Lose the Save
Caldwell, Christopher
Sports Lose the Save By Christopher Caldwell People who don't follow the Cleveland Indians baseball team too closely were introduced to Jos? Mesa last week when he strode to the mound in the...
...Not his saves, which measure little more than the pampering of his manager...
...Saves are too easy...
...Enough...
...So a Dodger reliever doesn't have the numbers other closers do (the team record was 28 until this year...
...The Dodgers were two runs ahead with the bases loaded and none out in the eighth...
...The electrifying relievers of the modern era-Dick Radatz of the 1960s Red Sox, Sparky Lyle of the 1970s Yankees-were constantly sent into multiple-baserunner situations in tight ballgames...
...The glory of relief pitching comes when a manager sends in his freshest arm to rescue a close ball-game...
...With the bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the ninth, he faced catcher Ron Tingley, who drove Mesa's second pitch into the right-field seats...
...But also note that the Dodgers once again made the playoffs, despite perennially anemic hitting...
...This is basically the story of Baltimore's fat old Doug Jones (22 saves), and California's rickety Lee Smith (37...
...So the best relievers no longer pitch in the most dramatic situations, and they're overused in easy, mop-up situations...
...The next time Hargrove used Mesa with runners on base was four months later on September 3 in Tiger Stadium...
...That was in the first week of the season in a game the Indians led 5-1...
...He gives up three runs in a few games...
...You can get a save if you throw just one pitch with your team ahead by two runs with two men out in the ninth inning...
...Take a third-rate closer, someone who gives up an average of, say, four runs a game...
...Worrell struck out Ricky Otero, and got Edgardo Alfonzo and Brett Butler to foul out...
...Of his 46 saves this year, only one came in a game he entered with runners on base...
...The state-of-the-art relief-pitching regimen, by contrast, is the one Oakland A's manager Tony La Russa has prescribed for his closer Dennis Eckersley since the late 1980s-bringing him in at least 90 percent of the time with nobody on base in the ninth...
...Mesa has just put together the greatest (statistical) season a closer has ever had: 46 saves in 48 "save opportunities...
...Manager Tommy Lasorda of the Dodgers still manages this way, bringing in his best relievers when they're needed, not when it's okay with their accountants...
...That would be outrageous...
...Take the game he sent Todd Worrell (31 saves, 2.02 ERA) into on May 23 against the New York Mets at Shea Stadium...
...Statistical fetishism interacts with baseball's salary-arbi-tration system to turn relievers into prima donnas...
...There are plenty of people, not just Cleveland sports-writers like Bud Shaw, who think he deserves the American League Most Valuable Player Award for it...
...In the last week of the 1988 season, Lee Smith, then with the Red Sox, was one game away from becoming the first ever to save 30 games five seasons in a row...
...Mesa is a gutsy reliever who's had a fine season...
...The games in which he gives up the three runs he'll lose, but chances are the team will win when he gives up one run or even two...
...Suppose this stiff appears in 50 or 60 games, all in the ninth inning...
...When manager Joe Morgan failed to use him in a "save situation," Smith vandalized the clubhouse...
...But the (weak) case for making him the American League MVP is to be found in a reliable old statistic: his ERA of 1.13, which shows how tough he is to hit...
...Again, Mesa had a four-run lead...
...The save is a close relative of the "hurry" in football, or baseball's late, unlamented "game-winning RBI" -a bogus statistic that measures little of value...
...one run in more still...
...Mesa is the hard-throwing Indians "closer"-a pitcher brought into a game in the late innings to preserve his team's lead...
...It ought to be scrapped...
...two runs in a few more...
...and in most outings doesn't give up any runs at all...
...This isn't rescue, it's coasting...
...You get the same save for genuine heroics: coming into a game with a mere one-run lead in the sixth inning, no men out and opposing runners on second and third base, whereupon you strike out the side, and then mow down the whole batting order over the last three innings...
...The save, in fact, has wrecked relief pitching...
...In the ninth, he struck out two, retired the side in order, and put a halt to a six-game losing streak...
...It's easy to see how this closer might finish the year with the awesome-looking record of 45 saves- all for having a lousy season...
...While baseball purists rightly decry the designated-hitter rule 20 years after it was first instituted, why has there been no uprising about the corruption of pitching...
...It's like a boxer running up his knockout record by fighting patsies...
...That's a fireman...
...To put a quality closer into a risky game, or to use him earlier than the ninth, is to endanger his statistics and his paycheck...
...Mesa last week when he strode to the mound in the first game of the American League division series...
...Indians manager Mike Hargrove has followed La Russa's model, not Lasorda's, and that makes Mesa's save totals much less impressive...
...Second, some saves are easier than others...
Vol. 1 • October 1995 • No. 5
