How Do You Spell Success? Relief

The road trip was a disaster for Jeff Reardon. In the first game, he gave up a ninth-inning, game-winning grand slam to the New York Yankees' Mike Pagliarulo. Then, four days later, he blew another game, to the Baltimore Orioles, by surrendering a grand slam to Fred Lynn and a three-run homer to Larry Sheets. "I stink," Reardon said after the second loss, and it was hard to argue with him. Here it was May 12, and he had only one save out of three chances, and his earned run average was 10.67. On Feb. 3, 1987, the Minnesota Twins had traded four players to the Montreal Expos for Reardon (and catcher Tom Nieto) because the Twins had been plagued for years by late-inning collapses. "Now I'm doing it to them again," said Reardon.

Across the clubhouse Gary Gaetti seemed unconcerned about Reardon's failures. "In years past, we'd all be saying, 'Here we go again,' " he said. "But Jeff is proven. We became a better team the day he arrived. We're a better team right now by his mere presence. We know this won't continue."

Gaetti was right. When last season was over, Reardon had won or saved 39 of Minnesota's 85 victories. He was on the mound in every game when the Twins won five straight in mid-September to pull away from the Oakland Athletics in the AL West race, and he was there when they clinched the division, the American League pennant and the World Series. After Game 7 of the Series, Gaetti was asked to explain how Minnesota had been able to win. "We've had the talent for years," he answered. ' "We just didn't have Jeff Reardon."

Atlanta Braves G.M. Bobby Cox knows precisely what Gaetti meant. In 1984, as manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, he had watched his team blow lead after lead and fall out of contention after having been within 3½ games of first in June. "When you don't have a bullpen, it infects the entire team," Cox said then. "It infects the starters, who try too hard. It infects the regular players, who start to believe that somehow they'll find a way to lose. And it infects the manager, who starts managing out of fear."

After the 1984 season, the Blue Jays traded for veteran relievers Bill Caudill and Gary Lavelle. "The next spring the atmosphere on the team was completely different," Cox says. "Caudill and Lavelle created a positive feeling that carried on through the season. They didn't do well, as it turned out, but the mindframe they established remained in place until Tom Henke came up from the minors in late July and became the closer that we so desperately needed." Toronto won its first divisional title that year.

"A manager is as smart as his bullpen," says St. Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog. "When I managed Kansas City, I wasn't too smart because I didn't have a closer. I got smarter in St. Louis because I've had Bruce Sutter, Todd Worrell and Ken Dayley. Today, managers start with their bullpens, then work forward."

With good reason. Only one team, if you don't count the strike-shortened 1981 season, has made it to the World Series in this decade without a 19-save reliever—the 1986 Boston Red Sox, and they lost Games 6 and 7 largely because of their weak bullpen. Since 1980 three relievers have won the Cy Young Award: the Milwaukee Brewers' Rollie Fingers in '81, the Detroit Tigers' Willie Hernandez in '84 and the Philadelphia Phillies' Steve Bedrosian last year. And two of them—Fingers and Hernandez—were also named the year's Most Valuable Player. "The evolution of relief pitching may be the biggest change in the game over the years," says Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose. "If Ty Cobb had had to hit off these guys, he might have batted .315."

Ten years ago, when Rose was still chasing Cobb's record for hits in a career, there were only a handful of star relievers in the game, most notably Sutter, Fingers, Sparky Lyle and Rich Gossage. Now there are seven who measure up to the best of any era—Reardon, Henke, Bedrosian, Worrell, the Yankees' Dave Righetti, the Reds' John Franco and the Red Sox' Lee Smith. And below them, you can find at least half a dozen others, led by the San Diego Padres' Lance McCullers and the Brewers' Dan Plesac, who could move to the head of the class at any time.

"What has changed in the last 10 years is that now everyone is concentrating on putting together a full 10-man staff made up of players who complement one another," says Pittsburgh Pirate pitching coach Ray Miller. "The age of specialization has come full force to pitching staffs."

One indication of that is the high value managers now place on finding good setup men. When Boston acquired Smith from the Chicago Cubs this winter for pitchers Calvin Schiraldi and Al Nipper, cheers rang out all over New England. But Red Sox manager John McNamara warned, "He's still not going to mean as much as he should, if our middle relief doesn't improve. Last year our middle men took us out of countless games that the greatest closer in the world couldn't have done anything about."