Six games into the season, the question hanging over the Bellwater Ironclads all winter has an early answer: the bullpen that collapsed in September is not collapsing in April. The Ironclads closed their season-opening homestand at Founders Park with a perfect record in save chances, a small but pointed sign that the offseason's rebuilding project is working.
The Ironclads went 5-1 over their season-opening, six-game homestand at Founders Park, and the number manager Ray Delacroix kept returning to afterward had nothing to do with wins and losses. The bullpen he spent the winter reshaping posted a combined 2.14 ERA across the homestand and converted all three save opportunities, with closer Julio Vasquez picking up three saves and setup man Desmond Cade allowing one run in five appearances.
“Six games is six games,” Delacroix said Thursday, before the team departed for a nine-game road trip. “I’m not going to stand here and tell you the bullpen is fixed because we didn’t blow a lead for a week. But I will say the process we talked about all spring is showing up in real games, and that matters.”
A different bullpen mentality
Vasquez, who re-signed with the Ironclads over the winter after testing the market, said the pitching staff made a deliberate effort to change how it talked about the ninth inning after last September’s stretch of 31 runs allowed over six games cost the team a playoff spot. “We used to walk into the eighth and ninth like we were just trying to survive,” Vasquez said. “Now we walk in like we expect to get outs. That sounds small, but it’s not small when you’re the guy on the mound with a one-run lead.”
Cade, who signed with the Ironclads over the winter after posting a 2.31 ERA at a rival organization’s Triple-A affiliate, said the relievers have made a habit of meeting as a group after every homestand game, win or lose, a practice he said did not exist at his previous stop. “We’re not waiting until something goes wrong to talk about what’s working,” Cade said. “By the time you’re down five runs in September, it’s too late to start having that conversation.”
Aldrich sets the tone in the opener
Some of the bullpen’s early success traces back to the rotation. Right-hander Theo Aldrich, who logged a career-high 162 innings last season, worked into the seventh inning of the home opener, limiting the bullpen’s workload on a night when third baseman Miguel Ontiveros returned from a wrist injury with a three-hit, three-RBI performance. Delacroix said stretching his starters deeper into games remains part of the plan to keep the relief corps fresh for the stretch run.
“You can have the best bullpen in the league on paper, and it still breaks down in September if the starters aren’t giving you length in April,” Delacroix said. “Theo giving us seven innings on opening night took pressure off guys who we’re going to need fresh in the summer.”
Every team in this league has arms. What separates the teams that make the playoffs from the teams that collapse in September is whether the bullpen believes in itself when it matters. Six games doesn’t prove anything by itself, but it’s the kind of start that lets a young bullpen believe the offseason work was real.
Ray Delacroix, Manager, Bellwater Ironclads
A ballpark feeling the momentum
General Manager Sandra Tolliver said season-ticket renewals are up 11 percent over last year, a figure she has attributed partly to last year’s late-season near-miss and partly to Founders Park’s proximity to Foundry Row’s growing biotech offices, which have brought a wave of after-work group outings from local employers. The opening homestand drew some of the largest weeknight crowds in recent seasons, she said, a trend she hopes continues once the team returns from its road trip.
“Fans in this city have been waiting a long time to feel good about this bullpen in April instead of dreading what happens in September,” Tolliver said. “We’re six games in. I’m not popping any corks. But I understand why people are paying attention.”
The Ironclads now face a tougher early test: a nine-game road trip that will put the bullpen’s depth to work without the comfort of Founders Park’s home crowd. Delacroix said he expects to rotate roles more aggressively on the road, using Cade in high-leverage eighth-inning spots and reserving Vasquez for the ninth, a split the team largely avoided experimenting with during the homestand.
Vasquez said he is not reading too much into the perfect early save record, pointing out that the Ironclads have not yet faced a lineup as deep as some of the contenders they expect to see in the middle of the summer. “Ask me again in June,” he said. “But I’ll take a good week over a bad one every time, and this was a good week.”
The road trip opens against a divisional opponent the Ironclads split with a season ago, and Delacroix said he expects the trip to tell the coaching staff more about the bullpen’s readiness than the homestand did. “Founders Park is comfortable,” he said. “The road is where you find out what you actually built over the winter.”