maybe but you have to have stones to be a closer for 10-15 years, and a rubber arm that can throw 2 or 3 innings (counting warm ups, bullpen tosses and in-between innings) every other night.
Some guys are just fit to be a closer. Rivera is one of them. Others are not (Brad Lidge??).
Just watch, the save will be the next big stat. Right now, for pitchers, it's 300 wins or 3000 strikeouts, but now it's going to be 300 or 350 saves.
If you look at how starting pitching is going and who is doing the best, we MIGHT have the last couple 300 win pitchers for a long time pitching right now. I figure that Glavine will get there, Mussina will get close and you can't count out guys like Willis and maybe Carlos Zambrano, but they are all young guys and it will be 10 years before they get close.
I didn't mean to disparage the Save, at all. It's the Stat of the New Millenium.
Used to be you had to finish the final three innings of any win (still an unconditional qualifier), but you didn't get credit for closing out the ninth with a lead, at least without tying runs on base.
See? You made your point extremely well. This is what makes a baseball geek: statistics are the lifeblood of cross-generational comparisons. I would agree: the 300 game winner could very well become a relic of the past. And closers, despite only 100-odd IP a season, have to be ready every day, if not every other day - and they typically will face both left and right-handed hitters.