Joe Posnanski with more data showing that closers simply don't matter

[Rojo]

Somebody here had the Tommy Lasorda tag about "the best teams loose a third of their games, the worst win a third so it's the middle third you have to worry about".

Games decided in the late innings are marginal. But the baseball gods are commies, they want to push everyone to .500. ergo, the marginal becomes crucial.

[RedsManRick]

Originally Posted by Rojo

Somebody here had the Tommy Lasorda tag about "the best teams loose a third of their games, the worst win a third so it's the middle third you have to worry about".

Games decided in the late innings are marginal. But the baseball gods are commies, they want to push everyone to .500. ergo, the marginal becomes crucial.

And yet, every year, the "ability" of a team to win 1 run games proves to be more or less random.

Lasorda's characterization is fun, but really misrepresents what's actually happening. The trick is realizing that games aren't first put in to a bucket called "1 run games" and then decided based on a team's ability in those games. Games are decided by the accumulation of runs over the course of a game. A run in the 3rd counts just as much toward the final outcome as a run in the 9th. What matters is how many more of them you can accumulate than your opponent.

And on the season level, teams improve by shifting their whole distribution of runs scored up relative to their distribution of runs allowed, essentially taking games from the definite loss bucket and pushing those in to the "margin" while taken games formally in the "margin" bucket and pushing those up in the definite win bucket.

Thinking of game outcome possibilities from a certain late inning point on can make us forget that the bigger chunk of wins and losses occurs before the 8th and 9th innings. Go up 4 by the time the 9th rolls around and you've robbed your closer of a chance to have a game that needs saving. And that's a good thing. So is taking a game that would have been tied and turning in to a save chance. But what happens when you get to those save chances? Well, it's a relatively small number of innings among teams that are relatively closely matched. Randomness is going to dominate.

Sure all gains are marginal. But if you want to know which teams from year N improved their W-L record in year N+1, you won't find it in their record in 1 run games. You will find it in their overall run distribution (or average run spread).

[fisch11]

Here's a good reboot:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...e=caple/080805

[UCBrownsfan]

Mariano Rivera was the Yankees closer from 1997-2011 - 15 years as the main finisher.

In those 15 years here is the Yankees distribution of wins over Pyth.

-9 thru -5 : 0
-4 thru 0 : 4
1 thru 5 : 7
6 thru 10 : 3
Greater than 10: 1

Over his career as the Yankees finisher they were 41 games over Pythagorean or 2.7 games/ year over Pyth.

[dougdirt]

Originally Posted by UCBrownsfan

Mariano Rivera was the Yankees closer from 1997-2011 - 15 years as the main finisher.

In those 15 years here is the Yankees distribution of wins over Pyth.

-9 thru -5 : 0
-4 thru 0 : 4
1 thru 5 : 7
6 thru 10 : 3
Greater than 10: 1

Over his career as the Yankees finisher they were 41 games over Pythagorean or 2.7 games/ year over Pyth.

As I posted earlier, Rivera actually was below league average in protecting a 1 run lead. So I don't think we can contribute their pythagorean record to the Rivera factor.

[jojo]

Originally Posted by fisch11

Here's a good reboot:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...e=caple/080805

Really the thesis of the article isn't that closers don't matter. The author seems to argue that the best relief arms are misused by labeling them a closer because save situations often times aren't high leverage and the closer role could be filled by many options in those circumstances.

I think the author's true quibble is with the definition of a save.