Baseball's highest paid starter can add a new title to his resume: highest paid long reliever.A slumping Barry Zito, 0-6 with a 7.53 ERA, was demoted from the San Francisco rotation Monday. The move, which the Giants hope to be short-term, is intended to give Zito the space he needs to pull his head out of wherever he's managed to lodge it.
Without any specific injuries to point to, we can only assume that the source of Zito's problems is his mind. And since we can only guess as to what might actually be going on in there, let's take a look at Zito's wisdom after his starts this season.
- 4/27 (3 IP, 8 ER, 7 H, 3 BB vs. Cincinnati): “I definitely want the ball. I’m not backing down from that,” Zito said. “But they know what’s best for the ballclub. It feels (bad) going out here and losing for these guys.”
- 4/23 (3.2 IP, 5 ER, 6 H, 3 BB vs. Arizona): “I take all the blame here,” Zito said. “Our guys came out, did what they had to do against a good pitcher and I was unable to hold them down.”
- 4/16 (6 IP, 3 ER, 5 H, 5 BB vs. Arizona): “I know I have good stuff in me and it will serve us eventually,” he said. “Stick with my approach, keep going out there with my head up. You can’t get down. Baseball is fun, even though it doesn’t seem fun sometimes.”
- 4/6 (5 IP, 3 ER, 8 H, 2 BB vs. Milwaukee): “The results aren’t what I want, but I made a lot better pitches consistently and got ahead consistently,” Zito said. “Got to work on keeping that ball true instead of having it come back.”
- 3/31 (5 IP, 4 ER, 8 H, 1 BB vs. Los Angeles): “I wanted to come out here and start off the season on a good note, but that first inning got out of hand. If I could take a couple of pitches back, it’s a one-run game.”
Thanks for the pearls, Barry. Now how about some outs?
