Other than Mo Rivera, modern closers don't measure up

By DAN TRAMMEL
@HighwaytoHall

Lee Smith retired in 1997 as Major League Baseball’s all-time leader in saves.

In 2012, his 10^th year on the Hall of Fame ballot, Smith received 50 percent of the votes for the first time. He is still well shy of the 75 percent necessary for enshrinement, and it appears unlikely he will ever receive the necessary amount.

This is a good thing.

Although he has 478 regular season saves, he never pitched in the World Series and has a career postseason record of 0-2 with 1 save. More than any other positions, relief pitcher and placekicker are judged by postseason performance. Morten Andersen and Gary Anderson may be the two highest scoring players in NFL history, but their zero points in the Super Bowl are going to resonate with the voters.

Adam Vinatieri may trail Morten by 792 points and Gary by 682, but his two Super Bowl winning kicks, combined with the game-tying and winning kicks in the “Tuck Rule Game,” put him in a much better position for enshrinement than any other kicker. Similarly, Mariano Rivera punched his ticket to Cooperstown with 11 World Series saves and 5 Championship rings.

Although some players (see Ernie Banks) overcame a lack of team success to join the elite (and deservedly so), most players have not been so fortunate. Hall of Fame voters look, in part, on how a player performed on the big stage.

Comparing a wide receiver’s numbers to Lynn Swann is a fool’s mission. Swann was not elected due to his regular season numbers. He is enshrined in Canton as a result of his otherworldly Super Bowl performances.

Reggie Jackson is not remembered for the three home runs he hit on July 2, 1969 against the Seattle Pilots. He is remembered for the three home runs he hit in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

World Series stars like Mark Lemke and Buddy Biancalana will never be Hall of Famers because they lacked any semblance of regular season success. But postseason achievements help the candidacy of good players, and help turn the great players into legends.

Currently, 5 players who were predominantly relief pitchers are in the Hall of Fame. Let’s first look at their World Series performances:

Name	Record	Saves	ERA	Championships
Rollie Fingers	2-2	6	1.35	3
Goose Gossage	1-0	2	2.63	1
Dennis Eckersley	0-2	1	5.79	1
Bruce Sutter	1-0	2	4.70	1
Hoyt Wilhelm	0-0	1	0.00	1

Similar to Smith, Fingers also retired as the all-time saves leader. But being a part of three straight World Series Champions helped earn his ticket. Although the other pitchers did not have the same World Series success as Fingers, they were each the closer of a World Series Champion. And so many times the lasting image of a World Series is of the pitcher celebrating after recording the final out, an opportunity Smith never had.

Smith’s supporters like to compare his regular season numbers to those relievers currently in the Hall of Fame. Wilhelm pitched in a different era and Eckersley was a starting pitcher for a large portion of his career so they are not fair comparisons.

Fingers, Gossage, and Sutter are the only three to which we can compare Smith.  First, we must look beyond the number of saves. Smith recorded more than the other three but the save statistic is overvalued. Relievers in previous eras pitched more often in tie games and were expected to pitch multiple innings. Today’s closers enter the ninth inning with the lead in a “save situation,” which, many times, is a three-run lead. According to Bill James in his Historical Baseball Abstract, a team will win a game 99 percent of the time if it uses its closer in the 9^th inning to save a three-run lead. If a team doesn’t use its closer in that situation, it will win 98 percent of the time.

So why exactly is the save the best indicator of a closer’s worth?

Let’s look at the list of the top 10 pitchers based on average number of outs each pitcher recorded in his saves (minimum 200 saves):

Hoyt Wilhelm	5.436
Gene Garber	5.399
Dan Quisenberry	5.189
Rollie Fingers	4.815
Bruce Sutter	4.733
Goose Gossage	4.716
Sparky Lyle	4.685
Dave Smith	3.898
Dave Righetti	3.893
Jeff Reardon	3.845

Lee Smith would be 13^th on this list with 3.722 outs per save, which is a huge dropoff from Sutter, Gossage, and Fingers. Smith suffers here because the reliever position changed toward the beginning of his career. He demonstrated the ability to pitch more than one inning but was not given as many opportunities as the others. For those interested, here is the list of the pitchers with the fewest outs per save (200 saves min.):

Brian Fuentes	2.917
Joe Nathan	2.979
Jose Mesa	2.981
Francisco Rodriguez	2.99
Brad Lidge	2.991
Trevor Hoffman	3.005
Troy Percival	3.031
Francisco Cordero	3.033
Rod Beck	3.034
Jose Valverde	3.061
Billy Wagner	3.069

This list obviously contains more current players, including Trevor Hoffman and Billy Wagner, helping to illustrate how the use of the relief pitcher has changed.

Let’s now look at the list of the pitchers with the most saves of 4 or more outs:

Rollie Fingers	201
Goose Gossage	193
Bruce Sutter	188
Lee Smith	169
Dan Quisenberry	160
Jeff Reardon	152
Hoyt Wilhelm	144
Sparky Lyle	134
Mike Marshall	127
Gene Garber	127
Mariano Rivera	116

The top 3 are in the Hall of Fame, followed by Smith and Dan Quisenberry, who received 3.8 percent of the vote in his only year on the ballot, despite 4 consecutive top 3 finishes in Cy Young Award voting. Rivera is headed to the Hall of Fame and stands far above all modern day pitchers in this category. (Since 1994, Keith Foulke is second to Rivera with 55 saves of more than one inning).

Here is the list of pitchers with the most saves of 6 or more outs:

Rollie Fingers	135
Bruce Sutter	130
Goose Gossage	125
Dan Quisenberry	120
Hoyt Wilhelm	114
Gene Garber	107
Mike Marshall	95
Lee Smith	94
Sparky Lyle	91
Tug McGraw	79
Jeff Reardon	78

The same 3 pitchers are at the top of this list, followed by Quisenberry and Hall of Famer Wilhelm.

Out of curiosity, the list of pitchers with the most saves of 9 or more outs is as follows:

Hoyt Wilhelm	53
Gene Garber	52
Mike Marshall	40
Bob Stanley	37
Dan Quisenberry	37
Rollie Fingers	36
Bill Campbell	35
Sparky Lyle	32
Tug McGraw	31
John Hiller	29

Wilhelm takes over the top spot, with Fingers, Quisenberry, Marshall, Garber, and Lyle also appearing on all three lists.

Of course closers were not only used to pitch the late innings, they were brought in to put out “fires,” thus the moniker “firemen.” And not all “fires” are created equal. Preserving a 1-run lead with 0 outs and a runner on third base is not the same as preserving a 3-run lead with 2 outs and a runner on first base. Nonetheless, here is the list of relief pitchers (minimum 100 saves) who inherited the most runners:

Name	Inherited Runners	Inherited Runners Scored	Percentage
Jesse Orosco	1049	261	24.88
Sparky Lyle	969	330	34.06
Tom Burgmeier	852	249	29.23
Goose Gossage	832	277	33.29
Lindy McDaniel	823	295	35.84
Dan Plesac	818	222	27.14
Rollie Fingers	782	225	28.77
Kent Tekulve	771	216	28.02
Hoyt Wilhelm	698	245	35.10
Darold Knowles	695	192	27.63

Here are Gossage, Fingers, Wilhelm, and Lyle again. Orosco was terrific in not allowing inherited runners to score. Now that we have a baseline to follow, let’s look at the same list but only include those pitchers who recorded the most saves of 4 or more outs (shown previously), with Hoffman and Eckersley thrown in:

Name	Inherited Runners	Inherited Runners Scored	Percentage
Sparky Lyle	969	330	34.06
Goose Gossage	832	277	33.29
Rollie Fingers	782	225	28.77
Hoyt Wilhelm	698	245	35.10
Gene Garber	647	231	35.70
Dan Quisenberry	523	201	38.43
Jeff Reardon	523	157	30.02
Mike Marshall	513	173	33.72
Lee Smith	510	143	28.04
Bruce Sutter	445	137	30.79
Mariano Rivera	352	102	28.98
Dennis Eckersley	349	91	26.07
Trevor Hoffman	346	70	20.23

In this list of 13 pitchers, Hoffman and Eckersley have the lowest percentage of inherited runners scoring, but they also inherited the fewest runners. Sutter inherited a surprisingly low number of runners. Smith and Fingers stand out on this list, while Quisenberry struggled with runners on base. Additionally, Lyle appears to be the forgotten reliever in history, appearing on all of our lists (excluding the one naming the pitchers with the fewest outs per save), winning the 1977 American League Cy Young Award, and finishing 3rd in the 1972 MVP voting. He spent 4 years on the Hall of Fame ballot, peaking at 13.1 percent.

Although Smith retired with more saves than any other pitcher, he was not used in the same manner as Fingers, Gossage, and Sutter. Judging from his track record, that appears to be more the fault of his managers and the philosophical change of the best way to use closers.

Without a World Series moment or any postseason success to fall back on, his candidacy hinges on the save record which he once held. This simply is not enough to get him into the Hall of Fame.

If it was, we would have to induct the man whose record he broke. Jeff Reardon. He received 24 votes in his only year on the ballot.