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When it comes to baseball's pitchers it's the "starters", who usually throw at least five innings of a game, that get the most attention. "Closers", chicago bears jerseys cheap who mostly pitch the final inning, also garner a good deal of ink (or pixels). But it can often be what comes in between that decides the result.

Despite that fact, middle relief pitchers rarely capture the fame associated with playing professional sports. One of the better known middle relievers is Jim Bouton, whose definitive baseball book, Ball Four, chronicles his year as a relief pitcher for Seattle and Houston. custom softball jerseys cheap Without the success of his book, Bouton would have likely been barely remembered for being a flash in the pan as a Yankees starter in the early 1960s – certainly not for his middle relief work for the 1969 Pilots and Astros.

And so you won't find Jesse Crain's number on the back of a jersey at your local sporting goods store. Or Mark Melencon's, or Steve Delabar's or Brett Cecil's – even though they perform that crucial role of being the bridge between starter and closer. This season, unlike most, cheap womens nfl jerseys that group of four middlemen found their way on to the NL and AL rosters at the All-Star Game. Regardless of such honors, they continue to toil in relative anonymity, especially when compared to the closer.

"It's hard to get outs," Greg Holland, a one-time set-up man who is now Kansas City's closer, told the Guardian. "And a lot of times that seventh or eighth inning can be a lot tougher than the ninth … I don't know why they don't get the recognition." Could it be because of the way middle relievers can enter a game? Often, they arrive on the scene at a crucial point, cheap authentic sports jerseys but the pitching change isn't used to preview the incoming hurler – it's just another excuse for yet another commercial break.

Regardless of the public status of relief pitchers, relief pitching is more important than ever. In 1980, relievers pitched 29.60% of innings. A decade later, that figure rose to 32.05%. In 2013, 34% of innings have belonged to relievers. Those figures include closers, but with such a rise in bullpen workload, the responsibilities of the middle relievers have grown.

Despite this, the position continues to be overshadowed, at least in the eyes of fans who focus on sluggers, starters and closers. It's certainly confounding to Crain, cheap football jerseys china a Canadian-born pitcher with the Tampa Bay Rays who has no hint of a north-of-the-boarder accent, having grown up in Colorado, where he played three sports in high school. He told the Guardian that part of the issue may be the inconsistency of relievers from one season to the next, or even one game to the next:

That's true, and it seems that a good chunk of baseball fans are slightly misguided when it comes to allocating their praise. Just consider this – the Rays, who are battling for a playoff place in the crowded American League, saw fit to do a deal with the Chicago White Sox for Crain at the deadline. The All-Star middle reliever is is 3-2 with a 0.74 ERA in 36.2 innings pitched. His 2013 record also includes 29 consecutive scoreless innings pitched – as a reliever, where to buy cheap nfl jerseys these innings were spread over 30 appearances. Those are desirable numbers, for sure, so it's no wonder that the Rays were interested – especially because if Tampa have a weak underbelly in 2013, it's their bullpen.

The rub here is that Crain is on the disabled listand has been since 29 June, with a sore shoulder; the 32-year-old will return on 29 August at the earliest. Trading for injured players doesn't happen very often, and it underscores the value that baseball executives see in middle relievers, even if most fans couldn't pick them out of a lineup.

On getting the short end of the stick when it comes to plaudits, cheap stephen curry jerseys Toronto's Cecil, who despite being an All-Star with a killer WHIP is probably known more for his thick black glasses and tatoos than his pitching, said: "It is what it is." Which is unfair, especially when you consider just how good, say, Baltimore's middle relief core were in 2012, propelling the Orioles during a magical season that came within a game of the ALCS. Isn't it kind of odd that most fans probably couldn't even name two of them?

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