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At BJOL -- just $3 per month -- James' latest article finds that the last 40 World Series winners tilted heavily towards great closers.  He freely confesses that this finding shocked him - he (and I) have always resisted the idea that great bullpens were very important.  Today, apparently, James changed his mind.

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METHOD

James took the last 40 Series winners, since the 1976 Reds, and counted up how many players a team had that were among the top 10 in baseball.   Is there more of a tendency for those 40 teams to rank a closer in the top 10, than to rank their catcher in the top 10?  

The average "position rank" of the closer, among these 40 historical teams, was 7.9 among 30 teams, "much higher than any other position."  The average rank for a Series winner was 11.4.  Easily the least important positions are the corner OF spots.  Which is where Dipoto is going with developmental players, by the way.  From a Position Scarcity standpoint I'd have thought it was almost self-evident that you address LF and RF last.

Can you guess the 2nd-most important?

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Left-handed starter.  I'll buy that.

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TAKEAWAY 1

Great study. You wonder whether this light bulb will impact baseball a bit like the Saves stat did.  

A cool aspect of it, is that it reminds us that playoff baseball is 'valid,' as it were. It's fashionable with saberdudes (elsewhere) to consider a championship nothing but luck. To tut-tut about celebrating the 2015 Royals any better than their +83 run differential. 

A great relief stud is like a "Get Out of Inning Free" card, and in elite baseball games it turns out that card weighs quite heavily in a strategic and practical sense. 

For me, a clarity about this point makes baseball a more coherent strategy game and more fun to watch. 

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TAKEAWAY 2

James also found that many of the 1970's teams had incredible arrays of stars ... the 1976 Reds were ALL top-10 players, and everybody but Cesar Geronimo was a top FOUR player.  But the 1978 Yankees were similar, and (it seems to me) you have the 1975 Red Sox, the Finley A's, the 1979 Pirates, the Dodgers...

I always felt like it was a shame we lost that era; it seemed to me that the great teams of the 1970's (including the 75 Red Sox, the Finley A's, etc) were more "satisfying" and that we've lost something since. (Still with the 85 Royals, etc., we were seeing the same thing.) 

But some of those 1970s teams had Real Madrid lineups, stars at every position, who were homegrown in a "fair" manner. This study clarified that in a concrete way. 

Fun stuff.

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WE GOT EDWIN DIAZ AND YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM

Assessing a 2-month rookie closer isn't a slam dunk in fantasy baseball; he can so easily lose his job the next year.  Ron Shandler opines, in restated words, that because --- > Diaz had a weaponized fastball with a 13% whiff rate, a slider with a 34% (!) whiff rate, a microscopic walk rate, and other bells and whistles, his stats "point to a top-tier closer."

Here's a Diaz video with (1) a painted fastball, (2, 3, 4) three parachute sliders up in the zone, and (5) a slider that rolls off the table.

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Enjoy,

Dr D