had a pretty good career, racking up 123 saves for six teams. But he was never able to top 1966, when he had 32 saves in 66 appearances for the Kansas City A’s.

“It was just one of those years where everything I did turned out right,” said Aker, who is the pitching coach for the Cleveland Indians. “There were very few days when luck didn’t go in my favor, and very few days when I didn’t have my good stuff. It was a once-in-a-lifetime year for me.

“I was used a lot and the next year (when he had 12 saves and his ERA more than doubled) I had a tough time bouncing back. I started off pretty well, but then I ran out of gas.”

--Don Stanhouse had 24 saves for the Baltimore Orioles in 1978, 21 more in 1979 and signed as a free agent with the Dodgers, who gave him a $400,000 bonus and a contract calling for $340,000 a year.

After pitching only 25 innings in one season with the Dodgers, he was released in 1981, his back hurting and his shoulder muscles so deteriorated that the entire area had to be rebuilt.

He returned to Baltimore in 1982, was ineffective and retired after the season.

Perhaps the most celebrated flameout of all, though, was Dick Radatz’s.

From 1962 to 1964, the man they called the Monster terrorized the American League, compiling a 2.76 ERA and averaging 72 appearances, 13 wins and 26 saves a season for Boston Red Sox teams that finished eighth, seventh and eighth.

“I couldn’t lose,” Radatz said last week. “That was just my feeling, and I think that had a lot to do with my success. That, and the fact that I had a good fastball and I could throw it where I wanted to.

“It was almost like I had two or three pitches because my fastball had good movement and I had good control. I could make it do what I wanted. My confidence level was very high.

“I quite honestly felt the Good Lord himself couldn’t hit me.”

The imposing Radatz, a 6-5, 245-pound right-hander, was still effective in 1965, when he was 9-11 with 22 saves, but his descent was swift after that.

Traded to the Cleveland Indians in 1966 and to the Chicago Cubs in 1967, he spent all of the 1968 season in the Detroit Tigers’ minor league system. He was traded again in 1969, to Montreal, and retired after the 1969 season.

In his last three major league seasons, he produced only 22 saves and was 3-11 with a 4.98 ERA.

“I never really did have arm problems,” Radatz said. “I tried to come up with another pitch and I did--a sinker. And I sort of fell in love with it. And in so doing, I kind of changed my motion.”

When it came time to throw his fastball, he said, he threw it from the same motion that he threw his sinker and it wasn’t moving as it had previously.

“It was straight and it was getting hit,” he said. “And then I got into control problems. By the time I got out of it a couple of years later, I’d lost just enough off my fastball that it wasn’t outstanding anymore.

“And I didn’t have a second pitch to complement it. Shortly after that, it was just about over.”

But it wasn’t only his fastball that abandoned Radatz.

His confidence deserted him, too.

“I started pitching defensively,” he said. “I started worrying about where I was going to keep the ball on hitters, as opposed to taking over and throwing the ball where I wanted to throw it.”

But the pressure of the position never affected him, he said.

“At our end, you make a mistake and you lose,” he said of relief pitching in general. “It’s so quick and it’s so sudden. You either love it or you hate it, and I just happened to love it.

“I loved the challenge of it. I think the idea that it was going to be over very quickly was rather attractive to me. And I think most of your successful relief pitcher pitchers feel the same way.”

Some feel that way longer than others, of course.

After 17 seasons and a major league-record 324 saves, Rollie Fingers is still looking for the challenge.

Released by the Milwaukee Brewers in 1985, baseball’s most consistent reliever has had informal tryouts this spring with the Detroit Tigers, New York Yankees and Montreal Expos.

He believes that, at 40, he can still be effective.

“Nolan Ryan is still pitching,” he said. “I see no reason why I couldn’t still pitch.”

Even in his worst season, Fingers had 13 saves. His ERA climbed above 3.00 only twice in his last 14 seasons, including 1985, when it reached an all-time high of 5.04.

Fingers attributes his longevity to never extending himself in the bullpen and to surviving stressful situations at a young age.

He helped the Oakland A’s win three World Series championships before his 29th birthday.

“After you’ve thrown in a World Series game, what more pressures can you have on yourself?” he asked. “It got to a point where anything below that didn’t bother me very much.”

Physically, Fingers said, it’s important for a relief pitcher to know how to warm up.

“You have to stay in contact with the manager,” he said. “You need that communication to know when you might go into a ballgame. Otherwise, you might get up and throw hard, hard, hard, and then the manager might decide not to use you, and you’ve wasted 30 or 40 pitches in the bullpen.” A “happy-go-lucky” attitude is a must for a reliever, Fingers said.

“When I was in the bullpen, I’d joke around and not really pay too much attention until it got to be my time of the game,” he said. “I’d start watching in the sixth inning and then in the seventh I’d stop screwing around.

“If you sat there in the bullpen and watched every pitch of every game and worried about who you might have to face, you’d be at Bellevue by the end of the year.”

Fingers was a starter in the minors and started 19 games for the A’s in 1971 and eight in 1972 before becoming a full-time reliever.

He didn’t have the temperament to pitch only once every five days, he said. He’d wind himself so tight between starts, thinking about how he was going to pitch each batter, that he’d unravel when it came time to pitch.

“I hated sitting around, waiting to start and then getting knocked out in the second or third inning,” he said. “Then I’d sit for another four days waiting for my next start and thinking about why I got knocked out the previous time. It was something that I couldn’t handle.”

The pressure of relieving, he said, never affected him.

“I’d always try to tell myself that there was more pressure on the guy at the plate, having to face me,” Fingers said. “He’s the guy who has to hit the ball.”

But the batter, whether he fails or not, might not be in that position again for another week or more.

The reliever will probably be there the next day.

“It’s like being a river-boat gambler,” Aker said. “You bet the whole stakes on every hand.”

And, unless you’re exceptional, you’ll be cleaned out in short order.