You may have heard that when Atlanta closer Craig Kimbrel takes the mound it's like a shark in a sea of chum The greatest reliever in baseball history, Mariano Rivera, wishes he had Kimbrel's talent. In his first-ballot Hall of Fame career, Rivera managed just three seasons with better ERAs, relative to league average, than Kimbrel has averaged over his first six seasons.
During that time, Kimbrel's 1.43 ERA compares to a league ERA of 3.82. He has toyed with NL batters like no other pitcher ever has. In his 289 innings, Kimbrel has fanned 476 batters and allowed just 153 hits. He's led the league in saves each of his five full seasons.
Better yet, the Braves have enjoyed Kimbrel's contributions at bargain bin prices, at least in the baseball universe. He's earned just $8.7 million, and even with the lucrative five-year deal they inked last season, the Braves are on the hook for just $46 million over the next four seasons for a pitcher who is just 27 and has missed a lifetime total of six days due to injury.
PECOTA projects that Kimbrel will whiff 103 batters in 64 innings in 2015, producing 45 saves with a 1.34 ERA. Keep in mind that projection systems are inherently conservative. If he has a good year you can expect him to cure cancer, exterminate ISIS and reach a higher state of consciousness.
All of which is prelude to the idea that the Braves should consider trading Craig Kimbrel. A closer's value is limited by the paucity of innings he pitches. For all his heat-firing transcendence, Kimbrel has retired just 867 batters in his career, earning the Braves just 12 wins against replacement, according to Baseball Reference.
Of course, closers don't just pitch innings; they pitch critical innings. Their value is heightened by the importance of the situations in which
they appear. Closers generally enter tight games to secure key outs with the
outcome on the line.
But: there will be no critical innings in Atlanta for the next two years. The Braves have sacrificed '15 and '16 for a sustained run starting in 2017 when the new ballpark opens in Marietta. Kimbrel will have to be under-utilized for two seasons when there are fewer games to "save," and even then, somewhat irrelevant as the team chases 80 wins. That's a lot of opportunity cost -- in the form of what he might bring back in trade -- for a few extra wins that might catapult the Braves into third place instead of fourth.
Moreover, the gulf between Kimbrel and Mariano Rivera is in the realm of reliability and longevity. Rivera's renown stemmed in part from the metronome-like regularity of his excellence over two decades. Kimbrel has not proven that he will sustain his performance into and through his 30s when bodies, particularly those of hurlers, break down.
Other teams know that, of course, but all it takes is one general manager to salivate at the prospect of acquiring Superman for his pen. Imagine what the Tigers might consider offering from the prospect list for some ninth-inning reliability.
For a team that is future-focused, with their top young stars locked up beyond arbitration, Atlanta might have the opportunity to flip a glitzy, over-appreciated asset for more future stars. It's worth looking into, if the braintrust hasn't already.
Showing posts with label closers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label closers. Show all posts
22 February 2015
13 April 2013
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.
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.
26 January 2013
Hey! I'm the Manager!
Congratulations to me. Charleston, SC just got a new American League franchise (along with the NL's new entry in Indianapolis) and Swamp Foxes managing partner Mike Veeck has appointed me manager.
The bulk of managerial duties are practiced in the clubhouse, on the plane and in the hotel with the human beings populating the team. I'll be off-loading that element of the job to my chief operating officer Joe V. Uhl.
My forte is applying optimal game strategies, which means understanding the research, analyzing situations, maintaining a season-long time horizon, and knowing what makes the players tick. Joe will be by my side in the dugout for that last part.
What fans of the Swamp Foxes will notice, besides our awesome home uniforms featuring Francis Marion in full Revolutionary War regalia and our well-appointed neo-classical ballpark hard by the harbor in historic downtown, is that our team will operate differently than every other. Consequently, we will win games.
No Closer; More Platoons
First, when we break camp, only 10 pitchers will come north from Florida. Five starters and five relievers should be sufficient, particularly in the early months, as days off reduce the fifth starter to a utility role. Our best reliever is our fireman, ready to douse rallies whenever they occur. Securing the last three outs with a three-run lead, though recorded by the newspaper, will be neither particularly noted in our dugout nor assigned to a particular hurler. Let Joe deal with the fallout.
While I'm at it, I'll staff a couple of bullpen jockeys who can throw two or three frames at a time. That will provide the flexibility to scratch the starter early if he's scuffling.
The happy consequence, of course, is that 15 position players will leave our bench thick with pinch-hitters, defensive specialists and platoon-pairs. The flexibility that gives us will enhance the output at some positions and foil the use of LOOGYs and other pitching abominations.
Employing platoons means a roster soft on stars but packing punch nonetheless. An outfield platoon of Matt Joyce and Drew Stubbs (they aren't teammates, but my GM is working a 10-cents-on-the-dollar deal for each of them) doesn't sound too impressive, but Joyce rocks a 1.032 OPS against righties (versus .639 against southpaws) and Stubbs delivers .831 facing lefties. With six hitters riding my pine every night (loblolly pine: this is Charleston), I can afford to mix and match, yanking Joyce when the LOOGY makes a late-inning appearance.
A Sensible Batting Order
I'm not bestowing top billing to our speedy middle infielder with the whiffle ball bat. The guy who bats first bats most and that's the wrong place for a junebug who couldn't hit a beach ball with a kayak paddle. On-base percentage, not velocity, is paramount in the leadoff position, so my leadoff batter will be someone who gets aboard. Lumbering Jason Giambi (.403 OBP) trumps Zack Cozart (.290) as a leadoff prospect, but Giambi saw the top spot nine times in his 17-year career while Cozart has heard his song first in 101 of his 130 MLB games.
Generally after that, my best hitters will be at the top of the order and my worst at the bottom, adjusting to alternate lefties and righties when practical.
Bunting and Stealing Judiciously
Sacrificing trades a precious out and the opportunity to post crooked numbers for a skooch better chance at scoring one run. Consequently, we'll employ this strategy when one run wins the game, and only enough otherwise to keep the enemy on its toes. These decisions will also be affected by the batter-pitcher match-up, the fielding alignment and the on-deck batters.
Stealing is an asset when it succeeds but a little bit of death when it fails. We'll limit our attempts strategically, but we'll occasionally send the runner when we shouldn't -- just to confuse Ron Washington and other deep thinkers.
Customized Pitch Counts
Mark Buerhle's on the hill? Let him throw all night. Pedro Martinez starting tonight? Get him out around 100 pitches. History tells us he tires after 90. A 22-year-old coming off TJ surgery? Yank him as soon as he labors. Pitch counts are more blunt instrument than science, so I'll treat them with respect without allowing them to become my master.
Shifts and Other Customized Strategies
Oreos are yummy, but you wouldn't feed them to your dog. Likewise with fielding alignments: you don't defend David Ortiz the same way you defend Ichiro. I'd throw novel defensive arrangements at some enemy batsmen and challenge them to prove us wrong. A beneficial side effect is that it won't behoove a hitter to practice beating a shift until several teams employ it, so if we're first, we're most likely to succeed.
Use the Right Stats
You'll never hear this manager talk about a good RBI guy. He knows that a batter is either a good hitter in a position to knock in runs or a lucky hacker fronted in the lineup by mad table-setters. Ryan Howard didn't knock in 136+ runs a year from '06-'09 because he was a good RBI guy; he knocked in all those runs because he smashed 45+ homers and tallied 300+ total bases behind Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley.
You also won't hear this manager justify a pitcher-batter match-up based on a handful of previous experiences. If I pinch hit for Juan Pierre against Matt Albers it won't be because of a career .125 batting average against the Indians' righty. Pierre has eight plate appearances against Albers. In fact, Pierre has essentially no lefty-righty splits for his career. The Swamp Foxes' skipper understands about small sample sizes.
I might trot out terms like on-base percentage, OPS, BABIP, range factor and other metrics that matter. The difference between Dusty Baker and me will be that one of us mouths atrophied old statistical shibboleths while the other flexes his muscular quantifiers, not that one uses stats and the other doesn't.
Don't Be Afraid to Innovate
Testing new ideas that don't work gets managers excoriated in the baseball media, providing a palpable disincentive to innovating. I already disdain the baseball ignorati, so I won't be swayed by their recalcitrance to unorthodox methods.
Here are some things I might try:
1. Take a pair of starters who lack stamina and platoon them every fifth day. One guy will pitch the first four or five innings and the other will know he's coming in for the last four or five. It might produce a #1 starter and save the bullpen some action.
2. Platoon position players not by handedness but by day/night or by ballpark or something else that might have an impact. Who knows better than a manager with whom this might work?
3. Give selected players whole series off to go home, see the family, take care of life business and recharge. At the cost of four missed games, they get five days of rest and emotional health. It wouldn't work for everyone -- maybe not even for most players -- but I'll bet there are those who would benefit.
4. (Ironically) practice bunting endlessly. Then employ the bunt for safeties. It forces the opposition to defend yet one more part of the field.
5. Instruct my team to strike out less and hit more home runs. I'm telling you, I'm an innovator.
The bulk of managerial duties are practiced in the clubhouse, on the plane and in the hotel with the human beings populating the team. I'll be off-loading that element of the job to my chief operating officer Joe V. Uhl.
My forte is applying optimal game strategies, which means understanding the research, analyzing situations, maintaining a season-long time horizon, and knowing what makes the players tick. Joe will be by my side in the dugout for that last part.
What fans of the Swamp Foxes will notice, besides our awesome home uniforms featuring Francis Marion in full Revolutionary War regalia and our well-appointed neo-classical ballpark hard by the harbor in historic downtown, is that our team will operate differently than every other. Consequently, we will win games.
No Closer; More Platoons
First, when we break camp, only 10 pitchers will come north from Florida. Five starters and five relievers should be sufficient, particularly in the early months, as days off reduce the fifth starter to a utility role. Our best reliever is our fireman, ready to douse rallies whenever they occur. Securing the last three outs with a three-run lead, though recorded by the newspaper, will be neither particularly noted in our dugout nor assigned to a particular hurler. Let Joe deal with the fallout.
While I'm at it, I'll staff a couple of bullpen jockeys who can throw two or three frames at a time. That will provide the flexibility to scratch the starter early if he's scuffling.
The happy consequence, of course, is that 15 position players will leave our bench thick with pinch-hitters, defensive specialists and platoon-pairs. The flexibility that gives us will enhance the output at some positions and foil the use of LOOGYs and other pitching abominations.
Employing platoons means a roster soft on stars but packing punch nonetheless. An outfield platoon of Matt Joyce and Drew Stubbs (they aren't teammates, but my GM is working a 10-cents-on-the-dollar deal for each of them) doesn't sound too impressive, but Joyce rocks a 1.032 OPS against righties (versus .639 against southpaws) and Stubbs delivers .831 facing lefties. With six hitters riding my pine every night (loblolly pine: this is Charleston), I can afford to mix and match, yanking Joyce when the LOOGY makes a late-inning appearance.
A Sensible Batting Order
I'm not bestowing top billing to our speedy middle infielder with the whiffle ball bat. The guy who bats first bats most and that's the wrong place for a junebug who couldn't hit a beach ball with a kayak paddle. On-base percentage, not velocity, is paramount in the leadoff position, so my leadoff batter will be someone who gets aboard. Lumbering Jason Giambi (.403 OBP) trumps Zack Cozart (.290) as a leadoff prospect, but Giambi saw the top spot nine times in his 17-year career while Cozart has heard his song first in 101 of his 130 MLB games.
Generally after that, my best hitters will be at the top of the order and my worst at the bottom, adjusting to alternate lefties and righties when practical.
Bunting and Stealing Judiciously
Sacrificing trades a precious out and the opportunity to post crooked numbers for a skooch better chance at scoring one run. Consequently, we'll employ this strategy when one run wins the game, and only enough otherwise to keep the enemy on its toes. These decisions will also be affected by the batter-pitcher match-up, the fielding alignment and the on-deck batters.
Stealing is an asset when it succeeds but a little bit of death when it fails. We'll limit our attempts strategically, but we'll occasionally send the runner when we shouldn't -- just to confuse Ron Washington and other deep thinkers.
Customized Pitch Counts
Mark Buerhle's on the hill? Let him throw all night. Pedro Martinez starting tonight? Get him out around 100 pitches. History tells us he tires after 90. A 22-year-old coming off TJ surgery? Yank him as soon as he labors. Pitch counts are more blunt instrument than science, so I'll treat them with respect without allowing them to become my master.
Shifts and Other Customized Strategies
Oreos are yummy, but you wouldn't feed them to your dog. Likewise with fielding alignments: you don't defend David Ortiz the same way you defend Ichiro. I'd throw novel defensive arrangements at some enemy batsmen and challenge them to prove us wrong. A beneficial side effect is that it won't behoove a hitter to practice beating a shift until several teams employ it, so if we're first, we're most likely to succeed.
Use the Right Stats
You'll never hear this manager talk about a good RBI guy. He knows that a batter is either a good hitter in a position to knock in runs or a lucky hacker fronted in the lineup by mad table-setters. Ryan Howard didn't knock in 136+ runs a year from '06-'09 because he was a good RBI guy; he knocked in all those runs because he smashed 45+ homers and tallied 300+ total bases behind Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley.
You also won't hear this manager justify a pitcher-batter match-up based on a handful of previous experiences. If I pinch hit for Juan Pierre against Matt Albers it won't be because of a career .125 batting average against the Indians' righty. Pierre has eight plate appearances against Albers. In fact, Pierre has essentially no lefty-righty splits for his career. The Swamp Foxes' skipper understands about small sample sizes.
I might trot out terms like on-base percentage, OPS, BABIP, range factor and other metrics that matter. The difference between Dusty Baker and me will be that one of us mouths atrophied old statistical shibboleths while the other flexes his muscular quantifiers, not that one uses stats and the other doesn't.
Don't Be Afraid to Innovate
Testing new ideas that don't work gets managers excoriated in the baseball media, providing a palpable disincentive to innovating. I already disdain the baseball ignorati, so I won't be swayed by their recalcitrance to unorthodox methods.
Here are some things I might try:
1. Take a pair of starters who lack stamina and platoon them every fifth day. One guy will pitch the first four or five innings and the other will know he's coming in for the last four or five. It might produce a #1 starter and save the bullpen some action.
2. Platoon position players not by handedness but by day/night or by ballpark or something else that might have an impact. Who knows better than a manager with whom this might work?
3. Give selected players whole series off to go home, see the family, take care of life business and recharge. At the cost of four missed games, they get five days of rest and emotional health. It wouldn't work for everyone -- maybe not even for most players -- but I'll bet there are those who would benefit.
4. (Ironically) practice bunting endlessly. Then employ the bunt for safeties. It forces the opposition to defend yet one more part of the field.
5. Instruct my team to strike out less and hit more home runs. I'm telling you, I'm an innovator.
22 January 2011
Scribes Know Best (Really!)
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?
b
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)