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Saturday, February 17

The stat that controls the game

By Jayson Stark
ESPN.com

And now the ESPY nominations for Most Misleading Stat in Sports:

From the ice rink: "plus-minus."

From the gridiron: "unassisted tackles."

From the hardwood: "the triple-double."

And from the diamond: "the save."

Special series: Closers

We all know teams need a top closer to be successful -- especially in the postseason, where Mariano Rivera has arguably been the most valuable Yankee as they have won three straight World Series titles. ESPN.com takes an in-depth look at closers.

Stark: The stat that controls the game

McAdam: The rise and crash of closers

Klapisch: Mister Mariano

Ranking the closers from No. 1 to No. 30

Neyer: A short history of closers

McAdam: Scouting for closers

Sickels: Where do closers come from?

Thank you. Thank you. And the winner is ...

What do you know? It's "the save."

But then again, this is a baseball column. So you were expecting maybe penalty-kick-shootout goal percentage?

Back in the old days ...
Once upon a time, friends, if you'll look back through your baseball encyclopedias, you'll recall that there was no such thing as a save. Of course, back then, there was no such thing as a closer, either.

There were only pitchers to throw, games to win, outs to get, nine innings in which to get them. Ah, it was a simpler time.

Even in those days, we're told, getting that last out was always a good thing. But shockingly, it wasn't the only thing.

There were other outs, too. And some of them were bigger than the last out. So it was actually legal to use your best pitcher to get them. What was up with that?

Then, however, the save came along. In the beginning, it was a useful little stat. Who could have known it would ultimately grow into The Monster That Ate The Pitching Staff (which, by the way, is not another Hannibal Lecter flick)?


	Robb Nen saved 41 games last year, but never had to get more than three outs.

Our No. 1 problem with the save these days is this:

A good stat is a stat that illuminates the game, gives insight into the game, measures who plays the game best and worst. The save has ceased to be that kind of stat.

Instead, it has become what no stat should ever become -- a stat that actually defines how the game is played instead of the other way around.

For every other player on the field, his job is defined by how he can best be used to win the game.

But the closer's job, here in the modern post-Eck-ian era, is simply to compile a number. That's what these men do now: They collect saves.

So the save no longer is a tool that measures how well they do their job. It's a stat that now has all-consuming powers over when they'll even be asked to pitch.

"I was the guy who wrote the current save rule back in the mid-'70s," says Steve Hirdt, ever-astute analyst-historian from the Elias Sports Bureau. "When I wrote that rule, I didn't write it with the idea that it would eventually be a guidepost to managers as to when to bring a pitcher into a game so he could get a save.

"But now, we see that situation time and again. We've all seen many times the case where the home team is ahead by three runs in the bottom of the eighth, so the closer starts warming up. And now, drat! The home team scores an additional run. So they're up by four runs, and it's not a save situation. So the closer sits down and a lesser pitcher warms up."

And we've all seen the opposite, too.

The ninth inning starts with a team up by more than three runs and that lesser pitcher in the game. Now a rally begins, so the closer gets up. And the moment the save situation goes into effect -- even if it's a five-run lead and the tying run merely has moved out on deck -- voila! It's time to bring in the closer.

"What we have now," Hirdt says, "is a situation where managers have created a series of automatic decisions. They don't like to put themselves in a situation where they have to make a judgment where, if it's 4-2 going into the eighth, do they put that guy in?

"Ten years ago, certainly 20 years ago, that was a real decision that had to be made. Now, unless it's Randy Johnson or Pedro Martinez or Roger Clemens, it's automatic: Your starter comes out, and the set-up man comes in. Then, in the ninth, the closer comes in. Managers do that to relieve themselves of what used to be their primary role: in-game strategy."

Nowadays, though, with rare exceptions, there is virtually no strategy involved in the decision to bring in the closer.

Ninth inning? Save rule in effect? Bring him in.

Seventh inning? One-run game? Tying and winning runs on base? Edgar Martinez heading for the box? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, now pitching ... uh, Jamie Brewington?

	“	What are we trying to do? Are we trying to win games or pump guys' numbers up? ”
		— Former Reds manager Jack McKeon

That's baseball by the book, 2001 edition. We asked the Elias Sports Bureau to delve inside that book. Here's what it found:

Robb Nen -- one of the best closers in the business, with no debate -- saved 41 games last year. Not once, in any of those saves, was he asked by the Giants to get more than three outs.

Over in the American League, Troy Percival saved 32 games for the Angels. Again, not one of them required him to pitch more than one inning.

Meanwhile, the two league leaders in saves -- Todd Jones and Antonio Alfonseca -- collected just two saves apiece in which they got more than three outs, and no saves in which they got as many as six outs.

Contrast that with the league leaders in saves in 1990, 1980 or 1970, all of whom were required to rack up at least five times as many saves of more than one inning. Those figures, courtesy of Elias' Ken Hirdt:

YEAR  LEADER           4-OUT SV    6-OUT SV 7+-OUT SV
2000  Todd Jones (AL)      2           0        0
2000  A. Alfonseca (NL)    2           0        0
1990  Bobby Thigpen (AL)  11           4        1
1990  John Franco (NL)    17           7        0
1980  Rich Gossage (AL)   20          14        9
1980  Bruce Sutter (NL)   18          15        5
1970  Wayne Granger (NL)  12           6        2
1970  Ron Perranoski (AL) 22          19       12

It was a different world. Even 10 years ago, let alone 20 or 30. Imagine a closer now who was asked to get 19 saves in one season of two innings or more. Which would come first -- the trip to the DL or the grievance?

Yet Sutter and Gossage, men who saved 30 to 40 games a year when saves still meant something, can't even get 50 percent of the votes in the Hall of Fame balloting. And one big reason for that is that modern voters can no longer distinguish the significance of their save totals from the insignificance of the inflated save numbers they see today.

"You have people painting their saves with the same brush as current saves," Hirdt says. "They know that current saves are kind of watered down, and they assume that's always been the case, and it's not. When Fingers and Gossage and Sutter were saving games, they weren't watered down."

Heck, those men were often asked to pitch when save situations weren't in effect, when games were (gulp) tied, when critical situations arose as early as the sixth inning. What a concept.

But today, virtually no managers even consider using their closer in any of those situations. And the one manager who actually did that regularly over the last several years -- Jack McKeon -- just got fired by the Reds.

It comes as no shock that McKeon's primary closer, Danny Graves, pitched more innings (91 1/3), earned more wins (10) and entered more tie games (17) than any closer in either league last season. But that was no accident. For McKeon, it was philosophy.

"How many games are lost in the eighth inning because you don't bring that guy in?" McKeon wonders. "There were times I brought Graves in there with a one-run lead, bases loaded in the seventh inning, because we needed to stop them right there. Now he'd get a sacrifice fly, and that becomes a blown save. But he gets out of the inning, and we end up winning.

"You know, sometimes in the seventh or eighth inning, that's when you've got to get that rally stopped. And we're bringing in guys who you know are not gonna get out of it. To me, that's stupid."

But to most everyone else, that's mandatory. So isn't it time we all reexamined how teams use their closers? And when? And, most importantly, why?

"What are we trying to do?" McKeon asks. "Are we trying to win games or pump guys' numbers up?"

If we asked any manager that question in a vacuum -- unconnected to any specific question about how he would use any specific player -- 100 percent of them would say they're more interested in winning games than inflating stats. Yet when it comes to using the closer, it's a whole different deal.

So what would it take to change that deal? A Constitutional amendment? A special clause in the next collective-bargaining agreement? A manager's job for Gossage and Sutter? Or is it just too late by now?

"It's simple," McKeon says. "You've just gotta say, 'I'm interested in winning games, not getting saves.' "

But obviously, it's not that simple. Not anymore.

"At this point," Hirdt says, "it will take a manager of tremendous courage to spit into the wind and do the right thing -- especially on a winning team."

To give credit where it's due, the manager of the best team around, Joe Torre, regularly has brought Mariano Rivera into postseason games in the eighth inning. Over the last four Octobers, in fact, Rivera has piled up 14 of 19 saves with stints of more than one inning.

This year, however, Torre doesn't have Jeff Nelson to call on when Manny Ramirez heads for the plate in those big situations in the seventh inning. So would Torre actually muster the courage to bring in his closer in that kind of situation?

There was a time, not so long ago, when managers did that regularly. But now those days are so long gone, a whole generation of baseball watchers has no idea they ever existed.

"A few years ago, I was watching the replay of The Bucky Dent Game on ESPN Classic with my son, Dennis," Hirdt says. "And now, in the seventh inning, Gossage comes in to relieve Guidry, with the score 4-2.

"Dennis says, 'Hey, I thought you said this guy was the closer.' I said, 'Yeah, he was.' He said, 'So what's he doing in there in the seventh inning?' I just said, 'They didn't do it that way then.'

"I later looked it up. Gossage faced the last 14 hitters in that game."

These days, 14 hitters can be two weeks in the life of Robb Nen. But that's not his fault. It's the fault of the culture he works in. It's about time, though, we looked hard at reinventing that culture.

Would the Rams kneel down twice on second and goal just to make sure Jeff Wilkins could kick another field goal? Would the Avalanche launch shots on their own net to help Patrick Roy work on his save percentage? Would Tiger purposely miss greens to make his putting stats look cooler?

No. No. And no. Only in baseball is it acceptable to let the club swing the golfer. Which leads us to one all-important question:

Is it too late to ask for that mulligan?

Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer for ESPN.com.

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