I’d prefer a stat that was something like “effective appearance” rather like “quality starts” for starters. (Though I can’t rattle off the quality start stats at the moment. Uh, 6 innings with 3 runs or less?)
Yup, a quality start is at least six innings with no more than 3 runs.
I’m going to play a little devil’s advocate here. It’s not that I necessarily disagree with you, but I think some other factors are not taken into consideration.
First, that Francisco Rodriguez is not conditioned to pitch 2 innings is absurd. He’s not used more than two innings, and is not used to more than two innings, but I can’t imagine any professional reliever conditioned for less than 30-40 pitches, which is 1-3 innings.
Second, a manager needs to take into account at what point in the season this situation is occurring, what his 8th inning options are (Mariano Rivera was once the 8th inning bridge pitcher), how many days his pitcher has pitched prior, and when is the next potential day off. Using my beloved Yankees as an example, Joe Girardi might want to save Rivera’s arm for an upcoming series with Boston, rather than using him on an interleague game versus the Reds. A manager would never admit that publicly, but they know which games are the “important” games.
On preview, I would say that there is a difference between having your role as a ninth-inning closer and having to always be lights out, and elsewhere in the rotation, where you can give up a run or two. A closer lets the leadoff batter get to second, he must think about stranding him there (after the bunt coming up on the next batter). A starter can play for the bunt and sac fly. Not that starters don’t get into do-or-die situations, just that closers thrive on them. Some closers do poorly when they aren’t in that situation. Don’t downplay the mental aspects of the game.
To add onto what D_Odds mentioned, I would think (because I can’t imagine there’d be a stat that could measure it) that there is a very real psychological component to being the opponent of a team with an absolutely dominant closer. “Knowing” that you only have 8 innings to get the job done instead of the regular nine can get in your head. If you bring the guy in during the 8th and a lesser reliever for the ninth, there’s a sense that “maybe there’s a chance”.
It’s possible, just as it’s possible that some pitchers are mentally suited for different roles.
However, absent any evidence that it’s true, there’s no reason to believe it is, really. As has been pointed out, major league players are generally pretty accustomed to performing under pressure, and are not going to give up in the ninth, or play badly prior TO the ninth, because the opposing closer is a good pitcher. Being professional athletes, they’re selected in Darwinian fashion particularly BECAUSE they have an unusual ability to perform at all times. It’s safe to say that every major league batter who has to face Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning knows Rivera once blew a lead in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 of the World Series, and thinks “I can do that to him again.”
Logically I agree with your point, but I think we all can agree that we’ve seen players and teams react differently in certain situations. The Cubs in this year’s playoffs so clearly collapsed under pressure. There may not be a easy statistical way to prove it, but anyone who watched them during the regular season and the playoffs would agree. Emotions, pressure and expectations have a very real impact, Darwinian selection or not. Hell, one could say that the “energy” of a home crowd shouldn’t matter based on your logic, but we all seem to agree that it does.
There’s more to this question than meets the eye.
In a perfect world, pitchers are universally interchangeable. In practice, not so much. Every pitcher has a fastball, but for some their second pitch is a change-up, for some a curve, for some a knuckleball, for some a slider, for some a forkball, etc. Different pitches induce different kinds of outs.
If a right-handed hitter swings early on a deceivingly slow pitch that drops down, such as a change-up, you’ll get a ground ball to the shortstop — perfect for a double play. If a hitter can be enticed to swing at a high fastball, he’ll probably pop the ball into the air — perfect for when there’s no men on base. What pitcher you put in depends on what kind of outs you need, and what kind of defense you have deployed. If your regular shortstep is out, you might not want to test his double-play range.
Pitching isn’t just throwing. There are legal positions for pitching. When there’s nobody on base, you usually use the windup position: both heels are against the pitching rubber. You get more power this way; your fastballs are faster and your delivery takes longer. When there’s men on base, especially on at first base, you usually pitch from the stretch position (with your dominant foot sideways against the rubber, facing first base [if you’re left-handed] or third [if you’re right-handed]).
What’s the difference? Well, the windup gets more power; that’s good for the fastballers. It also takes longer; that’s good for runners trying to steal. Your closer might be the guy who’s got the demonic fastball, who comes in at the top of the ninth — that puts him in the best position to use that fastball, pitch from the windup with nobody on base, strike some guys out, and induce some nice easy pop-ups. Fastball, slider, forkball.
The stretch position is a faster delivery: harder to steal on, but not as powerful. It is from the stretch position that the pitcher uses his pickoff move, to toss to first and keep the runner from stealing. Ideally, you have a setup man who can pitch from the stretch, get some ground balls and double plays, somebody who doesn’t rely on power but on guile. This is the guy who doesn’t give up sacrifices, who doesn’t let the runners steal, but who can’t blow anybody away. Fastball, changeup, curve.
Then there’s the knuckleball. Nobody has a clue where that sucker’s going. You won’t likely see a knuckleball closer because it’s just too risky. You don’t want to wild-pitch a guy around from first to third.
You just can’t draw any conclusions about three games. It’s baseball; any team has a reasonable chance of losing three straight games against any other team.
I know it must have been disappointing, and we tend to project that disappointment onto our favourite athletes as a moral failing, because we naturally want the universe to have a sense and an order to it rather than being a random jumble of unpredictable events. But the overwhelming odds are that it was just random chance that the Cubs happened to lose three games in a row on those three days. It’s only three games. They had two starters in a row have bad games. It happens. It wasn’t the first time in 2008 they lost three in a row, and any team will almost always look bad when they lose.
From June 26 to June 29 they lost four in a row and looked awful doing it., three of those games being against the White Sox. Was that pressure, or just random chance? From August 30 to September 5 they lost six in a row, and again were dreadful in the process, only once scoring more than three runs and capping it off with a 10-2 shellacking by the Reds, striking out ten times.
Sometimes, shit happens. Sometimes good teams have a bad run of luck; someone mediocre teams get lucky and win it all. It’s telling that **the team that wins the most games during the season usually does not in the World Series. ** In the last 25 years there have been only 5 teams to lead the majors in wins and then win the Series; the 1984 Tigers, 1986 Mets, 1989 Athletics, 1998 Yankees, and 2007 Red Sox (who tied with Cleveland.) By comparison, three teams with the WORST record of all playoff teams - the 1985 Royals, 2000 Yankees and 2006 Cardinals - won the World Series (not counting the 1992 Blue Jays; three teams all went 96-66, and one went 98-64, so you could argue the Blue Jays were “Tied for worst” at 96-66 but it’s clearly not the same thing.) It’d be hard to argue the other top winners all just choked, or that there was something magical about the Royals, Yankees or Cardinals. It’s just chance.
Home field advantage is pretty consistent across time and can be explained by a lot of ways besides the energy of the crowd.
My question is this:
You’re about to bat in the 9th and you’re down 2-0. You’re going up against, say, Trevor Hoffman in his prime. Your 3-4-5 hitters are the best in the league. You’re looking at 7-8-9.
Why not swap 3 for 7, 4 for 8, and 5 for 9? If you get back up to the middle of the order, you can put a pinch hitter in at the 3 spot, and, if necessary, toss a couple of utility guys in at 4 and 5. Can’t you use double-switches to make this happen, and dramatically up your chances of getting back in the game at the last minute?
BTW, those of you who doubt the importance of a good ninth-inning specialist have clearly never had Trevor Hoffman closing for your team.
A team which had the benefit of the magical three-strike grand slam, and the magical “Tony Gwynn’s first home run doesn’t count” rule.
Bah! 1998 Yankees. Don’t get me started. 1998 Yankees… :mad:
Um…because that’s against the rules?
No. The double switch takes two men out of the line up (permanently). You can’t move hitters from the place in the line-up where they’re inserted when they’re first put in the game. The double switch is used to move the pitcher’s spot in the line-up from 9th to somewhere else (let’s say 5th), but to do it you have to pull the pitcher for a pinch hitter and then also pull the guy in the 5 hole (currently sitting on the bench) and replace him with next inning’s pitcher.
–Cliffy
Cough:sweep:cough
I wonder if this is part of the reason for the existence of closers: as counter-productive as it may be, fans like the idea.
Anyway, to address your point, I’ve never had Trevor Hoffman closing for me, but I’ve seen fantastic seasons from Billy Wagner and Armando Benitez, which have been about as good as typical Trevor Hoffman seasons. Having great 9th inning specialists has never made me see the rationale for the closers’ role. Rather, it just underlines the ridiculousness of it.
"We’re up 2-0 in the 7th inning, the other team has men on 1st and 3rd with nobody out. We employ arguably the best relief pitcher in the National League and the game is going to be won or lost right here, in this inning – why is Scott Schoeneweis on the mound???
Yep. Or the Indians in 2007 with the two Raffies… and Joe Borowski closing.
For a while, I thought my husband and I were going to divorce over Joe Fucking Borowski.
Rickjay, surely over the years you have seen relievers who are effective in the middle innings but fail in the closer role, right? How do you explain that? Is it my imagination that I have seen it dozens of times in the past 25 years following the Texas Rangers? Like Omniscient said, players react differently in different situations. Some are just not effective when you ask them to get the 27th out.
There have also been great closers that do not react well to coming in with runners already on base, preferring to start from scratch in the ninth and get themselves out of thier own messes. Managers have a hundreds of factors to put into consideration besides lefty/righty. Saying that pitchers are all big leaguers and should be able to thrive regardless of pressure may be true in principle, but in practice, it’s a whole different ballgame.
I covered this. 
Some pitchers are better at pitching from the windup position (when there’s nobody on base). Some pitchers are better at pitching from the stretch position (when there’s people on base).
In a perfect world, all pitchers would be equally competent at both legal pitching positions and with identical pitches. But they aren’t.
Look, I watched probably 120 of the 162 games they played in the regular season and I will say without qualification that they played differently in the playoffs. It wasn’t just a slump, it’s wasn’t just sloppy defense. Pitchers that spent all season throwing strikes and trusting their stuff decided to start nipping at the corners and aiming pitches resulting in walks, lots of walks. Infielders tried to turn double plays that they never would have in the regular season resulting in giving away bases. Batters that worked the count and ran up pitch counts in September were flailing at the first pitch in the dirt. They were pressing, it was evident and every player in that locker room admitted to it.
Yeah–the magical rule changes took effect in game one, at home, setting the tone for the entire series.
Many relievers pitch exclusivly from the stretch.
Rather easily; relief pitchers, just like all pitchers, are unpredictable and will often have good seasons just out of sheer luck. A pitcher who moves from middle reliever to closer and fails in the latter role would just as likely have failed in the middle relief role.
I can name a HUNDRED relief pitchers who’ve had big years in middle relief and then failed while still in middle relief within a year or two. It’s not anything unusual, and you wouldn’t expect them to do any better moving to any other role. Most pitchers only have a few good years anyway. A pitcher who has a really good year pitching 67 innings has a very good chance of blowing up within a year or two, and even good relief pitchers usually have wild swings in quality from year to year because they don’t pitch much and their ERAs can vary a lot. It doesn’t matter what role they’re in. Take any lifetime middle reliever, or most stoppers, and look at their ERA+ numbers; they go up and down like crazy.
So when one moves into the closer role and blows up everyone says “He wasn’t cut out for it.” But he was just as likely to fail if he’d stayed in a bridge role. Nobody says Dennis Lamp was magically unsuited to the same role in 1986 he’d pitchyed well in in 1985.
I don’t doubt that there is the odd player who might fail in a particular situation, but the overwhelming evidence is that such players are really very rare. It’s just not the case that all 30 teams have these sorts of pitchers, and yet all 30 teams behave as if they do.