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.