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In chess, after the round is over you'll see a couple of great players sitting in the skittles room analyzing their game.  There will be several dozen lesser players (such as Dr. D) standing around "rubbernecking" the action.  The "kibitzer" is the Class C player who is making suggestions.  90% of the time the "kibitzer" has no idea of how his kibitzing is being received...

10% of the time the kibitzer is a strong player, and when this is the case, now you've got a fascinating three-way dynamic between the two masters, seated, and the "editor" who is serving as a kind of reality check on the argument.

Thus kibitzeth our compadre Thirteen, who rubbernecks the SSI action and generally produces several dozen Eyes Slideways when he tosses in a "What happens on Ng6?"  This time he kibitzeth,

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Thirteen: Of all my management peeves, the biggest one: DON'T HOLD YOUR CLOSER IN THE BULLPEN JUST BECAUSE IT'S A TIE GAME. Can't even remember how many games the Mariners have gotten walked off on these last two years because one of the scrubs was out there instead of the team's best relief pitcher... and leaving in Capps, the guy with platoon issues, against LHB masher Moss? Not the best idea I've ever heard.

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We'd assumed that Thirteen was a grad student; earlier he corrected us that he's a high schooler.  Maybe he's 13 years old.  This is precisely the whiz kid that we fear the most.  But the point is, it could very well be that Thirteen is too young to remember that Bill James' splash into Boston (2003-04) began with an attempt to change the "Closer" culture there.

On paper, it is perfectly obvious -- to saberdweebs like Thirteen and Dr. D, and also to any garden-variety birdbrained beat writer* -- that teams are giving away a HUGE advantage by reserving "Closers" for "save situations."  In one of his books, James calculated an 800% advantage for a team willing to use its "closer" in tie games OR WHEN BEHIND BY ONE RUN.  He finished, acidly, "As baseball percentages go, 800% is a big advantage."

So.  The idea of using your closer in non-save situations is not new.  James almost burned his career over it ten years ago, and he spent 15 years before that trying to sell the idea.

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Current State of the Debate

The state of the art on this debate is captured by James in this 2008 article:

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It has become a common belief in the sabermetric community (population, 1,742) that the modern use of the Closer is framed by the Save Rule.   I read that I was the first person to make this argument; I don’t know whether I was or not.  If somebody else wants that credit they can have it, and if you want to hold me responsible, that’s OK.   Anyway, the argument as I understand it is this:  that once it became accepted that the top relief pitcher’s job was to “save” wins, then baseball people accepted or simply assumed that the top reliever should be used in save situations.   “It’s his job to save the wins, therefore we should use him to get the Saves.”   The de facto definition of a Closer’s job became “to pitch the ninth inning, if possible, in every Save situation.”   Sometimes he can’t pitch the ninth inning because he needs a day off; sometimes he needs to pitch an inning in some other situation to stay sharp.  But the core of his job is to earn Saves.

            The sabermetric community (population, 1,741. . ..some guy in Idaho just resigned) tends to regard this as an irrational choice.   The best reliever should be used, they argue, in such a manner that it maximizes his impact on the team win total.   Sometimes the highest-impact situation is a Save situation—and often it is not.   Managers are wasting resources, so say the sabers, by using their best relievers in “Save” situations rather than high-impact situations. 

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In other words, a lot of "Saberdog" dogmatists, as Matty calls them, regards the current use of the closer as --- > just one more example of how painfully, woefully STUPID the people are who call the shots in MLB(TM).

As usual, a lot of "Saberdogs" have 200 of 1,000 light bulbs on, believe that they have 995 of 1,000, and wind up looking like numbskulls to those who actually have 300 light bulbs on.  As James does.

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Light Bulbs 201-300

What are the saberdogs missing?  Several things ... for one, the psychological Domino Effect on a team when it has a Super-Closer that it has confidence in.  One team after another has tried to buck this trend, only to its own ruin.  

Just as one example... cutting-edge "sabermetric" GM J.P. Ricciardi, a Billy Beane disciple, took over the Blue Jays in 2002 and realized that hard-throwing "Closer" Billy Koch wasn't that great a pitcher.  Koch wasn't as good on paper on Ricciardi's spreadsheet as he was in the clubhouse.  

He immediately traded Koch away, making do with guys like converted SP Kelvim Escobar, Aquilinio Lopez, converted setup man Jason Frasor (since converted back to setup, and prospering in it), and even Miguel Batista the next four years.

By 2006, Ricciardi was admitting defeat by trying to put down the upheaval by signing high-profile "Closer" B.J. Ryan to a megabucks contract.  Ricciardi had done precisely what a saberdog would do, and he got precisely the results a saberdog would have gotten:  a bunch of losing seasons and (we presume) the unbridled contempt of many of his players.

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But here's another of the light bulbs, one that even saberdogs (not including anybody active here, including 13) will stop and consider, because it happens to have an easy-to-find mathematical basis.  James continues, in his 2008 article,

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Look, there are a couple of issues here that are (I think) just behind a cloud that I sort of agree with Emeigh about.   One is, sabermetricians don’t really understand this problem nearly as well as they think they do.    The problem has a lot more dimensions in real life than it does in a Strat-o-Matic League.  In Strat-o-Matic you can target your best reliever to the most critical innings with very few restraints.   In real life there are very serious and immovable restraints on this usage, whereas in real life it is much easier to target your Closer to Save situations.

The phenomenal effectiveness of pitchers like Papelbon, Rivera and Gagne is created in substantial part by the facts that

a)      they pitch a very limited number of innings, and

b)      they do so on what is, for the most part, a highly predictable schedule.  

They pitch about three times a week, and they know when they’re going to be in the game an hour before they come in, overstating the case a little bit.   It makes a huge difference.   You take them away from that schedule to target them at more high-leverage innings, they’re not the same. 

            A lot of people in the sabermetric community have ignored or underestimated these effects—and other dimensions to the problem as well, which we won’t get into.   I think this is implied in what Emeigh is saying, and I agree with that. 

            Second, health concerns and “fresh arm” concerns have been a driving force in changing the game from one in which relievers worked 130, 140, 150 innings (and more) to one in which they work 55 to 65 highly targeted innings.   That’s absolutely true.

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What happens is --- > you get a Closer who is worth $10M per year, well, you keep that asset healthy, happy, and pitching great by keeping him in his role.  It's a valuable asset.  And you have a proven way to maximize it.

Look, gentlemen.  You know about Super Bowls and the other 31 teams in the league adopting the Champion's methods.  Has it WORKED, to make sure that Mariano Rivera has 1.0 innings to pitch, three times a week?  How long has that worked?  How well has it worked?  How long was Mariano Rivera healthy?

How well has it worked for all of the other super-closers?  With the mammoth pressure down in that dugout, you can sympathize with the manager wanting to pick his battles elsewhere.

NEXT

 

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