Yeah, if his career so far hadn’t precisely overlapped Mariano Rivera, he probably would have gotten at least some mention for Greatest of All Time. As it is, I think most people think of him as the guy who strikes out a lot of people.
Wagner better than Goose, Ecks, Fingers or Hoffman?
I never picked up that opinion of him. Or are you just saying mentioned in the conversation?
Mentioned in the conversation, mainly. But also that his career would look better (and those other guys would have looked worse) if there wasn’t Rivera putting up ridiculous numbers (and ridiculous playoff numbers) like a robot, year after year.
I don’t have a comprehensive list, since baseball reference cuts off their career leaderboards a bit above Wagner’s career totals, but I remember seeing a list of the top career ERA+ numbers; the only guy close to Rivera’s 200+ was Wagner at 187. (Gossage 126, Hoffman 141, Eck 116, Fingers 120. Pedro Martinez is far and away the best starter at 154.) Then throw in that crazy strikeout rate, and you have an argument.
Of course, there are arguments the other way - Wagner’s save percentage isn’t as good as Hoffman’s, over a shorter career, and he hasn’t done very well in the playoffs; but my main point is that people don’t even think of it, because he happens to have shared his career with the greatest reliever of all time.
Cox’s career winning percentage in the regular season is .556; his career playoff winning percentage coming into this year is .500 even, if I’m doing my math right.
I don’t see that as being a particularly unusual split. After all, in the postseason, the Braves are always playing championship opponents, so their winning percentages should drop. I’m not really convinced Cox is a bad postseason manager; the Braves winning one World Series instead of three can be attributed to luck. Sometimes you have a bad week. How did Cox mismanage when his team was getting destroyed in the 1999 World Series? They just got destroyed.
Well, let’s see.
Billy Wagner pitched 903 innings with a career ERA 87% better that the league average, which is, well, amazing.
Goose Gossage pitched 1809 innings with an ERA 26% better than the league average. That’s a hard comparison. Wagner was way, way more effective but pitched only half as much. So I can’t say for sure Wagner was better.
Fingers, again, same problem as Gossage; he pitched twice as much, although he was not as effective, inning for inning, as Wagner. For what it’s worth, by WARP, they’re all pretty much the same; Gossage is at 54, Wagner 40, Fingers 45. That sounds about right to me. I think Fingers was a poor HoF choice, by the way.
Hoffman looks to me to be clearly inferior to Wagner - Wagner has a much better ERA+ in only about 15% fewer innings - but Hoffman’s career WARP is about 54, the same as Gossage, so that’s interesting.
Eckersley, of course, was a successful starter for many years and is on a different level; his career WARP is 78, which again sounds precisely correct to me. Eckersley’s career as a starter was just as valuable than his career as a reliever. Just his relief career wasn’t as long as as valuable as these other guys but obviously you can’t pretend he didn’t have those great years as a starter.
Strange, Texas wins 2 in Tampa. Tampa wins 2 in Texas. Home field does not seem to mean much.
Can’t anyone catch a ground ball?
Couple of complaints about your stats though. The ERA+ is not the only measurement of good pitching I would hope. Even if it were, Gossage and Fingers had how many multi-inning saves vs. being asked to come in clean of 3 outs in the 9th? In general league ERA was significantly lower for that pair and thus separating them from the pack would be a tougher achievement I believe. Add to that Gossage’s lifetime ERA is adversely affected by being quite honestly a failed starter and then hanging around post closer status for the love of the game (more money).
I think the important part though is the multi-inning saves and being asked to begin their saves with runners on base. The same thing that separates Rivera even more than his crazy stats from the crop of closers during his career so far.
In 2010 Rivera pitched 60 innings over 61 game appearances. The year before, he pitched 66 1/3 innings over 66 game appearances. Multi-inning saves can’t be a very large part of his work.
In the regular season he won’t be asked to pitch more than an inning unless it’s a huge game, usually against the Red Sox. In the playoffs he has 14 saves of more than one inning. My math could be off, but as a closer, I think he’s made 80 appearances and pitched 117 innings.
Right. That is, he’s being used more or less exactly the way most managers use most “closers” these days, with the difference that Rivera is usually good enough to succeed even when asked to stretch a little. That still doesn’t mean that he (or any of them) are being used optimally.
Which doesn’t address Trevor Hoffman, who has the edge on Wagner in total saves and total innings pitched, and a slight edge in save percentage (which I hope we can agree is also an iffy metric) but also was basically a one-inning closer.
There are a lot of ways to end up with a .500 postseason record over as many games as Cox has managed. Cox has attributed to him one of the least satisfying.
Go further back in Rivera’s career, not the last few years. He has more 4+ out saves per year on average and in total than anyone of his generation. He is not comparable to Gossage & Fingers for this but he is well ahead of Hoffman and Wagner and the like. You were looking at the years that are probably at the tale end of his career. 1997 through 2006 should show a different story for you. Also I don’t think anyone is seriously comparing Wagner to Rivera. They don’t really compare at all.
Wagner might have been better than Hoffman, I don’t really know about that one. I think I would have rather had Hoffman than Wagner but I might not have any support for that gut feeling.
True, but from my point of view the very fact that four outs is considered a demanding relief appearance shows how blinkered the “closer” and “save” thinking has become.
Well that we agree on.
I will add:
Pitchers don’t throw enough before they come up, it is silly the current system now requires 5 starters and you’re very happy if they collectively average 6 innings.
For cost of pitching, teams should be trying to develop stronger kids that can go every 3 days and pitch 7+ innings. At least one or the other.
I don’t think there’s a cite I can offer, but it’s widely understood that our pro athletes are getting bigger, stronger, and faster over the generations. Our current crop of MLB pitchers is likely, physically, the strongest ever. Rotations and pitch counts are what they are today in large part because of medical research over the last few decades. Parents, coaches, and organizations are all rather wisely risk averse with their pitching prospects; allowing the athletes to reach physical maturity before undertaking a “full” load is just smart business all the way around.
That said, I’d prefer more complete games and less middling relief, too.
In the ideal baseball team you’ve described, you’ve freed up the roster spots normally occupied by the #4 and #5 starter, and probably a middle reliever, too. What do you do with those roster spots?
Do you really believe that the entire superstructure of baseball talent development is just being silly? Every 3 days is an unworkable goal. That’s why it isn’t the goal. For every one pitcher you got 8+ years of major league pitching out of, you’d ruin hundreds and get nothing out of them and just be peeing cash away via your developmental system.
The reason pitchers don’t throw 375 innings in modern baseball isn’t because silly management is turning them into sissies. It’s because management, collectively, is getting smarter and pitching, as a result, is much better. You can’t really think that a pitcher from the 60s could pitch the same number of innings at the same level of effectiveness against today’s hitters.
What kind of management are you talking about? Actual managers, or the management of a player development system?
Speaking for myself, I didn’t mean to suggest or support the idea that starters should be routinely completing games and throwing huge numbers of innings.
I just think the idea of the closer, specifically, is vastly inflated; most of these guys are not a different breed from any other reliever, and even the ones that really are exceptional are usually misused. I’ve seen many games lost in the sixth and seventh innings because conventional wisdom held that it was “too early” to bring out the guy who is ostensibly the team’s best reliever.
Starters, and long relievers, could be allowed to finish games more often; the manager and pitching coach just need to pay attention and judge their guy’s condition, that moment that day, beyond arbitrary pitch counts.
Actually I am advocating for a 4 man rotation and wrote it out terribly. I strongly suspect that as Jim Kaat and others have said dozens of times, kids should be pushed to elevate their inning counts a bit more before the majors and be prepared to pitch more than 6 innings while still in the minors.
BTW: As to the extra roster spots, it would be nice to see the return of the third Catcher to teams.
BTW2: I know everyone universally hates the Yanks but for the love of baseball, listening to the stupid fake “indian” chant, how can you not want Atlanta to lose at least as much?
Did they just yoink the start time of the Braves - Giants game up a few hours? Just because it’s the only game of the day?
I mean, that’s inconvenient enough for those of us who just planned to come home from work and turn on the game. What if you had tickets?
They just don’t care any more about ticket holders. Only whatever is most convenient to the TV networks.