To be fair to Rizzo, no one could have known that
A) Rosenthal couldn't throw strikes.
B) Barraclough couldn't get outs
C) Sipp couldn't get LHH out.
All 3 had a resume of being able to get it done. The only concerns going into the season were
A) Health (Rosenthal coming back from TJ, Doo going a full season)
B) Will Wander progress, spin his whells, or regress
But we brought in 2 guys with previous successful Closer experience. A Left Handed specialist. Just didn't work out. No way of knowing it wouldn't.
Rosenthal was coming off TJ surgery, had a long history of being wild (career 4.5 BB/9), no reason to believe he was going to suddenly be a 1.50 ERA stud.
Barraclough was even more wild in his history than Rosenthal and was not good in 2018
Sipp's career has been either up or down, and was available for insanely cheap in spring training
There were plenty of huge red flags. Previous closer experience means nothing when it was 4 years ago and he's had TJ surgery since then also just been bad since then. No one could have expected literally all the guys to be terrible, but there was also a huge chance it didn't work out. not like we had three all-stars from 2018 back there.
