Do closers always pitch in the most important situations?

by Daniel Moroz on Mar 17, 2011 8:00 AM EDT in Visuals Above Replacement

This type of topic has been covered before, but I was thinking about the idea of a team potentially using a slightly lesser pitcher as a standard closer - allowing the best bullpen arm to be used in other high leverage situations - and decided to look at the distribution of save opportunities versus leverage index for relievers from 2010. Nothing too fancy; just a simple graphic:

Svli_medium

That's all relievers with at least 30 IP from lat year. gmLI is the leverage index when the pitcher entered the game, and save opportunity % is the proportion of saves and blown saves to total games. The red line divides the top 30 guys from the rest according to save opportunity %, though a few guys with some saves fell to the left of it (Trevor Hoffman, Fernando Rodney, Brandon Lyon).

The major outlier seems to be Daniel Bard, who had a 1.9 gmLI with Boston with only 3 saves (and 7 blown saves*). Jonathan Papelbon - the team's nominal closer - had a 1.85 gmLI. The other Sox had a similar situation, with Matt Thorton (1.63 gmLI) beating out closer Bobby Jenks (1.58 gmLI). Atlanta too (Peter Moylan at 1.52, and Billy Wagner at 1.43). Both Ryan Perry (1.48) and Joel Zumaya (1.36) beat out Detroit closer Jose Valverde (1.27). With several relievers switching clubs mid-season, injuries, shifting roles, and whatnot, this isn't exact.

Still, while for most teams the main closer was their highest leverage reliever, there were enough teams where some other guy ended up coming in for the most important situations** to not get too hung up over whether the 3.50 ERA pitcher or the 3.75 ERA pitcher is set to get the ball with a three-run lead in the top of the ninth***.

* Using just saves instead of saves plus blown saves mostly just compresses the points on the left side of the graph.

** Ignoring the multi-team pitchers, the average gap in gmLI between each team's top guy when it came to save opportunities and their (next) highest leverage pitcher was just 0.19.

*** This presumes the manager is more or less stuck using the closer in the "usual" manner, which most are the majority of the time I think.

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Good stuff

I wonder if this has changed any over the last 10 years.

You may know me as NYRoyal.

by Scott McKinney on Mar 17, 2011 10:17 AM EDT reply actions

If I have a chance

I’ll look at some past years as well. My hunch is that it bounces around some, but that 2010 wasn’t terribly unusual.

Orioles blogging at Camden Crazies | Follow on Twitter at @CamdenCrazies

by Daniel Moroz on Mar 17, 2011 5:57 PM EDT up reply actions

Interesting stuff, Daniel

But does this indicate that teams purposefully used lesser arms as nominal closers? Or is it just a function of what we all know, which is often times the highest leverage situations do not occur in formal “save” situations?

Some teams may have gotten this right, but others may just have done this by accident. Maybe breaking this out by team would help.

Writer at Beyond the Box Score and tortured Mets fan (is there any other kind?)

by Bill Petti on Mar 17, 2011 10:24 AM EDT reply actions

It doesn't indicate that

But that wasn’t what I was looking for really. If non-closers were being closers in LI everywhere, I wouldn’t be as strong in suggesting that using a lesser arm as closer could be an OK idea. So the second one.

I kind of broke it out by team by showing which closers were “out-leveraged” by other relievers.

Orioles blogging at Camden Crazies | Follow on Twitter at @CamdenCrazies

by Daniel Moroz on Mar 17, 2011 5:56 PM EDT up reply actions