Baseball, more than any other sport, is at a crossroads between the old, traditionalist ideas and the new, analytic-driven ideas. One area where this crossroads is prominent relates to the proper way to utilize a closer.
The traditional view is that closers should be held in the bullpen until the ninth inning or when a save opportunity presents itself. Those who question this view cite that the last three outs of a game are often not the most important outs, and that the closer role should be much more flexible as far as their availability during the course of a game.
By definition, the closer is (or should be) the best relief pitcher in the bullpen. If it’s the seventh inning, and it’s a tie or one-run game, and the opposing team is bringing up the top of the line-up, and/or the reliever that’s in the game gave up some combination of walks/hits resulting in runners on base, isn’t that a situation where the guy with the best ability to get hitters out be called upon? If the “closer” gets out of it, he did his job, and other relievers should be able to be relied upon to navigate the bottom of the line-up for the last six outs. If a manager falls too far into the closer-only-in-the-ninth wormhole, that’s making the mistake of oversimplifying it; it’s making the last three outs the most important outs, only because they’re the last three, not because it’s the inning his team faced the greatest danger of losing.
Nationals manager Matt Williams appears to be at the forefront of the mindset that relief pitchers must have a defined role (i.e. they must be a “7th inning guy,” “8th inning guy,” or “closer”). But, as described above, taking a hard line on these roles would be to routinely place the 6th, 7th, and 8th inning relievers in high-pressure situations and more often than not, placing the closer in a low-pressure situation, with no runners on base when entering the game. If the closer is the best reliever on a team, it makes the most sense to use him in the highest of pressure situations. Recently, Williams’ win-starved Nationals have lost several close games, giving up the eventual game-deciding runs in innings six through eight, while their best reliever/closer (Jonathan Papelbon) sat and watched because Williams has taken a hard line on only using his closer in save situations.
One aspect that is an interesting point of discussion is the role of the manager. If a bullpen were to be more flexible, the manager’s role would become more crucial to team success. Most managers usually welcome more power and control. If relievers fit into clearly defined roles, it gives the manager an out-route when facing criticism. Of course, bullpens will always give up leads, no matter how you use the pitchers. The traditional usage leads to blown saves, and the modern version would hardly be foolproof. If a team goes into the the sixth inning tied, and their “6th inning guy” gives up four runs and they end up losing by that amount, it offers the manager a built-in excuse. They lost the game, and it was too early to go to the closer.
However, if the bases are loaded in the sixth inning of a tie game, and the closer is brought in, and gets out of that jam, but the team ends up losing after that, the manager doesn’t have the luxury of putting it on the team, because the traditionalist-leaning media and fans would ask why he didn’t save the closer until the more commonplace ninth inning. Going by the book and using the bullpen as pretty much everybody expects offers managers a way to deflect criticism of their decision-making as a job preserving measure. However, using the bullpen in an outside-the-box way could potentially open the door to more wins. Of course, we don’t know this for a fact because no manager uses this method enough to give us a good sample size, but in theory using the best pitchers in the most vulnerable situations makes a ton of sense.
This might be too open-minded, but even the save is sort of an arbitrary stat. Going against the traditional bullpen method would be to turn one’s back on the save stat and number chasers everywhere. However, if you measured the number of times a “6th-inning guy” comes in with no runners on, and got out of the inning without giving up any runs, that number probably wouldn’t deviate much from the percentage of times a closer secures the ninth inning. Getting out of the sixth inning of a close game isn’t all that much more important than getting through the ninth, because giving up runs in the sixth drastically changes the odds of the outcome
At this point, we can’t have an accurate discussion over which way produces better results, but the fundamental fault in the traditional view is that it’s flawed to always assume the ninth inning is the most important. However, if you go too far in that direction and it would be to render the rest of the game leading up to the ninth as pretty useless; go too far the opposite way and MLB would need not play the ninth. Regardless, next time you watch your favorite team lose a close game and the closer sits in the bullpen the entire game because his clearly-defined role wasn’t presented, ask yourself: Would my team’s’ chances have improved if the best reliever been given a chance to pitch when the lead was given up? Are MLB managers using closers right?
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