Has Eric O’Flaherty “lost his confidence?”

The numbers that Eric O’Flaherty has posted in his first five outings have been pretty atrocious: in less than three innings, Eric has allowed nine base runners, five of which have come around to score.  All seven of the hits he’s allowed have been against left-handed batters, for a .636 average and a 1.182 OPS.  Not exactly what you’d like to see from your left-handed specialist whose job it is to get left-handers out.

I argued against the Bedard-Jones trade when the rumors were reaching a fever peak during the off season.  Besides decimating the offense for a pitcher we’d have no guarantee for keeping long term (the seemingly prescient prediction of 3-2 and 2-1 scores seems utterly obvious), we would also be dealing reliable lefty set-up man George Sherrill, hoping that the 23-year old O’Flaherty could be slotted in Sherrill’s stead.  The night-and-day performances between the two pictures so far this year prove otherwise.  As much as it hurt watching Sherrill pick up three saves during the four-game Oriole sweep, it hurts even more when you realize that O’Flaherty has lowered his ERA in only one of his outings, a scoreless inning against the Orioles on Saturday that dropped his ERA six points.

Now McLaren is asking out loud whether O’Flaherty has lost his confidence, and whether he should just be utilized in low-pressure situation.  This is a profoundly negative turn of events at this point in the season, especially when it leaves Ryan Rowland-Smith, whose splits between right handerd (.804 OPS) and left handed batters (.762) are negligible, as the left-handed specialist.

Oh to have Sherrill back.  I still have a continued profound distrust of the Bedard-Jones trade, and a strong suspicion that the outcome will be a handful of negatives against the Mariners that cancel out any positives that Erik is able to bring to the pitcher’s mound.  Perhaps my stance can be broken if Bedard delivers a seven-inning, two-hit, no-run, 11-strikeout performance (but most importantly a win!) against the Rays.  Otherwise, if you were to ask me at this moment if I’d rather have George Sherrill or Erik Bedard on the Mariners’ roster, my answer would be in favor of Sherill.