In terms of overall place in baseball history, I’d put Rivera in a similar place as Rickey Henderson - unparalleled at what he did, and very valuable overall, but what they did just isn’t quite up there with the greatest of the great starters/sluggers.
BTW, Gibson was great but Koufax was better - almost as many innings and an ERA .9 lower.
It’s an amazing coincidence that so many players are simply lucky to be on good teams, not that they’re good themselves, huh?
It has been argued that the closer, if he is the best shut downer on the team, should come in the game when there is an emergency, where a rally is mounting and a bunch of runs could score. Waiting until the 9th may be too late. I wait for a manager to step out of the baseball lore and take that chance. Then we would redefine closers and relievers.
No argument there.
True. David Robertson got some of those outs this postseason when he shut down the Twins with the bases loaded and nobody out in one game.
Even so, we saw other closers blow a couple of leads like that this year.
No.
But his results are still phenomenal, and you can’t sensibly discount that. It’s not Trevor Hoffman’s fault that the Padres did not get to the playoffs as often as the Yankees did, so that can’t be held against Hoffman. But if Rivera does an outstanding job in postseason after postseason, you can’t say it doesn’t count. He’s gotten these opportunities and by and large he has been amazing. That’s not extra credit, it’s working with what you get.
The Red Sox tried it a few years ago. The logic works, but the experiment failed because the pitchers were not very good. And to some degree I think there is a real psychological factor involved in the ninth inning.
From KidA’s post #2 above, the relevant portion of the ESPN blog by David Schoenfield:
Rivera’s certainly great and a first ballot HoFer, but give me Koufax or Gibson.
In my opinion, he is one of the 3 best pitchers of all-time, with Clemens and Martinez being the other 2. I know that other pitchers throughout history dominated their competition to greater degrees. But today’s line-ups are way,way better, even after expansion. I can’t give the “best ever” tag to anyone who pitched before the '90’s.
I first became a baseball fan in 1977. I remember watching my Yankees win a couple of WS’s. I absolutely loved Ron Guidry and Goose Gossage. Now the YES network shows many of the great games in Yankee history. I’m sorry, but all the players of earlier decades sucked compared to the players of today. While this may not be apparent when you compare the greats of each era, but it’s very clear when you look at the average and bad players.
I went from memory and mistyped here. In games in which he factored in the decision (W, L, SV, BS) Rivera came in with leads of 3+runs 15 times, not 19.
It’s amazing to me that people can’t get passed this. Look at the 1998 Yankees, one of the 5 greatest teams ever, won 114 games. But none of them hit 30 HR’s, nobody won 20 games, and none of them had an MVP type season. They had no superstars but no weak spots.
You add Babe Ruth’s biggest season to an average 81-81 club, the team goes about 93-69*, and misses the playoffs. If, however, all your batters and pitchers are just 10% better than average, you go 97-65*…(Records estimated based on =Runs For^2/Runs For^2+Runs Against^2) aka the pythagorean.
Marley23, believe me, I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that Mariano is the best closer I’ll ever see, but it comes down to how much credit you give to the guy who skinned the bear versus the guys who speared the bear.
I’m sorry, but I never suggested it excluded old players.
But it HAS to count. The playoffs matter. They matter just as much as the regular season. You can’t pretend Rivera’s performance in the postseason doesn’t count, unless you’re saying the postseason doesn’t count.
That old timers didn’t have as many chances to play in the postseason is interesting, but it’s just the way the game is. And if you want to adjust for opportunity and say Bob Gibson was really just as great a postseason performer, there you have a solid argument. After all, Gibson was World Series MVP twice, so there you have a point. And I’d say overall the greatest postseason performer of all time, EASILY, is Babe Ruth; not only did Ruth win 3 starts (one a 14-inning job) but then you’ve also got him batting .326 with 15 homers in 41 games and winning seven rings.
But one way or another the postseason counts, Rivera has pitched in a huge number of them, and he’s been awesome. The postseason’s more games now, and performance in those games matters.
::Hijack::
I was messing around on Baseball Reference a couple of months ago and was surprised to learn that Tom Seaver has the highest ballot rating for the HoF. Can someone explain why it’s the case? It’s apparent from his stats that he was a very good pitcher and was consistently so for a large part of his career, but he doesn’t strike me as having been jaw droopingly unbelievable. At least not to the point of having the highest ballot rating. Is there something I’m missing in terms of either active comparisons or a favorable fluke in the balloting year?
::Hijack over::
Imho, I think relievers should be treated like kickers in the NFL hall of fame: there’s only been one so far.
Goose Gossage, (before his recent induction) when he was griping about his role as compared to relievers today, in the 70’s relievers had to work harder, usually 2.5-3 or more innings every game, and thus they had lower save totals than relievers today who work more games, but only 1 inning per game. I believe his argument is correct: the save is overrated today because it discounts the team effort put into the previous 8 innings. Saying a save is a useful stat is disrespecting the rest of your team.
Looking at the HOF, before Gossage’s media blitz, the only relievers in the HOF played at least part of their careers as starters, enough to earn 100 wins and 200+ saves. This list includes Rollie Fingers, Hoyt Wilhelm, and Dennis Eckersley. I think this is a fine rule of thumb, and all relievers should be held to that standard. Again, before the 90s, relievers had to pitch 2 or more innings each outing, so they were the pitcher for around 1/3 of the game (vs 1/9, if they only pitched one inning.)
In another sense, it’s like the “live ball” era in baseball during the 80’s, where stadiums became smaller to increase the number of homeruns hit there. Dale Murphy, for example, won the HR crown and back to back MVP’s in 82 and 83 with 35 homeruns. In 2009, 35 homeruns would be tied for 12th.
Back to the NFL: no matter how “clutch” a kicker is, they only account for 3 points if they kick the winning field goal, ignoring the other points scored by their team (and their defense holding their opponents to within 3 points.) In Superbowl 38, for example, Adam Vinatieri hit the winning kick, but the final score was 32-29. Did he win the game single-handedly? No.
Imho, relievers and kickers get a lot of the credit because they’re in the right place (the end of the game) at the right time (their team is winning or will win if they succeed.) I think at the very least, Rivera should be held to the 100 wins, 200 saves rule at the bare minimum.
I think it was a voting fluke. Here’s the list of nominees:
The only other player inducted with Seaver was Rollie Fingers. Also, Pete Rose was on the ballot for the first time but embroiled in the gambling scandal.
Compare to 1999 (1999 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting - Wikipedia) where George Brett, Nolan Ryan, Robin Yount, Carlton Fisk, and Jim Rice split the ballots.
Why?
You’re just setting an arbitrary standard; “Well, they have to win 100 games and have to have been a starter at one point.” Why is that important? And why would it include Rollie Fingers, who was a failed starter and started only 37 games and, incidentally, lost more games than he won?
Saves are overrated, no doubt. But so far, nobody in the thread has made the argument that Mariano Rivera should be in the Hall of Fame for his saves. He should be in the Hall of Fame because he is an amazingly effective pitcher. Wouldn’t matter to me if he’d been a setup man the whole time.
Superhal, I think everybody here agrees saves are overrated as a statistic. Nobody’s argued Rivera should be in the Hall based on his save total alone. No one has even cited the number. For that matter most people here agree that wins are overrated, so it’s ironic you are creating a standard of 100 wins and 200 saves. And nobody gives closers credit for wins in the first place. That’s why the save statistic was created.
But then, nobody gave Adam Vinatieri credit for winning any games for the Patriots either. Nobody rated him ahead of Tom Brady. They said Vinatieri was an a very accurate kicker, which is true - I think he’s the fourth most accurate kicker of all time - and that he made some enormously important kicks in high pressure situations, like the ones in the Super Bowl, which was also true. So you’re arguing against points nobody tried to make. The role of a closer did not exist decades ago, but that does not mean there’s no validity in the job or that we have to measure current closers by standards that are not supposed to measure their performance.
Rivera has been great at what he does for a decade and a half now, and a part of five World Series winners. In 1996, the Yankees won the Series with Rivera as a two-inning setup man, not a closer, and he was equally successful at that, so he is not only benefiting from the modern specialization of his role. While his innings totals are more limited that starting pitchers for obvious reasons, he’s built up enough of a body of work that we can say we know how he pitches in the regular season and post season. And it turns out he’s got a lot more innings than most people who have tried to do his job over the years because he was much better at it for much longer.
And the number of set-up men currently in the hall of fame…?
The 100/200 number is arbitrary…as arbitrary as 300 wins for a pitcher, 3000 hits for a batter, 500 homeruns, etc.
@Marley23: Ok, I will address the argument specifically that you mention: he is a great pitcher. According to his wiki page, he is a single pitch pitcher (the cut fastball.) The only way a single pitch pitcher can be successful is by going through the batting order only one time. Therefore, since they are pitching less, they can pitch harder with fewer pitches, as they may only see 1 or 2 cycles through the batting order.
Therefore, many, many pitchers have had success if they only go through the batting order 1 or 2 times. What separates the good from the great is going through the batting order 3 or 4 times, which Rivera doesn’t do.
Re: He’s a winner: I would argue that the Yankees throughout the Steinnbrenner era has been stacked to the gills with talent. Relievers come in when their team is ahead, and Steinnbrenner ensures that that happens. If the Yankees weren’t leading in the 8th, Rivera wouldn’t come in, simple as that.
Maybe I’m being a devil’s advocate here, but until very recently, being a “clutch” reliever didn’t mean automatic HOF credentials, as much as being a “clutch” kicker or “clutch” punter in the NFL.
Zero, for the simple reason that no career set up men have been good enough to deserve it.
If Rivera had been a setup man, I’d be arguing for his induction.
Which is why there’s scores of hitters who don’t have 3000 hits or 500 homers in the Hall of Fame, and why so many pitchers without 300 wins are in the Hall of Fame. No one statistic defines a player’s worth. Setting arbitrary standards for Hall of Fame consideration will never work, because there will always be exceptions. 3000 hits? Well, that rules out Babe Ruth. 500 homers? That rules out Stan Musial. Why set any arbitrary standards? Why not examine the whole body of evidence?
Maybe.
But LOTS of pitchers have only pitched one time through the order. None have been as brutally effective, inning for inning, as Mariano Rivera. Not Gossage, not Fingers, not Sutter, not Reardon, not Henke, not Quisenberry, nobody.
According to my back of the envelope calculations, Rivera over his career has saved the Yankees about 278 runs as opposed to an average pitcher. That’s an amazing number. (Calculated by multiplying earned runs by ERA+ to get how many runs an average pitcher would’ve given up.) Here’s how he compares to other relief greats:
Hoyt Wilhelm: 291 runs
Rivera: 278 runs
Eckersley: 204 (all numbers include starts, too)
Billy Wagner: 181
Gossage: 157
Hoffman: 149
John Franco: 148
Quisenberry: 147
Lee Smith: 135
Henke: 131
Fingers: 104
Reardon: 83
This is an admittedly crude measure, but it shows what I expected; Wilhelm and Rivera are in their own universe. And this doesn’t count postseason, where Rivera has saved approximately FIFTY runs more.
Wilhelm and Rivera’s total here is very high, well into Hall of Fame territory. By way of comparison, Baseball Prospectus rates Rivera as being worth 96 wins more than a replacement level player - which is equal to good HOF *position player *candidates, like Robbie Alomar or Ivan Rodrguez, and way past marginal choices like Jim Rice (already in) or Don Mattingly.
Papelbon is actually 12th on that list, RJ, with +93 runs in only 4 1/2 years of pitching.
I look at Rivera, and I wonder how he does it. The fastball is fast, but it isn’t high 90’s (not sure if it ever was). He doesn’t have any sort of good breaking ball (IIRC he just takes something off his cutter sometimes). It looks like his pitches are hittable, and he’s around the plate all the time, but rarely does someone really get ahold of one. Not taking away from his accomplishments understand, but in a way he’s got to be the most unlikely candidate (going in) for greatest relief pitcher ever. You line the candidates up as they were right when they hit their prime seasons and start drafting them (future career not assumed or even known), and you’ll probably take Sutter (never saw anyone with a splitter that dropped like his), Goose, Paps, Wagner with the awesome K rates-hell even Rob Dibble or Dick Radatz. In '98 Rivera’s K/9 dropped all the way down to 5.3 (from 10.8 2 years earlier), but he did everything else so well it didn’t matter.
Second most unlikely-I forgot about Eck, who appeared to be about to drink his way out of baseball when the Cubs gave up on him and Oakland attempted a reclamation project with him.
I don’t know, Kelly and many others have described Mo’s cutter as the best single pitch in baseball history. I would have taken him, but I saw him from failed starter to best setup man ever in 1996 before he got the job of closer and I thought he was not only far better than Wetteland or Rags but also better than Lyle or Gossage. By 1998 I knew he was better than they.
Definitely true. I think he throws that pitch more than 90 percent of the time.
Many have been successful, few have remained very successful for very long. A handful, maybe, are comparable to Rivera. You keep overlooking this point. He’s doing a different job from a starting pitcher, and maybe it’s an easier job, but he is still far better at it than almost anyone else who has ever done the same job or a similar job. If that was true, you’d be able to find a lot of other pitchers who have been this good for this long.
That’s like saying you have to hit home runs to be great: it isn’t true.
Having a lot of hitting talent does not help a pitcher get outs. If you plugged in any given reliever of average talent, do you think he would have pitched as well as Rivera has?
I think it’s just the late movement on the cutter. I don’t think his fastball ever got above the mid 90s, and now it’s more often in the low 90s.