There remain only four career-long relievers in the Hall of Fame -- Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers, Bruce Sutter and Rich Gossage -- while one-time saves leader Lee Smith languishes on the HOF ballot. (Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera seem destined to join the first group.) This may be a case of baseball writers understanding something about the game that managers don't.
Ever since Tony LaRussa designated the ninth inning Dennis Eckerley's (Eck is in the Hall, but like John Smoltz, he's a starter-reliever hybrid), teams have wrapped usage of their best relief pitcher around the save statistic, like a pig in a blanket. For the last decade we have known that this is sub-optimal use of said hurler, who would have much greater impact pitching in higher-leverage situations.
The game totters in the balance for the Mudville Nine down by a run in the seventh with the bases juiced and the heart of the enemy's lineup due. That's the time to bring in hard-tossing Billy Ballslinger. Saving him to "protect" a three-run cushion in the opponent's last at-bat is a waste of resources and, in Mudville's case, futile. After all, leaving in middling Wendell Whiplash so as not to "waste" the closer obviates the need to "protect" anything at game's end besides the clubhouse spread.
Great new research from Baseball Prospectus demonstrates vividly how little "closing" has meant to team success. Over the last half-century, the number of one-run leads lost by teams in the ninth inning has declined microscopically -- about once every two years per team. Add in two- and three- run leads no longer being squandered and use of the closer may be worth a win a year. (This research comes with a slew of caveats, but the principles are sound.)
Except there's a cost to defending the closer's game-virginity until the final frame. It's all those leads Mudville might have established had optimal bullpen use squashed opponent rallies in previous innings. The difference there, according to BP's research, is twice as great since '88. Since they're most often much higher leverage situations than two run leads with three outs to induce, they wipe out all of the gains, and a whole lot more.
Given that, how much is a great closer worth to his team? There's been scads of research on the subject with varying results, but it all has this in common: even a guy who regularly flays batters from the closer role has less value than a mid-line third starter, because he's only out there for 65 innings in a season, many of them with a three-run lead. Baseball Reference, employing the model that snuggles up most to relievers, pegs Trevor Hoffman's 18-year career at 31 wins over replacement value, miles short of the Hall of Fame average for pitchers. By way of comparison, that's 2.7 wins fewer than Jamie Moyer accumulated...in the 18 years before he turned 40. In just 10 seasons, the punchline that sounds like this -- Carlos Zambrano -- has bequeathed 31 1/2 victories on the good denizens of our Second City.
One more: Pedro Martinez earned four more wins against replacement level in just his four best seasons than Hoffman did in all 18. And Hoffman's the second best ninth-inning specialist of all time. (Please feel free to ignore along with me that they've only existed since 1988.)
So give the writers their props for recognizing intuitively that closing is a bad investment and leaving most of the best relievers out of the Hall. So, managers, when are you going to figure it out and help your teams win more games?
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