Closing time

When J.J. Putz gets up in the bullpen, Jim Slaton knows not to say too much.

Slaton, the Seattle Mariners’ bullpen coach, has been around enough closers in 38 years of pro ball to know some are so touchy he could set them into a rage by saying something like, “Nice stuff.”

Since manager Mike Hargrove handed the ninth-inning job to Putz in May, the 29-year-old has pitched as well as any closer in baseball. Entering Saturday, he had 14 saves, a 2.41 earned run average and a streak of 11 straight saves.

Putz throws a fastball that’s getting faster – consistently 98 mph when he blew away the Diamondbacks on Thursday – and a split-finger pitch that looks crushable until it dives into the dirt and under the sick swing of whoever’s trying to hit it.

Putz is throwing those pitches for strikes, too. His walk in the ninth inning Thursday was his first since mid-May.

“We’ve tried to give him regular work, whether he’s pitching in a save situation or whether he’s come in just to get work,” Hargrove said. “To be a good closer, you have to throw strikes. You can’t afford to put people on base via the walk. The more he’s been out there, the better he’s been.”

The good thing about throwing as hard as Putz is that he doesn’t need to nibble around the strike zone, and he doesn’t.

“If you throw the ball 88 to 91, you’d better be pretty good as far as command of the ball and keeping it out of the middle of the plate,” Hargrove said. “The good thing about J.J. is that he has command of all his pitches. He’s not lucky, he’s good.”

And intense.

Like most other closers, Putz finds himself in a different state mentally just before, during and after the ninth inning than he is at almost any other time. It’s difficult for him to describe but easy for anyone around him to notice.

“You can see the way his demeanor changes in the bullpen,” Slaton said. “As the game moves on and it gets closer to time when he might be in there, he kind of puts his head down. When he does that, you know he’s thinking about different situations.”

Long before the bullpen phone rings, Putz will get up and stretch, keeping his thoughts to himself.

“He keeps his eye on me and the phone, waiting for word from the dugout,” Slaton said. “But he knows when he’s going to be in there.”

At times like that, nobody says a lot. When Putz begins throwing off the bullpen mound, he usually has just one question for Slaton.

“He always asks me about the first hitter and how to pitch him,” Slaton said. “He doesn’t ask about the others, just the first one. He knows who they are, though, and what to do with them, too.”

Ask Putz what goes through his mind, and it’s not easy for him to explain.

“Really, nothing,” he said. “I just clear my head and get relaxed, get focused. When we’re sitting out there early, we’re having a good time. All the guys are talking among each other. Usually about the fifth inning, we get focused in on everything.”

That’s when the intensity increases, and Putz says it’s no different in the major leagues than it was when he was closing in the minors.

“The ninth inning is the ninth inning no matter where you’re at,” Putz said. “It just happens naturally and the adrenaline starts pumping.”

It never pumped harder than the ninth inning June 16.

Putz had gotten the first two outs in the top of the ninth with the Mariners leading 5-4, and Barry Bonds walked to the plate.

He struck out Bonds on a 3-2 splitter in one of the classic pitcher-hitter confrontations ever at Safeco Field.

The adrenaline rush was more like a torrent.

One of the Mariners’ PR employees tried to grab Putz after that game for a TV interview, and he walked right on by, his mind still in closer-mode. He admitted it took a long time for his head to clear after that game.

“I didn’t go to sleep that night,” Putz said. “That was one of the best. There aren’t words to describe that.”

The strikeouts and saves, which are starting to pile up, describe it well enough.

Kirby Arnold covers major league baseball forThe Herald