Closing Time

A look at the troubles with closers in this early season.

Have you ever felt like you knew more than the professionals? Sometimes you sit on a couch, watch the game, and marvel at the fact that managers out-manage themselves. In the rush to prove themselves valuable and worthy of their ridiculous contracts, managers often ignore decisions based on common sense and make judgments based on fear of the media and personal ego. Yesterday, after having lost two in a row, the Yankees battled back to tie a game against the Indians at three in the sixth inning. After a rough start, Ian Kennedy had battled to keep his team in the game and had been rewarded by Jorge Posada’s pinch hit three-run triple. Years ago, this would be the type of game Joe Buck would pinpoint in October as what turned New York’s season around.

Yesterday, in the bottom of the ninth, struggling reliever Russ Ohlendorf loaded the bases, and fed a fat 2-1 fastball to Victor Martinez, who lined a game winning single into left field. Meanwhile, Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera sat unused in the bullpen. Could I sit here and second guess Girardi for this maneuver? Of course. Should I? Maybe. Ultimately, though, I can see where Girardi was coming from. He saw the writing on the wall of the game, and simply did not want to burn his best pitchers if there was a chance they might be more needed in extra innings. Simply, he allowed modern strategy to override his basic common sense. He fell victim to the modern specialization of the bullpen.

Up until the careers of Bruce Sutter and Goose Gossage, the save statistic was little more than a novelty. It was used by announcers and students of the game much like all of our novelty statistics—such as a player’s batting average on his birthday—are used today: to fill air time and maybe flesh out someone’s understanding of a player. It in no way reflected the value of a reliever. Then came Sutter’s splitter and Gossage’s ferocity. Managers found value in pitchers, who having limited success in starting roles, found their niche getting big outs in high stress situations.

Dennis Eckersley and his side-winding delivery closely followed. However, these specialists were still not the norm across baseball. When a manager like Tony LaRussa had a pitcher like Eckersley, he would use him to close the game. Whether the hitter was lefty or righty had no relevance, if the A’s had a three run or less lead with less than five outs to go, Tony was going to Eckersley. Nine times out of ten, the strategy worked. Unfortunately for Eck and the A’s, that one time where the strategy fell through ended up being Kirk Gibson depositing the Eckersley delivery into the right field bleachers in game one of the World Series. Nevertheless, if a team did not have a Dennis Eckersley or a Jesse Orosco, they went with what worked—a hot reliever, matching lefty-lefty or righty-righty.

Then, in the mid-90s, the Yankees found success with shortening the game. In 1996, they used Rivera in the seventh and eighth and John Wetteland in the ninth. Then they had Jeff Nelson and Mike Stanton as set up men and Rivera as a closer. Yankees starters only needed to pitch with a lead into the sixth inning. Then they would hand the ball to their bullpen specialists. They found a formula that worked and stuck with it. Baseball men all over the country took notice, and, in their usual creative way, totally ripped off the idea. Couple that trend with the growth in popularity of fantasy baseball, which led to the growth of the save as a viable statistic that demonstrates the value of a relief pitcher to his team, and you end up with every team locked into a strategy that does not necessarily lead to consistent success.

Flash forward to 2008. All 30 teams have the ninth inning reserved for their respective closer, the eighth reserved for their set up man, and the seventh held back for the middle relief. Whether you have Jonathan Papelbon’s 1.85 2007 ERA or Joe Borowski’s 5.07 2007 ERA in the back of your bullpen, if you have a lead going into the ninth inning, you will use that pitcher. The problem? Technically, a closer should be a team’s best relief pitcher, and the set up man its second best pitcher. Now imagine this situation: you are a manager, it is the bottom of the sixth inning and you are leading 5-2. Your opposition has men on second and third with one out, they have their three and four hitters coming up. The next few pitches will most likely determine the outcome of the game. As a manager, you want your best pitcher in the game, but, because it is the sixth inning, he’s not going to be the one trotting out of the bullpen. Instead you end up with a match up like Joaquin Benoit and his 6.75 ERA facing Manny Ramirez…good luck.

So far this year, between middle relievers, set up men, and closers, there have been 277 save opportunities, 34% of which have been blown. I included the saves not blown by closers because that is the crux of the issue. As a manager, you should have your best pitcher getting the high stress outs, no matter the inning. But because pitchers are now reserved for specific innings and batters, managers are forced to employ their lower quality relievers to get the most important outs. Over time, those high quality relievers are used at a lower rate, while the Russ Ohlendorfs of the world see more innings. Is that how you would run a successful business? Imagine if law firms gave their most important cases to their most underperforming attorneys.

To go a little further, the teams that have been the best at blowing saves are Texas, Washington, Colorado, and Milwaukee. Let’s focus on Milwaukee and Eric Gagne. Based on success from three or four years ago, combined with the emphasis on saves, Gagne will make ten million dollars this year. So far, he has appeared in twelve games, has blown four saves and a 6.75 ERA. The Brewers signed Gagne with the hope that he would provide stability to a bullpen that struggled last year and push them over the hump. Right now, they have paid $1.4 million per save, and $2.5 million per blown save. They have sunk so much money into this shaky investment that they have locked themselves in with a reliever, who only succeeded when he was allegedly taking steroids.

When I was really young, living in Brooklyn, my friends and I loved to play Ninja Turtles. I liked to be Donatello. At one point, I joined the TMNT fan club, mainly because they promised an authentic TMNT bandana/ mask. When the package arrived, I tore into it, and hastily pulled out a purple bandana. However, this bandana was just a handkerchief—there were no eyeholes. Not to be deterred, I tied the do-rag around my eyes and convinced myself I could see out of the bottom of the mask. I walked outside and directly into a pole.

The Brewers have done exactly what I did. They have convinced themselves they can see out the bottom of the mask, when in reality; Gagne is going to walk them into a pole. The worst thing about this situation is that the Brewers have pitchers that could match up with hitters and be effective in the late innings, possibly leading to more Milwaukee wins. That being said, that $10 million salary guarantees that Gagne is going to stay a closer until they desperately need to make a change.

Overall, baseball strategy evolves slowly, and once a tactic gains a foothold in baseball consciousness, it is very hard to dislodge or question that tactic. “Baseball men” and the media will always tear apart a manager that diverges from the norm; whether he succeeds or fails, he has still done so in an unorthodox manner. Am I saying that the closer should be disbarred? Of course not, but why should a manager blindly follow strategy that does not jive with every situation? A manager will manage the ninth inning the same way whether he has Francisco Rodriguez or Manny Corpas in his bullpen and that makes zero sense.

Ultimately, managers should be free to coach more by their own individual feel of their team than by convention or tradition. Devalue the save; pitch the right pitcher for the right situation. Until someone does that, we are stuck with mediocre closers and lots of innings from sub par middle and long relievers. Hopefully, we don’t walk into too many poles.