Replies

Hey, I agree with you that leaving the ducks on the pond with the game on the line is the quintessential defintion of relief. And that's what your top relief man used to do. The starter would go as long as he could (what's a "pitch count"?) until he got in trouble and was in danger of losing the lead or the game. This was in the 7th, 8th, or 9th inning (what's a six-inning "quality start"?). The reliever (I don't think the term "closer" had been invented yet) would come in, put out the fire, and then, hopefully, pitch the rest of the game, whether that meant one, two, or even up to three innings. (BTW, using only one or two pitchers, instead of six or seven, meant fewer pitching changes and thus, shorter games. And nobody had six-or-seven-man bullpens anyway.)

To be honest, I think the pitch count is a little bit overworked and a little more ridiculous; if you look at the prime starting pitchers in the game now, there's really very little reason why the bulk of them couldn't take a game into the eighth inning. And I have noticed a few more complete games coming this season than at a comparable point last season.

You may not know or believe it, but the pitch count concept actually began with Milt Pappas - for years, the one-time "Baby Bird" hotshot absolutely refused to throw more than 80 or 90 pitches in any given game, and he pitched in an era where a quality starting pitcher was pretty much expected to finish what he began unless he got murdered on the mound. Pappas was so insistent on his own personal pitch count that it probably cost him a Hall of Fame career; I find it nonsense that people actually think he's a Hall of Fame qualifier only because his overall won-lost record and earned-run average compares almost exactly to Don Drysdale. (Drysdale is actually a very overrated Hall of Famer - he wasn't as good down the pennant stretch as his reputation, and - as Bill James once isolated devastatingly - he had thirteen chances in his career to beat the one team his team most needed to beat to stay in the race or win the pennant and he never won one of them.)

Consider: Pappas was nearly always purged from a pennant-contending team within a year or two after they became contenders. He was the key man in the Frank Robinson deal for Cincinnati, and the Orioles had become contenders and would win the damn thing in 1966 while the Reds in the mid-1960s continued suffering the same fate as the Reds following their improbably 1961 pennant: inconsistent or continuously injured pitching - they never won a thing with Pappas on staff. He was unloaded post-haste from the Atlanta Braves right after they won the National League West in 1969. He went to the still-contending Chicago Cubs but the Cubs never won a thing with him on the staff, even if Leo Durocher did finally get in his face and tell him it was long past time to knock it off with trying to beg off the mound after his 80 pitches. Pappas also had a reputation as a clubhouse lawyer who too often gave the impression that he was more for himself than for his clubs.

A recent historiographer of the Orioles has suggested, with plenty enough support from Oriole players of the time (telling comment: another "Baby Bird" pitcher, lefty Steve Barber, saying of Pappas, You were a prick when we pitched together and you're still a prick), that Pappas was a goner practically before he got his wings wet because of his first influence on the club: Billy Loes, the legendary Brooklyn Dodger whose stated ambition was to not win 20 games a year. Loes ended up in Baltimore when Pappas came up and that was all she wrote.

Now, as you say, it's often one of the set-up guys who faces the men-on-base crisis, and then--even if the guy could go longer--they automatically hand the ninth inning over to the shut-down closer.

Often - but not exclusively.

So now closers often don't pitch enough inherited-runners innings to show up on your chart.

Still, there were at least eight such closers, and it did prove useful to examine them in that light in order to evaluate them as more than just shut-down closers. Especially considering it's been Mariano Rivera who was considered the best relief pitcher (as opposed to merely a shut-down closer) in baseball over the past five or six years, and he seems to do very well when he is brought in with men on base, as he is. I just don't think being nothing more than a shut-down closer is enough or the most important thing to go by when evaluating a relief pitcher, even if Sports Illustrated is more likely to put the single-inning shut-down closer on the cover because he's the one who usually gets the ink and the image.

I was still surprised that I could and did find eight qualifying closers who pitched ten or more IPIs and worked with five or more inherited baserunners in the period I isolated, in an era in which the image of the closer remains the one-inning shut-down man. (I was surprised, considering the workload of the San Diego bullpen, that Trevor Hoffman didn't have any inherited runners to work with in the time I examined.) I was also surprised to see exactly half of those closers (DeJean, Kim, Nunez, Rivera) had inherited runs averages of 1.50 or less; my best guess going in would have been two at the most. About how many closers I might find matching my criteria I had guessed, before looking, that I'd be lucky to find only four. And I think it may well be possible that perhaps a few more closers could become something more than single-inning shutters.

I think the game lengths have been affected more directly by a) the five-man starting rotation and b) the offence explosion and the strike-zone pinching of the mid-1990s that midwifed it - those are what created the frequency of pitching changes in the first place. Even in the earlier years of using closer-specific relievers (the Bruce Sutter-Kent Tekulve-Goose Gossage-Dan Quisenberry years, though I'm not sure exactly when the term "closer" came into complete usage), when managers were beginning to lean a little more on the finisher, the games weren't quite so bogged down by pitching changes unless, really, you were in the League Championship Series or the World Series. You'd be more likely to see half a dozen pitching changes in an LCS game or a Series game than during the regular season unless the pennant race was tight.

OK, here's what's wrong with baseball (well, at least one of the 517 things wrong with baseball, but don't get me started):

Tuesday, three games, two showing what's wrong, one showing what's right . . .

Giants 2, Braves 0

Here's the line on Giants' starter Ryan Jensen:
8 innings, 5 hits, 0 runs, 0 BB, 4 SO, 82 pitches.

"The ninth belongs to Nen," so the (non-)thinking goes, thus shut-down closer Robb "The Starter of a Complete Game" Nen works the ninth. His line:
1 inning, 0 hits, 0 runs, 0 BB, 1 SO, 7 pitches

Now, can someone please explain to me why, on God's green earth, Jensen could not have finished that game? His spot did not come up to bat in the eighth inning; they didn't pinch-hit for him. He had thrown only 82 pitches--82 freakin' pitches! If he pitches into the ninth and gives up a dinger, they're still leading. If that happens, or even if he lets a man on base--fine, bring in Nen, I have no problem with that. But the guy was pitching a great game--five hits, no walks, a minimal number of pitches--Jensen was in line for a shutout, for cryin' out loud! Instead, Nen "works" a quiet ninth for a rather cheap 12th save.

By way of contrast, let's look at . . .

Mets 3, Dodgers 0

Now this is "the way it oughta be"--and used to be! Here's the line on Mets' starter Pedro Astacio:
9 innings, 2 hits, 0 runs, 2 BB, 9 SO, 121 pitches

Notice: No Armando "Hammer" Benitez "working" one inning for a cheap save! Even though Astacio (That Nut!) had thrown an incredibly high (by today's standard's, but not by yesteryear's) 121 pitches. That's 39 pitches more than Jensen!

Finally, back to an example of what's wrong . . .

Indians 6, Orioles 5

Orioles are leading 4-2 after six. Do they have to pinch-hit for starter Erickson in the seventh? No, this is the dumb DH league, remember. Anyways, even if it's the NL, and even if his spot comes up to bat, you wouldn't have to pinch-hit for him if you're leading 4-2. But Erickson has made his "quality start" of six innings and, after all, he's thrown a whopping 96 pitches--poor baby! So Erickson doesn't come to the mound for the seventh; instead we get Bauer, who has a quiet inning. But then Bauer pitched to one batter in the eighth--he must have let the guy on, because he's lifted, and Groom and Roberts pitch the rest of the scoreless eighth. (Note: Two intra-inning pitching changes there; that's what takes so much time. Thank you, Mike "Human-Rain-Delay-as-a-Manager-Too" Hargrove.) The Orioles add a run in the top of the ninth, so now they're up 5-2 going into the bottom of the ninth. Pitching now is the guy I'm guessing is their one-inning shut-down closer, Mr. Julio. Except he can only get two outs. The Indians score four, Matt "There Oughta Be a" Lawton hitting a two-run walk-off dinger to win the game for the Tribe.

Altogether for both teams: nine--count 'em--nine pitchers. (And this, in a league where pitchers don't have to come out for pinch-hitters.) Time of the game: three hours, twenty-two minutes (3:22). Exciting finish for the home fans, I'm sure, but . . . how many of them had fallen asleep before then?