Slaves to the Saves
Tuesday, July 24 2012 @ 12:30 AM EDT
Contributed by: Magpie
I haven't given you a Data Table in a long time.
Consider this, then:
Team Team Team Team Closer %
Team SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct SV SV Opp BSv SV Pct of Team SV
Jonathan Papelbon PHI 21 24 3 .875 21 34 13 .618 1.000
Jason Motte STL 21 25 4 .840 21 35 14 .600 1.000
Brett Myers HOU 19 21 2 .905 20 29 9 .690 .950
Rafael Betancourt COL 16 20 4 .800 17 35 18 .486 .941
Fernando Rodney TBR 27 28 1 .964 29 35 6 .829 .931
Chris Perez CLE 26 28 2 .929 28 33 5 .848 .929
Jonathan Broxton KCR 22 26 4 .846 24 36 12 .667 .917
Alfredo Aceves BOS 20 24 4 .833 22 34 12 .647 .909
Jim Johnson BAL 30 32 2 .938 34 46 12 .739 .882
Craig Kimbrel ATL 28 30 2 .933 32 41 9 .780 .875
Joe Nathan TEX 19 20 1 .950 22 27 5 .815 .864
Jose Valverde DET 18 22 4 .818 22 33 11 .667 .818
Frank Francisco NYM 18 21 3 .857 22 38 16 .579 .818
John Axford MIL 16 22 6 .727 20 36 16 .556 .800
Joel Hanrahan PIT 28 31 3 .903 35 41 6 .854 .800
Rafael Soriano NYY 24 26 2 .923 31 40 9 .775 .774
J.J. Putz ARI 17 20 3 .850 22 33 11 .667 .773
Heath Bell MIA 19 25 6 .760 25 38 13 .658 .760
Huston Street SDP 16 16 0 1.000 22 32 10 .688 .727
Casey Janssen TOR 13 14 1 .929 18 29 11 .621 .722
Addison Reed CHW 15 18 3 .833 21 36 15 .583 .714
Santiago Casilla SFG 24 30 6 .800 34 45 11 .756 .706
Kenley Jansen LAD 18 23 5 .783 26 39 13 .667 .692
Matt Capps MIN 14 15 1 .933 22 29 7 .759 .636
Carlos Marmol CHC 11 13 2 .846 18 30 12 .600 .611
Aroldis Chapman CIN 17 21 4 .810 29 40 11 .725 .586
Tyler Clippard WSN 16 19 3 .842 30 41 11 .732 .533
Ernesto Frieri LAA 11 11 0 1.000 22 34 12 .647 .500
Tom Wilhelmsen SEA 10 12 2 .833 21 32 11 .656 .476
Ryan Cook OAK 10 14 4 .714 25 36 11 .694 .400
MLB Total 564 651 87 .866 735 1067 332 .689 .767
What's all this then?
Well, that's each team's closer, obviously. The order of listing is based on the final column, which tells you what percentage of their own teams saves that pitcher has scooped up - from Papelbon and Motte, who have collected 100% of Philadelphia and St.Louis' saves, respectively - all the way down to Ryan Cook, who has gathered just 40% of Oakland's saves.
As you can see, the overall average through the majors is 76.7% - that's the percentage of saves recorded by each team's save leader, whom we shall now designate The Closer. And of course, Closers actually account for a considerably higher share of the overall total. What happens, every year, is that some teams change which of the relief pitchers is the Designated Closer. That's the reason that Cook and Wilhelmsen have recorded such a low percentage of their team's saves. Some other guy was the Designated Closer earlier in the season: Grant Balfour in Oakland, Brandon League in Seattle. We've gone through the same thing here, where Casey Janssen is the third pitcher in the Closer's role.
Your modern managers are Slaves to the Save. Every one of them.
This bothers a great many people - it used to bother me, although I don't think it's nearly the outrage I once did. Here's what I'm curious about:
How long has this been going on? How long has it been standard practise to reserve the Save for your Designated Closer? Closers are getting 76.7% of the saves this year?
Well, how many did they get in 2011?
Team Team Team Team Closer % of
SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct SV SV Opp BSv SV Pct Team SV
2011 Closer Avg 32.6 37.6 5.0 .866 41.4 60.7 19.3 .682 .786
Even more than this year. Ok, how about 2010?
Team Team Team Team Closer % of
SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct SV SV Opp BSv SV Pct Team SV
2010 Closer Avg 29.9 34.6 4.6 .866 40.1 58.1 18.0 .690 .746
Uh-huh. And 2009...
Team Team Team Team Closer % of
SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct SV SV Opp BSv SV Pct Team SV
2009 Closer Avg 31.1 35.9 4.8 .866 40.1 59.8 19.7 .670 .776
What about 2008?
Team Team Team Team Closer % of
SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct SV SV Opp BSv SV Pct Team SV
2008 Closer Avg 29.4 34.4 4.9 .856 39.5 61.6 22.1 .641 .746
2007, maybe?
Team Team Team Team Closer % of
SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct SV SV Opp BSv SV Pct Team SV
2007 Closer Avg 30.5 35.4 4.9 .861 39.9 59.8 19.9 .668 .763
This has been going on for a while, it seems. Life is short - let's continue, but in five year increments. We'll begin with 2006, which looks pretty much like all years we've seen since:
Team Team Team Team Closer % of
SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct SV SV Opp BSv SV Pct Team SV
2006 Closer Avg 29.7 34.8 5.4 .853 40.0 60.9 20.9 .657 .741
But now let's jump back in time to 2001. Were things different then?
Team Team Team Team Closer % of
SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct SV SV Opp BSv SV Pct Team SV
2001 Closer Avg 30.2 35.3 5.0 .857 40.3 59.9 19.5 .674 .750
Evidently not. 1996, then?
Team Team Team Team Closer % of
SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct SV SV Opp BSv SV Pct Team SV
1996 Closer Avg 29.6 35.4 5.7 .838 39.9 60.3 20.4 .662 .744
Same old, same old. 1996 could very well have been 2012. Well, how about 1991?
Team Team Team Team Closer % of
SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct SV SV Opp BSv SV Pct Team SV
1991 Closer Avg 26.8 32.7 5.8 .821 43.5 62.0 18.5 .702 .616
Whoops, there it is. Houston, I think we found something. That was pretty dramatic.
Let's quickly gather a few more sample seasons.
Team Team Team Team Closer % of
SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct SV SV Opp BSv SV Pct Team SV
1986 Closer Avg 22.5 30.0 7.5 .750 38.6 57.4 18.8 .672 .583
1981 Closer Avg 19.3 25.2 5.9 .764 35.2 50.6 15.4 .696 .547
1976 Closer Avg 14.3 19.5 5.6 .735 28.5 42.0 13.5 .678 .504
1971 Closer Avg 15.1 19.5 4.5 .772 28.7 41.3 12.6 .695 .525
(We're stopping here because the Save wasn't an official statistic until 1969, although the Sporting News had been publishing them since 1960, when Jerome Holtzman invented the thing.)
So - during the first fifteen or twenty years after the official recognition of the Save rule, the number of saves recorded by a team's relief ace increased gradually. But in the early 1990s, managerial habits changed dramatically. Saves become the property of the Designated Closer. It wasn't a nice, unbroken progression. Here are the league figures for 1986 through 1996.
Team Team Team Team Closer % of
SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct SV SVOpp BSv SV Pct Team SV
1996 Closer Avg 29.6 35.4 5.7 .838 39.9 60.3 20.4 .662 .744
1995 Closer Avg 26.0 31.5 5.5 .825 35.9 53.1 17.2 .676 .723
1994 Closer Avg 25.4 31.9 6.5 .797 39.4 59.4 19.9 .664 .645
1993 Closer Avg 30.8 36.5 5.7 .843 42.6 61.9 19.4 .687 .722
1992 Closer Avg 27.9 34.0 6.1 .821 42.7 61.2 18.6 .697 .654
1991 Closer Avg 26.8 32.7 5.8 .821 43.5 62.0 18.5 .702 .616
1990 Closer Avg 26.8 32.8 6.0 .818 42.8 60.0 17.2 .713 .626
1989 Closer Avg 27.4 33.6 6.2 .816 41.1 58.0 16.9 .709 .666
1988 Closer Avg 25.8 32.3 6.5 .798 40.3 56.4 16.1 .715 .639
1987 Closer Avg 19.9 26.3 6.4 .757 37.3 56.3 19.0 .663 .533
1986 Closer Avg 22.5 30.0 7.5 .750 38.6 57.4 18.8 .672 .583
It's probably worth noting that 1994 was a strike year. Several teams were still experimenting with the Closer role, and the season was over before before some would manage to establish themselves. But this may have been the last time any team was willing to experiment with this particular job.
How did we get here, again?
In the 1960s and 1970s, an outstanding relief pitcher was regarded as a nice thing to have - but not an essential thing to have. Sparky Anderson, the manager who made the most conspicuous use of his bullpen in the 1970s, always spread the work among multi relief pitchers, who were more or less interchangeable. Earl Weaver's relief corps shared the work in a similar fashion - Weaver simply didn't use his pen as often. Billy Martin leaned on his starters so heavily that there was never enough work for more than one reliever, as Sparky Lyle and Rawly Eastwick both discovered in 1978.
In the 1980s, bullpen aces like Quisenberry and Righetti started to rack up hitherto unprecedented save totals. But there was still variety in the land. There were still successful teams that didn't have a clearly defined relief ace; there were still teams, like the Mets, that split the work between two relief pitchers, normally a RH (Roger McDowell) and a LH (Jesse Orosco). This last had an especially strong pedigree in the NL, going as far back as 1961 with RH Jim Brosnan and LH Bill Henry in Cincinnati. Walter Alston's bullpens split the work between a LH (first Ron Perranoski, aletr Jim Brewer) and a series of RH: Larry Sherry, Ed Roebuck, Bob Miller, Phil Regan . The Giants in the late 1970s had several of these units, with Garry Lavelle and Randy Moffitt (with Greg Minton replacing Moffitt in the early 1980s.). The Phillies of the same period had teamed LH Tug McGraw with RH Gene Garber and Ron Reed. These types of arrangements were once widespread, but they're a thing of the past now. Everything has changed, and all these changes took place over a fairly short period, in the early 1990s.
So why? What brought this on anyway?
I think that the obvious explanation is the same one that explains most changes in game strategies. In the early 1990s, the most visible, spectacular, and successful relief pitcher on the planet was Dennis Eckersley of Oakland. His manager, Tony LaRussa made a point of saving Eckersley for the ninth inning, for the save situation. LaRussa had a reason for using Eckersley this way, he explained what it was and why he was doing things this way. And it worked. Eckersley put together some of the greatest seasons any relief pitcher has had in the history of the game, and looked impressive as hell while he was at it. (Eck always reminded me of Zorro, myself.)
It's the same old story. Successful strategies get copied.
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