Yeah, the early returns were not promising, and although he likely has picked it up a few notches since then, with all the uncertainty I'm not terribly disappointed we didn't sign him.

Can't keep living in the past. Gotta be thankful for what we had, when we had it. Otherwise you keep signing Joakim Sorias. :D

With the Nats apparent quest to prove Dayton Moore's hypothesis that pitiful locker room chemistry WAR can destroy even the most talented of teams, it seems some Free Agents would rather go literally anywhere else than that clubhouse.

The implosion that followed the Papelbon acquisition will always be one of my most cherished baseball memories.

Still not sure how Mike Rizzo kept his job. They had a very good ninth inning guy who'd pitched as well as anyone all year. And instead of paying very little to go get a plus setup man, they paid quite a bit more so they could demote their All-Star closer and install a 'name' closer who just so happened to be a monumental douchebag.

And then the monumental douchebag choked out their franchise player in the dugout. Because of course he did.

Rizzo should've been fired that day. He took the lazy route, cost his owner millions and his team a playoff spot. Remarkably inept.

Sounds like Holland is getting $7 million guaranteed. Could be more with incentives.

I wish him the best. I'm a fan but Colorado is going be a tough place to come back. Especially since he relies on a couple out pitches and one of them is a nasty 12-6 slider. That's exactly the type of pitcher that gets neutered by the altitude.

If it goes 12-6, how can it be a slider?

Wouldn't that just be an overhand curve?

It's almost like a backdoor slider. Just watch him pitch. It's not a curve, even though it looks like one. He throws it too hard for it to be a curve. It drops off the table. It's a vicious pitch.

Weird pitch, but for what it's worth, it doesn't actually get much z-movement. It's a true 'slider' but unique in that it does appear to back up on occasion.

Speaking over large numbers his slider appears pretty conventional; 2.2 points of movement towards the LH batters box and not much vertical movement at all at only .5. So weirdly, his slider actually 'rises' from a mathematics perspective (I guess that's what speed do; hard pitches just don't have much time to drop).

Though I'll concede, visually it doesn't look like that at all. There must be some weird shit going on with his delivery and release that makes all of that look much different. I wouldn't call it 12-6 (Wainwright still holds the patent there; 10 points of drop, 8 points of run to the LH box; just absurd movement) but there's definitely something different about it. Its pitch movement figures show a pitch that ends up damn near exactly where it started on average, but there's something in how he lets it go that makes it look funky as hell.

I'm guessing without digging too much deeper that he threw across his body in a big, BIG way. That would yield a pitch that came screaming across out of his delivery but then started working back towards where it started, kind of explaining away the relatively small movement numbers despite it obviously moving a lot visually.

Odd pitch - no wonder nobody could hit it.

I had that backwards; he's not throwing across his body, he looks like he's actually rotating out a little early.

http://giant.gfycat.com/LimpCapitalAdeliepenguin.gif

It's not as bad as that gif looks because the camera angle is off-line, but he sure looks to be opening his hips up a bit early, allowing him to pull across a little bit like when a golfer slices a shot. That's what gives him that backed up movement and also helps explain why pitch f/x says he doesn't actually get much movement on the ball. Combine that with a fairly extreme lean in his upper half and you get a guy that's just funky up there.

Very little conventional about trying to hit that guy.

Yeah. It was fun to watch. I'll always remember the HDH days fondly.

Perhaps my memory is failing me, but Holland seemed to work into trouble a little more than I would want my closer to do. I don't recall if it was hits, walks, or a combination of the two, but he always seemed to be anything but an automatic inning.

Mr recollection is that prior to last year he was a little more automatic. Last year was pretty shaky comparatively.

Hold on now, I was originally responding to this:

You and I went off on a bit of a tangent discussion where our wires were crossing.

Oh come now. All I'm saying is that's still speculation. Warranted - I'm not going to argue against that. It's still projection - and maybe my choice of using the word 'Hope' was incorrect. You're saying that he's a Surefire good starter (maybe paraphrased, would have to go back and look). I'm saying that's just not the case from an outsider perspective. I don't see it as simply cut and dry. You obviously have a good amount of witness to this so I can't argue against that, but have to look at their career progression. So you do have a bit of an advantage on me here. I'm not burying my head, and I do enjoy discussing with you, DJ. I wasn't trying to upset you, my apologies and I'll refrain from engaging ya further.

That was such an anomaly to have all three blossom at a similar time in our pen. Say what you want about GMDM and Eiland, what you cannot argue against is their ability to build a bullpen. They've done it with changing pieces every year and that has been the one consistency on this team for years.

2015 is coloring your recollection, I think.

From 2011-2014, Holland put up numbers that compare favorably with any reliever in baseball. He was a goddamn unhittable god.




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Wade Davis broke your brain.

Before Wade Davis made anyone that wasn't Wade Davis look sub-human, Greg Holland was as good a closer as you'd find out there.

In his 2 healthy seasons as the primary closer, Holland put up a WHIP below .9 and struck out better than 13 per 9 with an ERA of 1.32 and a FIP of 1.59. Those numbers are absurd.

In 133 appearances over those 2 seasons, he allowed a runner in scoring position 51 times. So at worst, in 38% of his appearances, he was in a little trouble. But I'd bet that many of those were 3 run leads with a man on 2b (not really in trouble there) or something of similar effect.

Short answer: I think you got spoiled by your robot closer and forgot that you had a pretty superhuman guy doing to job before him.