Has bullpen management devolved to the point that a team must bring in its worst pitcher at the game's most crucial point?

Pirates fans know what I'm talking about. With the Pirates ahead by four runs in the seventh inning on Saturday night against the Diamondbacks, manager Jim Tracy brought in Marty McLeary to face Tony Clark with two outs and the bases loaded.

He didn't bring in Matt Capps. He's the eighth inning guy.

He didn't bring in Salomon Torres, the ninth inning guy.

He didn't even bring in Damaso Marte. He's the LOOGy, the Lefty One-Out Guy.

Tracy went with McLeary, the three-home-runs-allowed-in-as-many-outings guy, the never-pitched-with-his-team-ahead guy. McLeary promptly offered up a grand slam that tied the score, 7-7.

You know how football coaches have this little chart that says when to go for a two-point conversion and when to go for just one? Maybe managers could use one to remind them the crucial moment won't always wait for the ninth inning.

Managers didn't always need one of those. Before the age of hyper-specialization, which baseball embraced not long after Tony La Russa met Dennis Eckersley (curse that unholy union!), the team's best reliever was called a "fireman." Yes, boys and girls, this reliever could come in to put out fires whether the conflagration occurred in the seventh, eighth or ninth innings, and he often would pitch more than one inning.

In 1979, the year the Pirates won their most recent World Series, Kent Tekulve pitched in 94 games, 51 of them for multiple innings, and entered 46 games with men on base. He entered 20 games in the seventh, 36 in the eighth, 34 in the ninth and four in extra innings. He finished second in the National League in saves that year with 31, blew six, and finished with a 10-8 record in 134¹/₃ innings.

Now it's different. Managers such as Billy Martin and Dusty Baker helped ruin young arms by working their starters like rented mules, and baseball noticed, so pitch counts and crowded bullpens are here to stay. But does that mean a team needs such rigid specialization?

Torres has not entered any game before the ninth inning in his 20 appearances this year, nor has he entered with runners on base, nor has he pitched multiple innings. Capps has entered just three of his 25 games before the eighth.

Of course, even given that setup, bringing in the right-handed, untested McLeary made no sense when the left-handed, experienced Marte was available. The most probable next batter, the switch-hitting Clark, has hit left-handers and right-handers roughly equally in his career, but was only 3 for 16 with no extra-base hits against left-handers this season. More important, PNC Park is kinder to left-handed sluggers than right-handed ones, and Clark would hit right-handed against the left-handed Marte.

Actually, it's simpler than that. Marte had been good; McLeary had been bad. With the game on the line, it's generally best to go with the good one. Don't bring in the guy who had given up three home runs in 7¹/₃ innings rather than one who had given up none in 12²/₃. Don't bring in McLeary, who had never left a game unscathed, rather than Marte, who has allowed a .167 average to right-handed hitters and .182 to left-handers.

If the Pirates had gotten Clark out, there would have been no save situation in the eighth. But Clark hit a full-count fastball into the right-field seats, four runs scored, and then Capps gave up two runs in the eighth. So Torres came in with his team behind, 9-8. The closer's 1-2-3 inning was robbed of its meaning.

Tracy's bullpen management had been pretty good before Saturday, so maybe he had a brain cramp. Maybe he had typecast his relievers so carefully that when he went looking for the tying-run-at-the-plate-in-the-seventh guy, he came up empty. That must be on his mind because he is considering keeping Shawn Chacon in the bullpen rather than making him the fifth starter. Tracy would like yet another specialist, for the seventh inning.

Whatever the explanation, Tracy didn't give his team its best chance to win Saturday. The Pirates subsequently lost the game, the series, the homestand, and valuable ground on four other NL Central teams that lost series over the weekend. McLeary lost his job, going back to Indianapolis on Sunday. The Pirates are again five games under .500 and the season has much the same look as the past 14 losers.

The point would be the same if McLeary had gotten Clark out. There was no reason to risk using less than the best pitcher at that critical moment. Such situations don't arise every night. Torres has not pitched in one as highly leveraged as that inning in two weeks. His previous white-knuckle moment a 1-2-3 15th inning in a 4-3 victory in Chicago May 8.

That's because Torres is the closer. Every team needs a good closer, but he now comes with a warning sticker from the Department of Current Conventional Wisdom: Break the glass on his alarm only at the end of the game, when it might or might not mean as much as it does when the tying run comes to the plate with two outs in the seventh inning.