Five St. Louis Cardinals relief pitchers have combined for 15 saves, but now it looks like one of them might get an extended trip in the closer's role, and it's not the rookie you might have expected. Fernando Salas, renowned more for his command and his pitching skill than his knockout stuff, picked up his sixth save Saturday afternoon against the Kansas City Royals. That put him two ahead of Eduardo Sanchez, his more exciting counterpart, and three ahead of Mitchell Boggs, the first man tabbed to replace Ryan Franklin following his extended implosion in the closer role. The Cardinals might still have a closer-by-committee-by-name, but Salas has a chance to run away with the role if he continues to look this—competent.
At 26, Salas has been a long time coming as a minor league reliever, and at every stop he's done just enough to make it clear that he belongs at the next level. His low-nineties fastball didn't get him a lot of press as a future closer; meanwhile, he continued to act as the closer for whichever farm team he played on, picking up 46 saves in his minor league career.
On a team with a taste for triple-digit fastballs or flamboyant post-game celebration that might not be the kind of resume that earns a reliever a shot at the highest-profile job in the bullpen, but Salas joins a team that had a two-fold reason to give him a shot. For one thing, the sitting closer was himself even more of a finesse-and-command guy than Salas figures to be; for another, the sitting closer had been so catastrophically bad that Salas's sheer decency has overwhelmed any number of more outwardly impressive candidates.
It's hard to bet against Eduardo Sanchez when it comes to handicapping the Cardinals' closer of the future, but for the Cardinals of the present Fernando Salas has proved to be a perfect fit.
