I think that article actually hits on the key point in the very beginning. The role of the closer hasn’t changed the outcome of baseball games, it’s just changed the structure of baseball teams. I blame it all on the save stat. Saves and save percentage give relief pitchers a nice, shiny thing to put on their résumé come contract time. Teams pay a guy a lot of money to close out games and rack up those save stats, so they want him to close out as many games as possible. That means fewer innings per outing. The dirty secret is that it’s not actually that special. If you’re winning a game in the 9th, especially by more than 1 run, something disastrous has to happen for you to lose. Thus, the blown save is the ultimate blemish.
While I agree that closing is overrated, I think some people don’t take into account that the 9th inning is different. Not that it being “the 9th Inning” in some mystical way makes its more challenging, but more that a manager will pull out any remaining stops to try and win a close game - using his best pinch hitters, trying for better matchups, etc. In theory that should make the 9th tougher.
I don’t see how that can be blamed on the save stat, because it’s increasingly rare for any relief pitcher to pitch more than one inning–not just the closer. Once a team goes to the bullpen, it’s almost a given that they’ll be trotting out a new reliever every inning.
The only exception is when a starter gets injured or shelled and has to come out early. Then, you might see a long reliever go two or even (gasp) three innings. And of course, that pitcher will be unavailable the next night.
Or even more often than that. Witness the rise of the LOOGY (Lefty One-Out GuY), a left-handed relief pitcher who is often brought in specifically to face a left-handed batter who struggles against lefties (but whom the other team is unlikely to pull for a pinch-hitter), and very likely then pulled for another pitcher after facing that one batter.
It can be blamed on the save stat because the closer is usually the best relief pitcher the team has, and orthodox strategy these days requires that he only be used during save situations. Probably 90% of the time, this means pitching the ninth with a 1-3 run lead. There are those who would argue that this is because the ninth inning provides a unique set of challenges unlike those of any other inning, and they may be right (although every single study looking into this has found no effect whatsoever).
But even if they are, I think it’s hard to argue that pitching the ninth with a three-run lead is more critical to a win than (to go to the most extreme hypothetical) getting three outs with the bases loaded in the 7th inning, when you’re clinging to a 1-run lead. The latter is a FAR higher-leverage situation. And yet, because it’s not a “save situation,” managers routinely leave their best reliever languishing in the pen and bring in their second-best (or even third-best, for the managers who really adhere to the “7th inning guy/ 8th inning guy” role playing stuff). Which makes zero sense strategically, and pretty much only happens because saves = money for closers, and thus closers get pissed when they’re pitching innings other than the ninth.
In other words, the save statistic not only makes no sense from a bookkeeping standpoint, it actively sabotages intelligent strategy in the game by creating a perverse incentive for managers to use inferior pitchers in higher-leverage situations.
As a Cub fan, I take exception at you unfairly singling the northern Chicago team as an example.
Relief pitching has evolved and changed a lot just in my lifetime. Believe it or not, many teams DID put their best relievers in the game a lot earlier back in the Seventies.
Things weren’t always as they are now, and they don’t have to STAY the way they are now. But the conventional wisdom has solidified now, and it would take a VERY gutsy manager to try a different approach with his relief aces.
A lot of interesting thinkers have suggested different ways to use a Mariano Rivera (why not use him to quell a Red Sox rally in the 6th, rather than waiting until the 9th)… but doing things differently from the herd is often a good way to get fired.
I disagree that this is why managers do this. I really don’t think managers mind pissing off their players; after all, pitchers are promoted/demoted to and from the closer role all the time.
Rather, I think there’s two things in play here:
-
I think managers believe, and to some degree correctly, that players thrive better if they know what, specifically, their role is and when they will be asked to do it. I acknowledge that it’s the case the closer role shows little evidence it helps win ballgames, but I think it is generally true in baseball - and probably in ALL sports - that athletes perform better with routine and predictability. That general impression will lend itself towards set bullpen roles.
-
Managers, for the most part, do not make decisions to win games. They make decisions to keep their jobs and avoid criticism. Most of what helps them keep their jobs is winning games, but not all of it, and this is one example. Managers who stay to conventional wisdom will be criticized less. If the manager uses Clive Closer in the ninth and Clive blows it big time, the blame largely falls on Clive. The manager was simply doing his job by sending in the closer. If, however, the manager tries something unorthodox, and it fails, the manager will be blamed more than the player. The manager is risk averse, and he avoids risk by sticking to conventional wisdom.
My perception that most strategic innovations have been largely pioneered by managers who either had the political capital to do whatever the hell they wanted - what beat writer is going to challenge Tony La Russa? - or who were left with nothing to lose.
The closer doesn’t have to be better than anyone else at closing a game, he serves a purpose by saving the arms of the other pitchers. Your middle relievers may have a limited number of pitches and you don’t want them going deep into the ninth. You don’t want to pull guys out of rotation just to take care of the ninth. A good closer just has to be as good as the other guys would in the ninth inning, but maybe more often, and sometimes that one good inning is all they have anyway so it’s best to get some use out of them.
Also, the Save stat is really useless. The Blown Save stat is what you have to pay attention to.
Well, sure, they don’t mind pissing off players who aren’t performing, which is the biggest reason anyone would be demoted from the closer role.
I agree that defined roles can help a pitcher’s mentality. However, it doesn’t really explain how we got to this structure in the first place. If save percentages were the same before anyone cared about save stats, and pitchers were used differently back then, why change? Unless pitchers and managers cared about racking up saves, why change a system that was already successful?
Agree completely, which is why every team is entrenched in what is now a standard bullpen structure that highlights 1 inning guys.