Someone at a discussion board made the assertion that setup men are, in general, more valuable than closers because they pitch in tight games, while closers often “protect” three-run leads. I’m certainly not going to defend the misuse of bullpen aces, but closers most certainly do pitch in their fair share of tight situations.
The chart below is the 25 relievers with at least 30 innings pitched who have the highest LIs. LI stands for leverage index, a measure of the importance of a particular plate appearance. An LI of two means that the situation is twice as important as the average situation. The LI listed below is the average of LI across all of a pitcher’s batters faced. Thanks, Fangraphs.
Name SV LI Fran Rodriguez 45 2.55 B.J. Ryan 22 2.34 Brian Wilson 32 2.33 C.J. Wilson 24 2.29 George Sherrill 31 2.26 Huston Street 18 2.15 Kevin Gregg 25 2.13 Trevor Hoffman 24 2.01 Kerry Wood 24 2.00 Brian Fuentes 21 1.98 Ryan Franklin 14 1.98 Heath Bell 0 1.91 Salomon Torres 22 1.91 Brad Lidge 28 1.88 Joe Nathan 31 1.88 Mariano Rivera 28 1.88 Matt Capps 17 1.88 Francis Cordero 22 1.83 Hideki Okajima 1 1.83 Joakim Soria 32 1.82 Brandon Lyon 24 1.80 Takashi Saito 17 1.79 Tyler Walker 0 1.76 Troy Percival 25 1.75 Jon Papelbon 31 1.75
Notice how only three relievers with fewer than 14 saves make the list? The lowest LI of any reliever with at least ten saves is 1.42 (Brandon Morrow). The lowest LI of any reliever with at least 20 saves is 1.62 (Jose Valverde).
Here are the relievers with at most five saves who have pitched in the most important situations:
Name SV LI Heath Bell 0 1.91 Hideki Okajima 1 1.83 Tyler Walker 0 1.76 Dan Wheeler 4 1.66 Kyle McClellan 1 1.61 Scott Downs 5 1.58 Scot Shields 2 1.55 J.C. Romero 1 1.52 Jim Johnson 1 1.48 Guillermo Mota 1 1.48 Chad Bradford 0 1.48 Frank Francisco 0 1.47 Octavio Dotel 1 1.45 Luis Ayala 0 1.45 Chad Qualls 2 1.44 Joaquin Benoit 1 1.43 Alan Embree 0 1.43 Saul Rivera 0 1.43 Doug Brocail 2 1.42 Renyel Pinto 0 1.41 Scott Linebrink 1 1.38 Eddie Guardado 3 1.37 Brad Ziegler 1 1.37 Tony Pena 1 1.37 Damaso Marte 5 1.36
It’s definitely true that bullpen aces are misused, but closers still tend to have the most important role given the current bullpen usage patterns.
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Sky is a baseball fan and racket sport afficianado living in upstate NY. His favorite color is orange and is just about ready to give up on his life-long dream to become the next Magnus ver Magnuson (World's Strongest Man). His favorite baseball teams are the Yankees and Red Sox, proving that there's hope in the Middle East.