Mariano Rivera's Record...A Rant about Saves

I saw on Twitter this afternoon (apologize for not linking as I couldn't find the exact tweet, but do remember the exact numbers and verified it here) that since the beginning of 1996, the Pirates as a team via numerous closers have 592 saves. Mariano Rivera in that same time period has 597 of his newly record breaking 602 saves.

This was shocking to me intitially, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense and further exposed probably the most ridiculous stat in baseball. 

The Yankees have obviously been much much better than the Pirates since 1996. How are the save totals (just guessing but Rivera has probably 90-95% of the Yankee saves) so close? Easy. Just about every team is going to get a whole bunch of saves at some point in the season no matter what happens due to the nature of the baseball season. Its just a matter of who gets them. 

Rivera deserves a ton of credit for consistency and mostly good health since 1996 but someone was going to get those saves for the Yankees. No matter what the media will have you believe, most relief pitchers can hold a 2 or 3 run lead for one inning the overwhelming majority of the time. Research that I don't feel like looking up right now puts that percentage at 90+ . 

The "closer mentality" is a myth that ends up hurting teams who refuse to use their closer in the true spot that would save the game. This is often way before the 9th inning (ex. 2 on with no outs in the 7th or 8th inning) but the manager "can't" use the closer in a non-save situation cause then who will work the 9th? After all, its been "proven" that not just anyone can get those last three outs. And more importantly, what will the home stadium play to fire up the crowd if the closer isn't coming in to his entrance music?

Back to Rivera....He is a very good pitcher and undoubtedly the best closer of all time. I am just not sure what that really means with the way closers are used these days. Of course, I would much rather have him hold the saves record than a guy who let up back to back game losing 9th inning homeruns to Ryan Doumit (Trevor Hoffman). However, Rivera is not anywhere near a first ballot Hall of Famer. How many games did he TRULY add to the Yankees win column over the years? Based on how close the number of saves are between a good team and bad team in a 15 year period, I am extremely hesitant to put any relievers in the Hall of Fame....

Addendum: This is all Tony Larussa's fault. He created the modern one inning save situation and closer in the late 80s and early 90s with Dennis Eckersley. Just one more reason to dislike Larussa and his over-managing.

Addendum #2: Further proof of the ridiculousness of saves. 13th on the all times saves list with a decent chance to get to the top 6? Francisco Cordero. I don't think Reds' fans even have faith in him. Oh, and 14th is Jose Mesa.

Dotel vs. Small Sample Size

Anthony hates closers more than any position in sports. He loves Evan Meek now, but will hate him once he becomes the closer and doesn't go 1-2-3 every outing.

Octavio Dotel's start has all the makings of a small sample size/luck issue. Right now he has thrown just 9 1/3 innings. A couple reasons why his struggles will not keep up:

-He has 12 strikeouts in those innings. This is slightly above his career rate of 11 Ks per 9 innings. He hasn't suddenly lost anything on his fastball or forgotten how to pitch.

-He has a .462 Batting average on balls in play against. This is the batting average of the hitters he has faced if you take out the home runs and strike outs. Basically, the balls that are in play for the fielders to make or not make a play on. Major league average is .300. Anything dramatically above or below is considered lucky and likely unable to mantain over the course of a season.

-His homerun per fly ball rate is about double his career average while giving up about the same percentage of fly balls he has over his career. Considering he is throwing just as hard as ever, this is another stat that is very unlikely to continue.

If you combine that with the fact that he most of that 10+ ERA comes from two disastrous non-save situation outings against the Brewers (18.90 era in 3 innings vs Milwaukee), I think Dotel will be just fine. Even the save he did blow against Milwaukee on Wednesday was due to a very inconsistent strike zone from the umpire and terrible defense (that wasn't ruled an error) by Aki Iwamura.

The last thing the Pirates (and Anthony) should be doing is worrying about Octavio Dotel.

Stat Sources:
MLB.com Player Page
First Inning Player Page

Don't Ask, Dotel

It's 6:18 a.m., and I need to get ready for work, so I'll make this quick.

I don't miss Matt Capps. I considered him to be overrated even when his stats were exemplary. Plus, he's fat. (not that there's anything wrong with that)

But holy freaking crap...Octavio Dotel has been awful. I can see having an ERA around 4.00 because of a bad outing or two.

Dude's ERA is 10.61. For those of you who don't understand ERA, that means he allows 10.61 runs per 9 innings of pitching. Allow me to translate: he sucks. Bad.

It should be noted, too, that last night it was Evan Meek who saved the game for the Bucs vs. the Dodgers. Pirates led 2-0 in the 9th, and Meek got the nod. (Evan Meek has been a monster this season so far. His ERA is .060)

That's not exactly a glowing endorsement of Dotel by his manager, regardless of what excuses they'll probably use in today's newspapers. I guess he can't blow the game for you if you don't ask him to pitch. Believe it or not, John Russell made the right call last night.

Buccos are now 10-12.