18 May 2005

The Value of a Closer

With all the closers in baseball coming up injured as of late, (Troy Perival, Armando Benitez, Joe Borowski, Chin-hui Tsao, and Octavio Dotel just to name a few) I must now state how I really feel about the position. The closer position is the most grossly overrated position in baseball. A closer is not really as important as one tends to think. If you give up two runs during any part of the game you have given up those runs. The offenses are not competing against one another directly and it doesn’t matter when the runs are scored.

However, what the closer position does offer is the ability for small market teams to rack up Saves, an absolutely meaningless category. Like I said, if a guy holds a team to no runs in the 5th he gets no reward for his efforts; if he holds a team to no runs in the 9th he becomes invaluable. Smart teams in baseball, such as the Oakland A’s and the Minnesota Twins have realized this miss step by many GMs to overvalue saves. What these two teams have done is put a pitcher in the position and dubbed him with the name closer. They then have him pitch primarily in the final innings of games and he racks up saves. At the end of the season teams will trade away these stars with 40 saves at very high prices. The other team overvaluing this statistical category pays a high price for an average middle reliever who has a lot of saves. Examples include Jason Isringhausen, Eddie Guardado, LaTroy Hawkins. Dotel and Nathan are nothing more than the same thing (particularly Dotel).

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