Welcome to the July 20 edition of (clutch) Reliever Rankings! There has been some shuffling in the team rankings since the last edition. Furthermore, some relievers who had tremendous starts have either come back to Earth or straight up slumped.<\/p>\n
A reminder that these are clutch<\/em> reliever rankings. Mop-up duty or pitching while behind, while important, is not what makes a bullpen earn its keep. Pitching scoreless innings in tie games or with a narrow lead is what does it. Another way to look at this is which back ends of bullpens are most trustworthy.<\/p>\n Reliever Rankings ranks teams by league in the following categories: Goose Egg percentage (GE%), Broken Egg percentage (BE%), and GE per BE (GE\/BE). These ranks are averaged to get their overall ranking. The reason we are looking at Goose Eggs \u2014 a clutch relief stat invented by Nate Silver \u2014 and not saves is that Goose Eggs give a better indication of clutch performance. Plus, they go inning-by-inning instead of game-by-game. (The short version: A Goose Egg is a scoreless inning of relief in the seventh inning or later of either a tie game or one where his team holds a narrow lead. When the pitcher allows an earned run in that situation, it is a Broken Egg. If he allows an unearned run or an inherited run, it is a Meh. In chess terms, that\u2019s akin to a stalemate.)<\/p>\n This week, we will look at the American League first. Statistics are up to and including July 18.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nAL Reliever Rankings<\/h3>\n