Posted by dlmose on 7/11/2012 9:04:00 AM (view original):
This morning during the all star game, Gary Thorne said that some stat nerd had researched the role of the closer in MLB all the way back to 1900. His findings indicate that since its inception, teams using a closer and leading going into the 9th have a 96% win pct. Teams prior to that and/or not using a closer had a 96% win pct. That's right, exactly the same. Going into the 8th the win pct. both ways was 83%. Obviously I'm not going to verify this (Thorne's word is good enough for me) but it seems to confirm the opinion of many 'round here that a closer is a waste of talent.
I've heard the same thing in the past, pretty much the same numbers.
The bottom line is that, with rare exception, closers don't provide nearly as much value as they are given credit for. The "save" as a statistic is pretty much a joke as it has become the tail wagging the dog in terms of how MLB managers utilize their bullpens in the late innings of games.
And as MikeT has pointed out, in HBD it's usually a wasted role as too many guys relegated to the closer roie leave too many unpitched innings on the table as they are almost always underutilized.
I've gone away from the closer role on all my HBD teams, I just put my best relievers as SuA guys.