Brian Wilson: Can San Francisco Giants Recover from Loss of Their Closer?

The San Francisco Giants have suffered numerous injuries to key players in 2011 and have survived almost solely on their stellar pitching. They might finally be in trouble.

Brian Wilson is an elite closer and Sergio Romo is about as good a setup man as you can find anywhere. Romo was most likely the Giants' plan B in the event that they had to do without Wilson for any extended period of time. When Romo went on the disabled list with elbow inflammation, a healthy Brian Wilson was even more crucial. Then, as if caught up in a pandemic, Wilson went down with his own elbow inflammation.

Bruce Bochy now faces the dilemma of using pitchers in roles that they are not familiar with. This sounds like an easy enough challenge for the remaining bullpen staff to rise to, but in reality it may prove impossible.

Bullpen pitchers are put in the best position to be successful by their manager and pitching coach and they become comfortable being used in those roles. If a pitcher is lights-out in the seventh inning, it may be because his pitches and his mentality are perfectly suited for the situations and stress that the seventh inning provides. That same pitcher may not necessarily have the make-up or the ability to succeed when the pressure is at its greatest—in the ninth inning.

Pitchers get outs and I agree to a certain extent that an out is the same whether it is the first, fourth or ninth inning, but how a pitcher gets those outs is entirely different when there is no room for error.

In the seventh or eighth inning, a pitcher can afford to be a little bit more aggressive in the strike zone, where someone like Wilson has mastered the art of not giving in to a hitter by working around the strike zone. To do that, a pitcher must have nerves of absolute steel and the ability to control his pitches an absurd amount of the time to place them exactly where he wants them to go with a margin of error of about an inch.

Wilson has developed into the closer that he is today by sharpening his nerves and mental strength while refining his pitch control over many years of pitching in high-stress situations. The Giants are a team who need a shutdown closer to be successful because they don't score runs.

If Brian Wilson is unable to return quickly while maintaining his elite ability to close down games, the 2011 San Francisco Giants might have finally run into the wall that they have no way around, over or under.