作者比较终结者制度形成的前后胜率，凡是进入第九局领先的球队，不论是有固定终结者
，或是没固定终结者，两者间对球队的胜率与影响性近乎一样，甚至是没什么差别。
因此，他认为终结者制度能左右比赛胜败的因素近乎于零。
再者，终结者的上场时机受限因素很多(例如:三分差比赛)，反倒是Setup Man的角色常常
扮演着决定性的因素，他能在第七局或第八局对球队作出重要贡献(维持住比赛)，并将
这领先的分数带进第九局，所以他认为牛棚的配置因该为:最强后援投手担任Setup Man，
第二好或第三好的投手担任终结者(closer)。
http://joeposnanski.si.com/2010/11/26/the-age-of-the-setup-man/
The Age Of The Setup Man
I came across a fascinating baseball trend the other day — or non-baseball
trend, I guess — and it’s one of the more surprising things I have seen
since I have been tinkering with baseball. I’m pretty sure there have been
studies done on this before, but I had never seen them, and so I was blown
away with my FTOD — Faux Thrill Of Discovery.*
*I have a friend who is convinced — CONVINCED — that he invented the “
throw the ball off the stoop” game. I have told him a hundred times that the
game was invented many years before he was born, but he refuses to believe
it, he is convinced that one day when he was very young (long before he could
have heard of such a game) he was looking at the stairs and thinking, “You
know, if one player throw a ball off the stairs, and another player was the
fielder…” In a way he DID invent it thought it had been invented a half
million times before. That’s FTOD.
So, here’s how it happened: I was looking over the American League rookie of
the year match-up, and I was kind of studying Neftali Feliz’s season. Feliz
had 40 saves, an .880 WHIP, a 71-18 strikeout-to-walk ratio, it was quite a
year. And then I saw that the Rangers went 73-6 when they had a lead going
into the ninth inning, an impressive .924 winning percentage.
Only … is that impressive? As I thought about it a bit more, I guessed it
probably wasn’t impressive. And I was right. That .924 winning percentage
with a lead going into the ninth is actually below league average — quite a
bit below league average in fact. The league average of games won with a team
going into the ninth with a lead was 95.5%.
Top six winning percentages with leads entering the ninth inning:
1. Tampa Bay .988 (81-1)
2. San Diego .987 (77-1)
3. St. Louis .987 (74-1)
4. Oakland .986 (73-1)
5. Detroit .986 (70-1)
6. Kansas City .981 (53-1)
Bottom six winning percentages with leads entering the ninth inning:
30. Baltimore .869 (53-8)
29. Los Angeles .908 (69-7)
28. Milwaukee .914 (64-6)
27. Arizona .923 (60-5)
26. Texas .924 (73-6)
25. Colorado and Houston .932 (69-5)
Feliz was not responsible for all those blown leads, by the way. But my point
had shifted. Now, I wasn’t interesting so much in Feliz; I was interested in
something else. We all know that the role of the closer has evolved over the
last 40 or so years. Even the name has evolved — we really used to call them
“firemen,” which was awesome. They used to come out to the mound on those
cool little bullpen cars, which was awesome. They used to have mustaches and
stomp around on the mound like pro wresters and have nicknames like “Goose”
and “The Inspector” and “Sparky” and “The Mad Hungarian” and “Quiz”
and “Bedrock” and “The Terminator” — all of which was awesome. Man the
closer role used to be so much more awesome than they are now.
But the point is that the closer has evolved, his role has crystallized, his
salary has gone up, his importance in the game has obviously increased
exponentially. And so I wondered just how much more often teams are winning
now when they lead going into the ninth than they did before the closer
became such a part of things.
You may already know the answer to this. But if you don’t, I’d like you to
take a guess how much more often teams with close out ninth inning leads than
they did 10 years ago, 25 years ago, 50 years ago.
I can tell you now the answer shocked the heck out of me. I conservatively
estimated that teams win about 5% more often now with ninth inning leads than
they did before the closer really came into the vogue. I suspected it was a
conservative estimate but that was my guess anyway. Here’s why: One of the
things that always surprises me about baseball is how little any one thing
affects the percentages of the game.
That is to say: There are charts that suggest how you arrange a lineup will
have very little effect on how many runs your team scores in the long run.
There are formulas that suggest that stolen bases — once you incorporate the
caught stealing — will have a surprisingly small impact on the game. One of
the biggest beefs people have with stats like Wins Above Replacement and some
of the more advanced defensive stats is that they always seem to come out
low, they always seem not only to disprove big swings (like the idea that
Ozzie Smith saved 100 runs a year with his defense or that a single great
player was worth 25 extra wins) but they actually MAKE FUN of those big
numbers. Baseball in the long view is stunningly consistent and predictable
and no one thing or one person shifts it much.
So, I guessed that all the advances — the creation of the bullpen as weapon,
the evolution of the closer, the Mariano Rivera cutter, all of it — only
made teams about 5% more likely to win games in 2010 than in, say, 1952.
I was wrong.
The truth is that all the bullpen advances have had ABSOLUTELY ZERO EFFECT on
how much more often teams win games they’re leading in the ninth inning.
Zero. Nada. Zilch. The ol’ bagel.
Teams won 95.5% of their ninth-inning leads in 2010. Teams won 95.5% of their
ninth-inning leads in 1952.
Well, shocked the heck out of me. Well, it’s not quite that simple. There
have been a few anomalies, yes. For instance, in 1957, teams won only 92.7%
of their ninth inning leads — easily the lowest percentage over the last 60
years. That was a year for comebacks. And the highest percentage was in the
strike year of 1981, when teams won 97.6% of their leads — that probably
would have normalized over a full schedule.
Other than that, though, the best winning percentage for ninth-inning leads
is .958. It has happened four times — 2008, 1988, 1972 and 1965. That pretty
much covers the entire spectrum of bullpen use. It doesn’t change.
Basically, teams as a whole ALWAYS win between a touch less than 94% and a
touch more than 95% of the time. This has been stunningly, almost mockingly,
consistent. The game has grown, the leagues have expanded, the roles have
changed, the pressure has turned up, but the numbers don’t change.
Here, I’ll give you another example. Most of us would agree, probably, that
Mariano Rivera is the greatest closer in the history of baseball, right? I
mean, we can have that argument another time, but I think it’s Rivera, and
you probably think it’s Rivera, and since he became a closer in 1997, the
Yankees have won a rather remarkable 97.3% of the time when they lead going
into the ninth inning. I don’t have an easy way to compare that to everyone
over the same time period, but I’d bet that’s the best record for any team.
In 2008, the Yankees won all 77 games the led going into the ninth. Most
years they lose once or twice.
So that would seem to indicate that Rivera DOES make a difference. And I
think he does make a difference — compared to other closers.
But … consider the 1950s New York Yankees. Dominant team, of course. The
bullpen was an ever shifting thing, though. One year, Ryne Duren was their
main guy out of the pen, another year it was Bob Grim or Art Ditmar or Tom
Morgan or Tommy Byrne or Jim Konstanty … well, the names changed all the
time. The bullpen changed all the time. Casey Stengel seemed to shift
strategies every now and again, probably to keep things interesting, starters
finished many more games, and anyway the game was very different then and …
From 1951-1962, the New York Yankees won 97.3% of their ninth inning leads.
If you carry it another decimal point, they actually won a slightly HIGHER
percentage of their ninth inning leads than the Mariano Yankees.
Well, it shocked the heck out of me, anyway. I didn’t do extremely detailed
research on this because (A) The numbers for winning ninth-inning leads are
not searchable as far as I know; (B) I’m not researcher. But just the little
bit I did do tells me that all of this bullpen maneuvering, these end-of-game
innovations, these big money closer contracts, they may make sense for
individual teams, but they have had almost no visible impact on the game
itself. Teams have always won a very higher percentage of their ninth inning
leads, no matter what their strategy for doing so. The good teams win almost
every single time.
Well, anyway, I think it’s fascinating. But you may notice that the title of
this blog post is about setup men. Well, here is what I came out of all this
thinking — there really isn’t much a team can do with the ninth inning.
Teams worry about it and fret over it and spend tons of money on it and … it
’s really kind of a static thing. In 2010, the Kansas City Royals were all
but unbeatable with a ninth-inning lead and they lost 95 games. In 2010, the
Texas Rangers were near the bottom of the league when it came to protecting
ninth inning leads, and they were in the World Series. It seems to me that
there just isn’t much wiggle room here. Teams, good and bad, with great
closers and terrible ones, are going to win the game almost every time they
lead going into the ninth inning. Sure, you want to maximize the ninth
inning, but I think it’s probably a lot more important to HAVE LEADS going
into the ninth inning.
And thus … the setup man. In 2010, teams won 91.7% of the time when they led
going into the eighth inning. And that was the highest percentage over the
last 60 years. It could have been a statistical blip. It probably WAS a
statistical blip. But it seems interesting just the same. I think the setup
man is becoming the new closer. I think on many teams, managers and general
managers think the setup man is even more valuable than the closer for two
reasons:
1. As mentioned, the ninth inning is predictable and has been going back at
least to 1950. A hot closer can give you a bit of a boost, but if you are a
good team you are not going to blow ninth inning leads very often.
2. Because of the save statistic and current group-think, the closer is
pretty much immovable. You have to start him in the ninth inning with the
three-run-or-less lead. Every now and again, a manager will go against
convention, bring in the closer to finish off the eighth, or start off the
ninth with a lefty-lefty match-up before bringing in the closer. But almost
every time the closer is used in only one way, and that’s stifling for
managers.
But the setup role is not as settled, and so managers can use their setup men
in many different ways. They can bring them into the game in the seventh.
They can wait until runners are on base in the eighth. They can use the setup
man for one out, for four outs, for six outs, when the team is in trouble in
the sixth inning, it’s an open canvas.
And, yes, I think some teams (like the Chicago White Sox with Matt Thornton*)
are making their best relievers setup men instead of closers.
*Several people pointed this out to me a couple of months ago when I wrote
that I really didn’t want to see Matt Thornton pitch in the All-Star Game. I
was probably a bit off in trying to make my point — Thornton is a terrific
pitcher. I really just meant I would like to see the stars pitch in the
All-Star Game, I think only starters should pitch. But that’s just me.
I think I would do this too — put my best reliever as a setup man. I mean,
yes, I would still love to see someone tear the whole thing down and try and
create bullpen without specific roles. But I don’t think that will happen
anytime soon, and I don’t know — human nature being what it is — that it
would work. I think there’s a chance it would not work. This isn’t just
about people liking to have roles. I think the way it works now, there’s a
clear progression for a reliever. You work the middle innings, then if you do
that well you work the later innings, and if you do that well you have a shot
at being a closer where the big money and fame is. I think that speaks to
players ambitions. They have something to shoot for.
So, assuming that we’re not yet in a place where you can go with a no-roles
bullpen, I think I would make my setup man my star. Sure, you would want a
good pitcher as a closer. But I think that’s enough. Put someone good in
that role and you will win 95-to-100% of the games you lead going into the
ninth inning.*
*I’ve been thinking lately how utterly ludicrous it was that Dennis
Eckersley won the 1992 MVP Award. Eck is a fascinating media creature — he
raced in as a first ballot Hall of Famer without anyone really thinking twice
about it, and he won the 1992 Cy Young AND MVP award, the last pitcher to do
that. He had 51 saves and a 1.91 ERA and an amazing 93-11 strikeout-to-walk
ratio that year. No question: It was a terrific year.
But it was really about the same year Bryan Harvey had in 1991 (46 saves,
1.80 ERA, 101-17 strikeout to walk) and Harvey didn’t even get a single
first place Cy Young vote, much less any MVP consideration. It was not too
different from the year Doug Jones had in 1992 (only 36 saves, but a 1.85
ERA, 30 more innings than Eckersley, a 93-17 strikeout to walk). And Jonesie
didn’t even get a third-place Cy Young vote.
To the larger point, the Oakland A’s went 81-1 when leading going into the
ninth. A fabulous record. But the Toronto Blue Jays went 83-1, and neither
Tom Henke nor Duane Ward (who had a higher WAR than Eck, by the way) got ANY
recognition or consideration at all — neither one even made the All-Star
Team. And the Kansas City Royals that year went 64-0 when leading going into
the ninth, but nobody was pushing Jeff Montgomery for the MVP award.
Eckersley — perhaps because of his amazing story as once-good starter turned
into fabulous closer — just had a way of seeming larger than life.
My feeling is: If you put in someone good — your second or third best
reliever — into the closer role, then you will have your best pitcher to use
in key situations. You will have him to secure the eighth inning, of course,
but you could also use him at other crucial times. I think the game is
shifting that way now. I think that’s what some of the smarter teams are
quietly beginning to do now. Take Boston: There’s all this talk about how
good a closer Daniel Bard can be for the Red Sox. But I think they might be
better off with him dominating in the role he’s in now and someone else,
someone not as good, in the closer role. We’ll keep an eye on that.