but he has really come off as someone who just flat out doesn’t like CJ lately.

He’s written quite a few critical things about Wilson this year—beginning with the stuff in spring training.

Look at his game log.

He has 2 blown saves, 2 “lucky” saves (where he gave up 2 or more runs). Every other save situation he’s been in, he’s been very solid.

When it’s not a save situation is when he seems to fall apart.

I’m staying away from the sidelines of this cat fight. When CJ’s baseball career is in the balance, now or later, he’ll decide the path to pursue. Baseball, entertainment, media, or who knows (?) maybe teaching or coaching. He’s playing multiple cards on different tables. That’s been done before, and believe it or not, the individual doesn’t always end up on the apparent logical path.

I say: keep the PGA and MLB in different corners. There’s nothing wrong with a solid sense of style. The game benefits from it.

i completely agree with grant about some points. CJ allows way way too many baserunners

if the team had another serious option. Still, I’d leave him there for the rest of this season and then figure out what to do then. He needs to think much, much less.

we just don’t have a better option right now. it makes no sense to insert Steady Eddie, with his 86 mph fastballs and, more importantly, his lack of future with this team.

stick with CJ for the remainder of the year. Closers are like starting quarterbacks, there is always someone on the roster who could be better, and because of that, the fans focus their ire on the incumbent.

I don’t think Grant and Hindman are having any sort of debate, because i think they would both agree that CJ is the best option on this roster. Could his peripherals be better, of course, but i am sure mike would agree with that.

Save percentage is an arbitrary stat, alone it is very hard to extract meaningful information out of it, though it is obviously something you want to be high, which CJ has done.

EG’s arguments are pretty silly though. Only the last one has any real merit – that CJ allows too many baserunners. The rest are either arbitrary or derive from the base runners argument.

Too many pitches? That probably has to do with too many baserunners. And last I checked, there is no penalty to the team who throws the most pitches. Obviously you want a guy to get in and out fast, so he is always fresh the next day, but this is orthogonal to quality.

Pitchers who through too many pitches may get injured? That is why we should worry about him coming into the 9th inning of a 5-4 game? Huh? Obviously we want CJ healthy, which means throw less, which means walk fewer guys, but it all gets back to walk fewer guys…

I won’t even touch the personality stuff – we all know that many closers are quirky, so who cares.

Basically, EG’s argument comes down to 1 good point (which alone is probably sufficient to be worried), two redundant, not really applicable points, and 1 just irrelevant point. I almost want to side with MJH just because he is concise…

Looking at C.J. this year versus C.J. last year, the big difference that I see is that he gets into extended bouts of nibbling on hitters with outside fastballs and breaking balls this year that lead to walks.

I’m willing to give C.J. more time, although I am significantly less bullish on him than I was in April. Our pitching staff’s numbers as a group are almost an inverse of the team’s offensive numbers. This is not a staff that’s going to be fixed by trades or that is suddenly going to snap to and start turning in quality start after quality start down the stretch. I think that getting too concerned with the closer when the starting pitching and bullpen are generally a mess is to focus on the wrong thing. C.J. should have the rest of the season to show he’s either earned it or burned it. If he’s still nibbling on batters and walking guys and giving up hits that flirt with blowing the situation at hand in September, well then he’s definitively shown us he’s not the closer of the future. You don’t pull the plug on your closer at the ASB who, while way too dramatic in his duties, is pitching at the back end of the worst rotation and bullpen in the American League in ERA, BA, OPS, WHIP and quality starts.

I also think that C.J.’s issues have as much to do with our craptastic pitching coaching as they do with C.J. Everything about this team’s pitching woes that isn’t medical scream craptastic pitching coaching. I feel C.J. has the arsenal and he has the juice to do it. In the absence of the Rangers having a real major league pitching coach perhaps the best thing we can do for C.J. is to bring back Eric Gagne; Gagne seemed to be a really effective mentor for Wilson. We could probably get him for cheap from the Brew Crew.

Those are just things that are not going to endear you to teammates and if you have something really important to say, who cares, if you aren’t loved by teammates.

Are you implying that they’re players on the team that do not like CJ? And, if so, who are they?