My reason for this post though is to show my disappointment in the continuation of teams paying big money to a player to be used in only one situation which is not always the best situation for their talents.
Derek Carty for The Hardball Times made some perfect comments over on a post at The Fantasy Baseball Generals yesterday that I am going to steal from. His general point was similar to the Bill James theory that your best reliever who is often your "closer" should be used in the most important situations. Derek used LI (Leverage Index which tells the importance of any situation) to show how this works.
That’s not to say it’s efficient, though. Closers could certainly be used
better, and the nice LI charts we have now would really help managers out when
making decisions like whether to let a ‘closer’ enter in the 7th inning, down by
1, with bases loaded (5.9 LI) or to save him for that ninth inning bases empty
situation (0.80 LI).
Without stealing his whole post I will say it is a good read and that also points out why a team like the A's who are religious sabermetrics still use a closer:
1) the traditional use of the closer isn’t horribly inefficient
2) they have good-to-great relievers like Joey Devine, Santiago Casilla, Brad Zielger, and Andrew Brown (who aren’t much worse than Street when he’s on) pitching
high-leverage middle innings3) they want to build the trade value of their closer to eventually trade him (ala Street this year). Using a committee wouldn’t accomplish this.
My final point is that the Mets just added a very good reliever, but this does not solve the fact that their bullpen can't get those important outs in the 7th and 8th to always get to him. Of note was the drop in K/9 for K-Rod this year as he dropped from 12 to 10, which is still good, but add in the 2-3 mph loss on his fastball and I think a three year deal may not be the best of ideas.
Questions or comments send to TroyPatterson@RotoSavants.com
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