Baseball / Ross Newhan : Three of a Kind: Sutter, Carlton and Saberhagen

A tale of three pitchers: --The Atlanta Braves fear that Bruce Sutter is finished at 33, a rotator cuff tear having been discovered during shoulder surgery last Wednesday.

Sutter, who appeared in just 16 games this season, also underwent shoulder surgery last December for a nerve problem. The Braves reportedly believe that the rotator cuff tear should have been detected then, which would have given Sutter another nine months to work on a recovery.

Now, Sutter looms as one of the free-agent flops of all time, an unfortunate designation for one of the best relief pitchers of all time. He had a 9-7 record and 26 saves in his first two seasons with Atlanta. His multi-decade contract has four years left at $1.7 million a year, not including annuity and deferments. The price of his relief work comes out to more than $390,000 a save, a significant road marker on owner Ted Turner’s predicted journey to the poorhouse.

--Steve Carlton, obviously finished at 41, plods on, swallowing pride and tarnishing his great career.

The Chicago White Sox, in need of a starting pitcher and without a farm candidate, contend that they have nothing to lose in signing Carlton for the major league minimum--about $19,000--over the final seven weeks of the season with no obligation for next year.

They say they are hopeful that even if Carlton stays for only the seven weeks, his experience will rub off on a staff with nine other pitchers whose combined totals of victories, 301, and strikeouts, 3,581, do not equal Carlton’s. He took 319 wins and 4,000 strikeouts with him to Chicago.

The truth is that Ken Harrelson, the club’s vice president who had previously pledged a developmental program, sees it as one final public relations ploy at the end of a dismal season, when the Bears are again dominating Windy City headlines.

For Carlton, who claims that he can still pitch and loves the game too much to walk away, it is rumored that a series of bad investments has left him desperate for one more $1-million contract.

--Bret Saberhagen, who did not lose two in a row all last season en route to a 20-6 record and the American League Cy Young Award, had not won two in a row this season before being put on the Kansas City Royals’ disabled list last week. He has a 6-10 record and an undefined shoulder problem.

Saberhagen, 22, may or may not be through for the season, but the Royals privately believe that his real problem goes beyond a shoulder injury, that it may be similar to one he experienced as a senior at Reseda’s Cleveland High. The Royals are said to believe that Saberhagen let his dream season affect his winter preparations and summer life style, that the boy next door yielded to the temptation of a neighborhood lighted by neon.

“I’ve seen a lot of players with similar talent wind up on street corners,” Manager Dick Howser, now battling a malignant brain tumor, said recently. “It’s up to Bret how he handles this.”

Said George Brett: “Any guy who comes up when he’s 19 and is a World Series hero when he’s 21 has never dealt with failure before. He’s obviously going through an adjustment.”

The adjustment may call more for maturity than cortisone.

Former Dodger Glenn Burke, now a security guard in Oakland, was back in competition last week, participating in basketball and softball at the National Gay Games in San Francisco.

“I can still play,” Burke told the San Francisco Examiner. “I came up with a lot of the guys who are now making millions. I was making money playing ball and not having fun. Now I’m not making money but I’m having fun.”

Responding to the Texas heat, the Rangers have been wearing shorts and T-shirts for pregame drills.

Said Charlie Hough: “We look like a softball team but we’re playing a little bit better.”

Refusing to wilt, the Rangers had won 11 of their last 15 games through Thursday, a span during which they overcame the startling inefficiency of their starting pitchers by averaging 6.9 runs a game.

How bad were the starting pitchers?

In those 15 games they totaled only 70 innings, compared to 73 for the bullpen, which answered 43 relief calls. Can an offense that has come from behind to win 31 games continue to carry the burden?

Manager Bobby Valentine doesn’t think it will have to, although he thinks it can, pointing to the depth of an attack that has six players with 10 or more home runs and nine with 30 or more runs batted in.

Pitchers have slumps, too, Valentine said. He predicted that his will come out of it.

“It’s not a matter of if, only a matter of when,” he said.

Angel Manager Gene Mauch gave Texas some motivational fodder the other day when he told the Herald Examiner’s Mel Durslag that he likes his chances against a team that has to score nine runs to win and that if he can’t beat Texas then, perhaps, he should consider retiring.

Add Rangers: The unheralded Texans have held on long enough that they have an advantage in the schedule. Currently playing a three-game series with Toronto, the Rangers have six games left with Boston, their final meeting with a team from the superior Eastern Division. The Angels still have 24 games left against teams from the East, including home-and-home series with Detroit, Baltimore, New York and Cleveland.

Detroit Manager Sparky Anderson seemed to be back in his foot-in-the-mouth mode the other day. Talking about new catcher Mike Heath, who had been 11 for 41 throwing out opposing base runners while with St. Louis, Anderson said: “Johnny Bench never saw the day he threw a baseball harder than Heath.”

Lance Parrish, the Tigers’ regular catcher, will not require surgery for a disk displacement that put him on the disabled list and led to the acquisition of Heath, but it is still uncertain whether Parrish will be able to catch again this season. It’s bad timing for the Tigers--and for Parrish, who will become eligible for free agency when the season ends. A bad back won’t help Parrish’s marketability.

Add Tigers: The absence of Parrish and the inconsistency of the offense has forced Anderson to employ a new weapon, the stolen base. “We’ll have to steal it,” he said, alluding to Detroit’s chances in the East. He added: “We could be playing in Buffalo and we’d still have to run.”

Kirk Gibson and Dave Collins have 24 steals, and Alan Trammell has 19. The Tigers haven’t had three players with 20 or more steals since 1934.

Jose DeLeon, 2-19 with Pittsburgh last year and now 3-1 and fulfilling his promise with the White Sox, has developed a forkball that is testing the catching ability of Carlton Fisk, who said: “You’ve got to cover eight feet diagonally. He throws that sucker 85 m.p.h. It’s like Charlie Hough throwing a knuckleball 90 m.p.h. and trying to catch it.”

Cleveland outfielder Mel Hall continues to press a suit against his team’s traveling secretary, Mike Seghi, regarding a car accident they were involved in last year at Arlington, Tex. Hall, a passenger in the car driven by Seghi, suffered injuries that restricted him to 23 games.

He has sued Seghi for negligence, claiming that he suffered career-threatening injuries. Hall, however, hasn’t been helping his case. He had 62 RBIs, 17 home runs and a .297 average through Thursday, all career highs.

On his decision to retire Billy Martin’s No. 1, New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner said: “I felt he deserved it. I’m tired of flowers for the dead. I like flowers for the living.”