Craig Kimbrel Is Proof of Mariano Rivera

In his first five seasons in baseball, Craig Kimbrel was turning the best hitters in the world into pretzels -- the greatest reliever baseball had ever seen.

The undersized Brave mowed down 476 batters in his first 289 innings and allowed just a 1.43 ERA. He relinquished a total of 12 home runs -- in five years! -- and finished off 186 saves, the most in the NL in four of those five seasons. Despite the size of his workload, he earned top 10 Cy Young votes for all but his rookie season.

Then Kimbrel became arbitration-eligible, and the Braves inked him to a deal that hiked his salary 11-fold to $7 million in just its first year. In deep rebuilding mode and at the urging of this blog, the Braves suckered A.J. Preller into taking Kimbrel and B.J. Upton's death-contract to San Diego for players, prospects and massive salary relief.

But I haven't heard much about him lately...
Imagine the setup: the Incredible Hulk of closers moving to the most demoralizing park for hitters the game has conjured. Petco Park saps 14% from hitters' production, a gilding of the lily that Kimbrel hardly needed.

But a funny thing happened on the way to immortality: Kimbrel lost some of his mojo. Batters began timing his fastball -- just a bit -- and squared him up for homers twice as often. His ERA ballooned from otherworldly to excellent (2.68) and his save numbers dropped by 20%.

Quickly pivoting, Preller sent Kimbrel to Boston for pennies on the dollar, but Kimbrel again took a step back in 2016. Battling injuries for the first time, his walk rate spiked, sending his ERA to 3.40. His saves plummeted again and his value, once reliably more than three wins a year, stood at 0.9 wins last season. The projections suggest that this is the new Craig Kimbrel -- a flame-throwing reliever whose high heat is losing its novelty.

All of this is commentary on Mariano Rivera. Wha?

In his best year, Rivera was a pale shadow of Craig Kimbrel 1.0. He never fanned batters at such a rate. He never dominated hitters so thoroughly. He merely converted his split-finger into relentless awesomeness -- year after year after year.

In Rivera's worst year, his ERA jumped to 3.15. But advanced metrics suggested he was mostly unlucky and the following season -- at age 38 -- he allowed 49 baserunners in 71 innings and dropped his ERA to 1.40.

Mariano in his 40s
In his 40s, Rivera saved 126 games, sported a 1.95 ERA and allowed a WHIP under one. Included in that period was a year missed due to knee surgery and his comeback (and final) season.

In other words, any notion we might have had that Rivera was turning into the game's second best reliever of all time have evaporated, just like that. While Kimbrel's inaugural five campaigns rank up there with the best ever, his two seasons since would rank as Rivera's worst. Kimbrel would have had to maintain his pace for 15 years to match Mariano -- and he has begun to wear down after five.

The name of the greatest reliever of all time will not be changing anytime soon, and by soon we mean at least two decades. Craig Kimbrel's "struggles" remind us how unbelievably great Mariano Rivera was.

Let's Rub Robinson Cano's Uniform in Dirt

Dustin Pedroia is an awesome player. A career .301 hitter, he gets aboard at an admirable .367 clip, flashes leather at second, swipes bases efficiently and plays with verve that endears him to teammates. He's posted 39.4 WAR since entering the league in 2006.

Ronbinson Cano also flashes leather at the keystone, though vervelessly. He poses no threat, except to his own team, of running. A career .309 hitter, he's on base a little less than Pedroia but hits for significantly more power -- twice as many home runs and 50% more RBI. He's also outscored Petey by 162 runs. The Yankees and Red Sox have both created scads of crooked numbers during the two players' careers, so that's not an issue. 

Overall, Cano has posted 45.5 WAR in one more season, six wins more valuable overall than his Boston rival. But Mariano Rivera says in his new book that he prefers Pedroia over Cano. And Mariano is an honorable man. 

Rivera says Pedroia burns to win and Cano does not. Well, I burn to win. Unfortunately, my talent lacks the will to exist. 

More importantly, does "desire" really show up in the results? In his career, Pedroia is a slightly worse hitter when he bats with two outs. Cano is too, though he retains more of his value. But Mariano Rivera prefers Pedroia over Cano. And Mariano is an honorable man. 

With runners in scoring position, both players lose some value. Pedroia makes up some ground on Cano, but Cano is still the better hitter.

Pedroia comes alive in high-leverage situations -- when the game is really on the line -- hitting safely nearly 40% of the time. Cano can't match him. But Cano makes it all up in medium leverage situations. It's a point for Petey, but hardly conclusive.

How about the post-season, when it really matters? Ha! They both stink. Cano has been more pungent, but nothing about Pedroia's post-season resume says "burn to win." 

Cano is also getting better; his four best seasons have been his last four.  Pedroia peaked in '08 and has more or less maintained that level of performance.

So why would the sainted Mariano Rivers take a jab at his former teammate and issue an homage to a former rival? The less obvious reason is a soiled uniform on a 5' 8" body. Pedroia makes a habit of throwing his miniature self in the dirt each game, and that gives the appearance of caring. We all adore the scrappy little over-achiever.

The more obvious reason is that Cano committed the cardinal sin of jumping the Yankee ship for the money. It's hysterical to hear the team's fans contort themselves to find that odious. Evidently they discount any accomplishments by Mark Teixeira, Brian McCann, CC Sabathia, Jacoby Ellsbury, Alex Rodriguez, Mike Mussina, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Wade Boggs, Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter . . . how much time do you have?

Mariano Rivera is the greatest relief pitcher of all time or at least until Craig Kimbrel retires. But that doesn't make him an expert on analyzing the game, any more than it made Joe Morgan or Harold Reynolds or John Kruk. The two second basemen are both potential Hall of Famers, but the talent is worth more than all the world's scrappiness. Take Cano, and if it makes you feel any better, you can rub his uniform in dirt before he puts it on.

All-Star Quality All-Star Observations

Tom Seaver throws like he's nearly 70 but looks like he's not yet 50. I guess you can't nip and tuck your fastball.

Why do we feel compelled to devote so much time to crooning at baseball games? Marc Anthony sings like a girl. Neil Diamond is so over that Huey Lewis and the News laugh at him. 

(In fact, note to Baseball: You're two-for-two with Diamond, if falling flat on your face is your goal. Sweet Caroline [whoa-whoa-whoa] is older than Mariano Rivera. Get the dorky old dude off the field.)

Speaking of Rivera, that was awesome. He and Cano really showed their class at the ASB. Rivera is so genuine. Bravo to Cano for his professionalism in the face of being forced out of the game after two pitches.

Who fed Joe Buck and Tim McCarver their Wheaties? That was the single best broadcast I've heard them do. It was pitch perfect. They called it a pitchers' duel from the start. They kept up with the personnel changes and packaged them in the managers' philosophies. They wove in on-point reflections on the season so far. They captured the changing of the guard without overstating it. And they let the scene speak for itself when Rivera came out. Fox gets my All-Star vote for last night.

It's nice that the bestowers of such things picked Mariano Rivera for the MVP. Let's be honest why he won it: because there was no MVP. Only the final run scored on a hit. No one homered. The shutout required 10 pitchers.

As usual, the AP got it wrong. In its first paragraph, it credited Jose Bautista, JJ Hardy and Jason Kipnis for driving in the game's runs. Two of the three runs scored on outs. Hardy nearly hit into a double-play. The trio went one-for-four.

Am I the only person who noticed how stupid Torii Hunter looked trying to pump up the AL squad before the game?  I mean, besides his teammates? Torii, that #*!@ doesn't work in baseball.

Sal Perez got the Royals' first hit in an All-Star game since Bo Jackson in 1986. That's 27 years ago, before Perez, and about half his All-Star teammates, were born.
 
The seats directly behind home plate were two-thirds empty by the seventh inning. Those are the seats occupied -- until late in the contest -- by rich, well-connected people who don't love baseball but want to be seen. You snot-nosed, mouth-breathing toads -- either honor sporting history or stay the !@#$%^ home. Dickie from Charlotte and Paul from Oakland would've given their left testicles for those tickets.

So now the American League has home field advantage in the World Series. Isn't it great that America gets to see an extra game at the O.Co Coliseum! Just in time for them to burn down that junk pile and let the A's move to San Jose.

And finally, we still have half a season to go. It's shaping up as one for the ages. Is it Thursday yet?

How Great Is Mariano Rivera?

New analytic tools have led us to understand baseball better and in new ways. They have magnified the under-appreciated and shined light on the game's nuances. They have helped clubs work more efficiently and provided their early adapters with an edge on the competition. 

But they have largely failed one area of the game. And that area's name is Mariano Rivera.

There doesn't seem to be any debate today that Rivera is the greatest reliever of all time. He's the all-time saves leader and possesses the lowest ERA relative to the league ever. He's allowed the fewest baserunners per inning in history. He's been well-nigh unhittable in 96 post-season games. He's spun one pitch into 19 dominant seasons. His worst season, at age 37, was merely excellent.

And yet, the analytic tools don't believe he's a Hall of Famer. 

When applied to closers, new analysis asks the following question: where ya been? Appearing for just three outs every other day limits the value of a closer, according to Wins Against Replacement and its ilk, even when his work comes in high-leverage situations. Despite pitching into his 40s, Rivera has just 1200 frames under his belt -- about seven good seasons for a starter. The result is that he has accumulated just 54 wins against replacement, well below the standard for a Hall of Fame pitcher. WAR (or WARP) matters because it's the statistic that comes closest to describing a player's overall value in a single number. 

That 54 is from Baseball-Reference, which is the most credible of the three main Sabermetric sites with regard to relievers. Baseball Prospectus pegs it at 31.4 while Fangraphs is at the median of 38.7. The discrepancy has much to do with whether the measurements use underlying data as the true level of performance; i.e., whether Rivera is given the credit (as he should be) for a career-long outlier BABIP or whether that's dismissed as luck.

By comparison, Fangraphs credits Mark Buehrle with 45.7 wins against replacement. 
 
The problem, of course, is that comparing a closer to a starter because they're both pitchers is like comparing the ACLU to the Teamsters because they're both unions.
Misused and under-utilized though they are, closers can still be fairly analyzed by comparing them to each other. That limits the sample more or less to Rivera's contemporaries, but that should be enough, given his dominance.

Rivera's lifetime ERA+ of 205 is about half-again beyond the next best closer in history, Trevor Hoffman. He has the lowest walk rate, by far the highest strikeout rate, by far the fewest blown saves and nearly double the Win Probability Added of any short reliever in history.

ERA+ measures a pitcher's ERA relative to the league at the time. Rivera has limited opponents to 2.22 earned runs per nine innings at a time when the American League is scoring 4.55 against non-Rivera pitchers.

The bottom line is that this is a SABR problem, not a Sandman problem. Clearly, WAR (or WARP) is not designed to handle closers, or at least to compare them to starters. Whatever number of wins Rivera allegedly added to the Yankees with his bat-breaking contributions, they are not being reflected in the sabermetric record.

A Successful Debut

Associated Press: Mariano Rivera made a successful debut as the Yankees defeated Boston 4-2.

Real Life: Rivera entered the game with a three-run lead. He relinquished a run on a walk and a double before retiring the side. For those of you scoring at home, Red Sox batters hit .250/.400/.500 against him and saddled him with an ERA of 9.00. 

But he "earned" a save, so it must have been successful. At least according to dinosaurs like the Association Press. 

Thirty-four years and counting.

Lots of Hits From These Three Records

Three notable accomplishments are in the news these days -- Ichiro's 2000th hit, Derek Jeter's Yankee-record safety and Mariano Rivera's 38 saves in 39 opportunities. Certainly these are three spectacular players, two sure-fire Hall of Famers and one probable one.

On the other hand, these records are something of a sideshow. After all, accumulating tons of hits often requires an inability to take a free pass. That's certainly a black mark against Ichiro. He would be a much more productive leadoff hitter if he walked 75 times a year rather than collect another 25 singles while producing 50 outs.

It's a bit more complicated with Derek Jeter, who does work the count and earn his share of bases on balls. His almost inevitable drive to 3,000 hits is based mostly on the intersection of consistent excellence with durability. This year, Jeter has reached a new level of performance just as age should be eating away at his skills.

Nonetheless, how important can it be to accumulate a large number of hits when you've passed Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Babe Ruth and are hot on the heels of Lou Gehrig? Clearly, Jeter's abundance of hits is less impressive than the Babe's, the Clipper's or the Mick's. That's not to say that there are any bad players where Jeter is going -- to 3,000 Land -- but hits themselves only tell part of the story.

Then there is the circus act that is the save. It happens that 38/39 accurately reflects the pitching performance of the greatest closer of all time, but in a year in which 2008's 38/39 guy is leaking like a dented sieve, we can't be faulted for being dubious about that stat. It's too bad, because Rivera is having another amazing season and even drawing some Cy Young consideration. (It's a nice sentiment, but at this point, Zack Greinke is so Cy the next candidate is third.)

Many baseball records are interesting from an academic standpoint but have limited meaning. These three (really two) fall into that category. Plus, they'll fill out the plaques in Cooperstown.
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