Charm City 2062.5 - The End is Near for Veteran Reliever

[DaveB]

Rumors are coming out of Charm City that the team is about ready to move on from Charm City legend Manuel Barrera.

Expectations were to resign Barrera this past offseason let him reach 500 saves and then hopefully ride into retirement. Members of the Jimmies staff were concerned in the spring when they noticed Barrera was elevating his pitches more and thus causing hitters to get more fly balls when contact was made. Things started off as well as they could as Barrera notched 7 saves with 1 earned run through mid April. Since then the wheels have fallen off. Barrera has allowed 17 earned runs in his last 5 appearances totaling 3.2 innings which is an unsightly 47.80 ERA over that time. He’s taken 4 losses in the 4 games. In more context in his last 6 full BBA seasons Barrera has allowed the following amount of earned runs: 35, 21, 19, 25, 23, and 8.

This has some members of the Charm City front office ready to move on from the legendary closer. Barrett’s status does have some backers high up the chain though as we’ve been told they are sticking with him for now, but if he continues to struggle over the next couple weeks they might have to pull the plug. We’ll see what happens. Barrera currently sits 11 saves shy of 500.

[BaseClogger]

Chasing those round numbers can be a bitch. But nobody is that bad, certainly not Manuel Barrera.

[Jwalk100]

I feared this would happen to Barrera when I was preparing the Atlantic Preview.