It seems to me that the roles of pitchers have gotten to be much more specialized, i.e. starter, middle reliever and a closer who almost always comes into the ninth inning only.
But here is my question, why are they not situation specific specialists as opposed to inning-specialist. Let me clarify, Suppose a team with an ace one-inning closer (Frankie Rodriguez for example) had a one -run lead going into the eight inning. The opposition has the 3-4-5 hitters due up in the eigth. Common practice seems to be to let one of the middle relievers handle the eigth and then let the closer, well, close. But if the closer is nails at getting folks out, and it seems the real threat is the eigth inning as opposed to the ninth, why wouldn’t you bring in your ace close in the top of the eigth?
Of do I not understand baseball at all (very likely)?
The short answer to your question is that baseball teams are behaving irrationally. They should, as you suggest, deploy their best relievers at the most critical junctures, in whichever inning that happens to occur. By using their bullpen aces as closers rather than firemen, they’re costing themselves wins.
**RickJay **should be along shortly to give you a better, more detailed answer.
Your question has been addressed before, IIRC, by Rob Neyer at ESPN.com (no cite, sorry.) The short answer is that baseball managers are slow to change (with some exceptions like Tony LaRussa.) It’ll happen eventually, I think. It took a long time before the advent of the “closer.”
The biggest counterargument (that I’ve seen) against bringing in a pitcher in the most optimal situation is that, by giving the relievers a pretty good idea of which innings they would most likely appear, they will avoid a long cycle of warming up/sitting down/warming up. You will thus save more runs by keeping your relievers fresh (by limiting the number of times they warm up per game, thus getting better performances from them when they do come in) that you lose by not using them in the direst of circumstances.
Francisco Rodriquez’s agent’s (or GM’s) answer would be that bringing him in during that situation would not enable him to pick up a save (okay - it would, but only if he stayed on through the 9th, and he’s not conditioned for 2-inning outings). Saves are what the industry bases the worth of closers on, and by doing what you suggest, you decrease K-Rod’s value. Not exactly the logical answer you were looking for, but there you have it.
Related insanity, putting the “closer” in when everything is going fine with the pitcher who’s already in the game. Especially wheln your team’s closer is not the top five in baseball.
There are a lot of really stupid things that managers do with their pitchers. The concept of pulling an effective right handed starter to put in a mediocre lefty to face one left-handed batter is asinine. In some cases that lefty might have a minor advantage against that one batter, but that’s not worth the expense of having to play pitcher roulette for the subsequent 3-4 innings.
A similar situation used to exist in the NFL regarding “starting” running backs. Before the concept of a running back by committee approach became accepted teams used to force sub-par RBs to take 90% of a teams snaps regardless of effectiveness because it was thought to be necessary to have a “starter”.
As has already been pointed out, what you are describing is, in fact, much smarter than the “Closer” role. All the posters who have replied so far are bang on; the way they do it now is stupid and irrational with respect to winning games. It’s rational in other ways, though, which I’ll get into.
Your proposed strategy USED to be the way relief aces were used. If there was a critical situation in the eighth, the ace would be brought in. That’s why all the highest save totals have happened in the last 20 years or so; prior to that, they didn’t just use the ace in the ninth.
Francisco Rodriguez in 2008 pitched 68 innings with 2.24 ERA, and had 62 saves.
Goose Gossage in 1980 pitched 99 innings with a 2.29 ERA, and had 33 saves.
Gossage pitched just as well and his team won just as many games; he had fewer saves solely because he wasn’t used in as many “Save situations.” Rodriguez is wildly, insanely overrated; he’s a legitimately first class pitcher but a guy who only pitches 68 innings just can’t be that valuable. Rodriguez would not have been the best pitcher in the AL even if he had pitched those 68 innings and given up no runs at all; Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay would still have saved quite a few more runs.
So why do they do it the way they do it now? Well, two things have already been pointed out:
The “Save” statistics warps the perception of a pitcher’s value and makes relief pitchers resistant to being used on non-save situations, and
There are benefits in having set roles.
A third, and probably more significant reason, is risk aversion. Major league managers will, to a large extent, manage in a way designed to avoid criticism for losing even when it does not maximize the team’s chances of winning. A manager who sticks to the now-traditional pattern of using one anointed pitcher as The Closer will generally not be criticized if The Closer screws it up in the ninth inning. I’ve heard commentators say “Well, you can’t blame Manager X for bringing in Smith there. Smith’s the closer!” But if Manager X brings in The Closer in the eighth and it goes wrong he’ll be blasted for it, even if it worked the other 39 times he tried it.
Managers are subject to far more criticism for moves that are nontraditional than traditional, even if the traditional approach is less successful. Use of “closers” is done by all teams, so any manager who deviated from that would be shot up for it every time a lead was blown, whereas if he sticks to the Closer strategy and The Closer blows it, The Closer is criticized, not the manager. This applies to other strategies, too. Managers are hardly ever criticized for bunting runners to second, despite the piles and piles and piles of evidence and common sense that show that bunting a guy to second in the major leagues is stupid, unless (and sometimes even if) the hitter’s a pitcher.
You are absolutely right. Fewer moves baseball managers routinely make infuriate me as much as the way closers are handled. I once heard an announcer say that the manager would not bring in their ace closer because there were men on base and the closer wasn’t used to that situation! It seems to me that that is exactly the situation when a pitcher would earn his umpteen million dollars.
To illustrate how absurd the “save” rules are: On August 21, 2007 the Texas Rangers rallied from a 3 - 0 deficit to beat the Baltimore Orioles 30 - 3. In spite of the fact that his team won by 27 (!) runs, the Rangers’ Littleton got a save!
This is the exact same reason why football coaches don’t go for it on 4th down as much as they should. Doesn’t make it, he gets reamed in the press the next day-but punt away and the other team marches down the field and wins the game, well it’s the ‘fault’ of the defense.
Preach it, Ronald C. Semone. I don’t see why the rule couldn’t be changed to where the guy who closes the game might get credit for a hold while perhaps the guy who pitched before him gets the save.
As an influence on managerial decisions, “received wisdom” seems particularly huge in baseball and football compared to other sports. It doesn’t make sense, and in fact these moves are stupid for the reasons already given in great depth.
The only pro closer thought I have is that there could be a psychological difference in pitching the 9th inning. If you’re the closer, the winning and losing of the game is very much upon your shoulders when you enter the game. I can see some otherwise good relievers not excelling under those types of conditions.
WRT saves, I think the save is a perfectly valid way to indicate if a reliever did a good job in closing out a game. The problem is in using the raw number of saves as the indicator. The raw number is too dependent on the actions of his teammates during the first 8 innings when he’s sitting on the bench. I would use save percentage as the indicator, at least that takes into account the number of times you failed.
God I hope not. But perhaps relief pitchers who pitch well when their team is behind will one day get some recognition as well. Scoreless inning(s) pitched in relief, anyone?
One thing that some teams have done is not have their best pitcher be their closer. That way you can use your ace reliever at any point through the eighth, and let the closer pitch the ninth. Of course if the most important part of the game happens in the ninth, you are screwed.
The main problem with that is that holds are as crappy a stat as saves is. I mean you can get a hold without actually getting anyone out.
I think if you have lasted long enough to reach the majors, you can handle the pressure. There may be a couple of rare exceptions, but I’d say the vast vast majority of pitchers can handle the ninth inning as well as any other inning.
Even still that isn’t a very useful number. There is a major difference between a 3 run, 1 inning save, and a 1 run, 6 out save. Giving up less than three runs in an inning isn’t that impressive.