Save the Save...for the Dustbin of History

It only took one day. One day to remind us of the save's utter fecklessness, and to make us wonder anew why it hasn't been retired to the junk pile, along with the game-winning RBI and the hold.

I refer to the Opening Day tilt between the Phillies and Reds, very possibly a match-up of divisional basement residents. In that game, the Phils held a 4-1 lead going into the bottom of the ninth when they brought in their closer, Mr. Jeanmar Gomez.

Jeanmar the Bullpen Keystone
Ol' Jeanmar earned his closer stripes by notching 37 of 43 saves last season, and also by sucking somewhat less than the rest of the Philadelphia bullpen. In his 69 innings, he allowed a 1.46 WHIP, a .289 batting average and 4.85 ERA. Baseball-reference.com suggests his value was less than replacement level.

Maybe some of that was the immobile, aging defense the Phillies rostered behind him. With the detritus cleared out, maybe Gomez is a better pitcher than those numbers indicate.

Saving the Victory
Well, don't tell yesterday that. Needing three outs to earn a save, Gomez got one, allowed a Zack Cozart single, fanned another and the watched mighty Scooter Gennett take him yard. I don't know anything about the single, but I doubt the dinger could be blamed on Ryan Howard's iron glove, even if he were still playing.

Gomez settled down to coax out number three for a 4-3 win and the save. 

Gomez earned the save solely because the Phillies had the foresight to craft a three-run lead. Consider this: 

• Had Gomez entered a 2-1 game he would have earned a loss. 
• Had he entered a 3-1 game a blown save would stain his record. 
• A 5-1 score would not have provided him with a save opportunity. 

This is a very wise policy. At this rate, the Phils will win all their games, Jeanmar will break the saves record and small children 50 years from now will sing paeans to his door-shutting powers. The 18.00 ERA will be lost to history. 

Which should be the fate of the save.

Here's to You, Pitcher Win Fans

Hey fans of pitching Wins, we have a fun game for you! And it's a double bonus, because it works for Saves aficionados as well.

Mariners closer Fernando Rodney is a winner because he knows how to win. He proved that yesterday by nailing down the "W" in an 8-7 Seattle victory over Oakland.

Rodney entered the contest in the ninth inning to close out a 7-3 game. Two walks, four hits and four runs later, it was on to extra innings. Thanks, Fernando, for bonus baseball!

It was all prelude to Nelson Cruz's 10th inning heroics. His solo blast in the top of the frame stood up and Seattle prevailed 8-7.

That gave Fernando Rodney the Win for the nine batters he faced. Better yet, because it was such a blowout when he entered the game, he didn't get blamed for blowing a Save. How can you blow a save when the game isn't even save-worthy!

The only thing missing from this is an Associated Press write-up congratulating Rodney for his triumph. Alas, even a blind squirrel knows an acorn from a pile of dog poo.

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.

Saved!

Matt Albers got a pretty cheap win for the Red Sox last night. After Jon Lester no-hit the Blue Jays and collected five strikeouts in four innings, he came out with a strained lat. Albers took credit for the win by pitching just two innings of one-hit ball. 

Franklin Morales pitched an uneventful seventh and Daniel Bard worked around a single in the eighth. No statistical credit for them. Then, with a 3-0 lead, Jonathan Papelbon nailed down his 18th save in 19 tries.

At least that's what the record says. In fact, Papelbon recorded two outs before allowing a single, a home run, a walk and two more singles. If you're wondering how eight total bases didn't tie the game, let's talk about Darnell McDonald and Jason Varitek.

With Edwin Encarnacion on second and JP Arencibia on first, Papelbon served up a single to left by Blue Jay shortstop John McDonald. McDonald's Red Sock namesake fired a beebee to the plate, which was being blocked by Tek's left leg. Varitek tagged Encarnacion to end the game. Papelbon got credit for that out and for "saving" the game.

In order to "earn" that save, here is the closer's body of work: three outs, one of which resulted from a great defensive play, two runs, four hits and a walk. The Blue Jays batted .667/.714/.833 against him.

This is why sabermetricians don't care about saves. It's why managing to the stat makes utterly no sense. (Actually, it makes utterly no sense to manage to any statistic.) It's why, baseball Neanderthals who claim to dismiss statistics actually don't; they just rely on the wrong ones.

But it's all right. Eventually, they'll all be saved.

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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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