Great closers, overpaying for them, and saberbickering

By Bill


I started a bit of a fracas on Twitter a couple weeks ago, primarily with a couple guys I really like and think are brilliant guys and good analysts, Patrick Sullivan and Moshe Mandel. I won't link to the discussion or anything, because Twitter fights are always confusing and really, really dull, but here's the gist:

1) As you probably know, most sabermetric types have a generally low opinion of relief pitchers and, more than that, of the large, multi-year contracts free agent ones are given.

2) A few, like Patrick and Moshe, have a problem with the sometimes rote and knee-jerk way point no. 1 is applied. There are quite a few points and I won't do justice to them, but some of the keys are: (a) GMs are generally smart people, and it's arrogant to assume you know a bunch of things they don't; (b) saying things like "relievers are fungible," at least with regard to the really, consistently good ones, is stupid and reductive; and (c) we're not really sure how to properly measure relievers yet, so we should stop acting like we are. A common tack is to mock the idea that the Rays' tactic of building a bullpen on the cheap is "smart," pointing out that by xFIP, the Rays had the second-worst 'pen in baseball in 2011.

3) I eventually tired of the way this extremely vocal minority presented their otherwise perfectly valid and worthwhile opinion: mostly in really sarcastic preemptive-strike subtweets which I thought unfairly belittled the (sabermetric) majority position and put words in people's mouths that seriously oversimplified what was actually being said. You'd think, from reading these comments, that the average sabermetrically-minded person didn't think relievers had any value, that they were literally all exactly alike, and that a signing like Papelbon didn't actually make the Phillies any better. So I spoke up, and it became this big thing.

Twitter is wonderful, but Twitter fights, as I've said, are awful (especially among intelligent people who can't be dismantled and dismissed in 140 characters the way, say, a Jon Heyman can). So I thought I'd try to lay out my thoughts in a more coherent form here. Moshe has some thoughts on it in an excellent post here, which will be the focus of a lot of this, and for some additional perspective on "the other side," Moshe approvingly cites this from the same blog a few weeks earlier.

So here are a few thoughts on this, at more than 140 characters a pop:

Is Ryan Madson a Bad Closer?

By Bill

Yesterday, it was made official that Brad Lidge had a rotator cuff injury that would keep him out for some time -- maybe a few weeks, maybe half the season, maybe more -- thus saving the Phillies from having to appoint one of the worst pitchers on the team to (arguably) the most important spot in the bullpen. Instead, veteran Jose Contreras, age 39 going on 60, takes over in the closer spot, with arguably the best reliever in the National League, Ryan Madson, remaining in his customary 8th-inning role.

The truth is, the decision is unlikely to make a difference. Contreras established himself as a fine reliever last season, and even if that was a fluke or he suddenly starts acting his age, the Phillies figure to have a quick trigger and swap Madson in at the first sign of a real struggle. Even more to the point, though, it doesn't really matter who's pitching the eighth and who's pitching the ninth; they're of pretty similar importance, and really, since the silly made-up "rules" applied to closers don't apply to set-up guys, you might argue this is better for the Phillies just because Madson's not being the closer will get him into the game more often and for more total innings.

But that doesn't mean that the decisionmaking makes any sense. The prevailing opinion among fans and the media -- and as far as I can tell, the Phillies' manager, pitching coach and front office have bought into it, too -- is that Madson, while he's great in the 8th inning, really struggles when you get into the 9th and into save situations, that he doesn't have the mental make-up to be a closer. And this doesn't come from anything Madson has said -- he's stated that he wants an opportunity to close -- just, apparently, from perceptions of his performance. He "has pressed when he has closed." But is there anything to that, really?