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Dave Righetti: He was Rookie of the Year as a Yankees starter in 1981, but by 1986 he was leading the league in saves, with nine more bullpen seasons (including three with the Giants) to come.<\/p>\n
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Dennis Eckersley and John Smoltz: The masters, with careers split roughly in half between a starter\u2019s dominance and a closer\u2019s expertise. Absolute top of the line in both roles.<\/p>\n
Mariano Rivera: The best of them all? He spent nearly six years in the Yankees\u2019 farm system before the switch in his second MLB season.<\/p>\n
The Giants\u2019 history includes Rod Beck, Joe Nathan and Stu Miller. Miller had been a spot starter for six years when the team moved west in 1958 and, transitioning into relief, he led the National League with a 2.47 ERA. Many of his best years as a closer came after he was traded to Baltimore in December 1962.<\/p>\n
When teams really get lucky, their new closer can be a game-changer. The 2002 Dodgers turned to off-and-on starter Eric Gagne, and he became almost instantly unhittable for three years (rumors suggest he may have had performance-enhancing help) with stuff that bordered on the ridiculous. John Wetteland, who grew up in the Bay Area, lived on the outskirts of the Dodgers rotation until he was traded to Montreal, launching a seven-year run of supremacy that found him leading the league with 43 saves for the 1996 Yankees.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, how about the best in the business right now? The Sacramento A\u2019s hate to think Mason Miller was once their property, but he was a starter in their system for three years before the A\u2019s made him a reliever in 2024, and he was swapped to San Diego much too soon. Heading into the weekend, he had a league-leading 11 saves with only seven hits and two earned runs allowed in 17\u2153 innings.<\/p>\n
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How could the Giants make such a thing happen? With patience, smart scouting and some open minds. This isn\u2019t about a weird kind of brainstorm that gets you a lights-out closer by Tuesday. It\u2019s about seeing a man\u2019s potential, watching him dismantle a hitter\u2019s timing, realizing he\u2019d rather quit the game before he walks the leadoff hitter, and recognizing his ability under pressure\u00a0\u2014 because getting those last three outs, with victory so close at hand, is a world removed from the other 24.<\/p>\n
It always helps if the candidate is a little bit quirky in his delivery, not one of the dull-as-rocks statues who have no concept of a windup or deception. A little personality doesn\u2019t hurt, nor does a vivid imagination, fancying the idea of being out there with the crowd in an uproar\u00a0\u2014 and doing it 70 times a season.<\/p>\n
Surely, the Giants have more pressing needs. That can happen when two proven sluggers become (at least temporarily) the two worst hitters in the league, or it becomes insufferably tedious to watch a catcher who can\u2019t hit. But the bullpen is flat-out unreliable, and it will remain that way all season without some major changes. The kind that come out of nowhere, and change everything.<\/p>\n
All the little dunce caps<\/p>\n
\u2022 When you set about identifying the really stupid people in sports, it invariably comes down to the hopelessly rich buffoons who mindlessly ruin their sport for the sake of some extra cash. So now we have a 76-team NCAA basketball tournament for the men and women, when no rational person asked for it. And with the business of baseball skyrocketing to the heavens in attendance, television viewership, franchise values and salaries, a bunch of crybaby owners want to shut it down because the Dodgers are too good. The sad part is, they don\u2019t realize that a salary cap would be of no help at all; the smart competitors always win.<\/p>\n
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\u2022 The Lounge feels a bit silly tearing into James Harden, because we\u2019ve been doing it since he made a habit of choking (with Houston) against the Warriors more than 10 years ago. He\u2019s been a playoff disaster since, routinely crushing his team\u2019s chances with turnovers (47 in nine games through Thursday) and awful 3-point shooting (1-for-11 in the first two games against Detroit). I like Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson, who served the Warriors well as an assistant to Steve Kerr, but he must be joking when he calls Harden an asset to the team. That trade (with the Clippers) completely doomed Cleveland\u2019s chances.<\/p>\n
\u2022 With the Valkyries passing on Flau\u2019jae Johnson with the No. 8 pick in the WNBA draft, and taking heat over the residue, the final judgments are yet to come. But it\u2019s worth noting who else was available to be drafted in that eighth slot.<\/p>\n
The best of the guards would appear to be Raven Johnson, a high-character talent who went 10th to Indiana, but the Valks are rich in guards who play good defense, and she\u2019s just 5-foot-9. Among the forwards, there\u2019s no guarantee of a smart call on 6-foot-4 Angela Dulgalic (out of UCLA) or 6-0 Cotie McMahon (Ole Miss), both drafted by Washington. Teonni Key is a 6-5 inside-game threat from Kentucky, touted by ESPN\u2019s Rebecca Lobo as a sleeper second-round pick by Toronto.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Perhaps most intriguing is Madina Okot, the 6-6 center from South Carolina, for that\u2019s where the Valks need help in the wake of Iliana Rupert\u2019s pregnancy leave. Okot grew up in Kenya and has been playing basketball for only six years, but she\u2019s an elite rebounder, shot blocker and finisher, with improvement showing on her 3-point shot. She was drafted 13th by Atlanta, where she will have a chance to start.<\/p>\n
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Bruce Jenkins writes the 3-Dot Lounge for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: jenksurf@gmail.com; Twitter: @Bruce_Jenkins1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Walker has had success as the Giants\u2019 closer as recently at 2024, when he finished 22 games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[10897,129795,101,4820,103,102,104,106,105,127,10892],"class_list":["post-308992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-giants","tag-ryan-walker","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sports","tag-tony-vitello"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}