MO-verrated
Mariano Rivera is leaving Major League Baseball after Sunday's meaningless game between the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros, and there's some speculation that the pitcher may, in five years time, become the first baseballer ever to be a unanimous selection for the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Now with so many worthy players resigned to unending Hall purgatory, induction at Cooperstown has really lost all cultural currency anyway, but the value of Rivera is a pitcher is still fun to debate, and count ESPN's Jim Caple among those with at least one foot dragging outside the Mariano Rivera retirement party bus.Caple's basic argument that Rivera is overrated boils down to this: As a closer, and an almost-exclusively one-inning one at that, Rivera had very little impact on the games in which he pitched. Including the postseason, the hurler participated in 1,423 innings entering tonight. His shortstop teammate, Derek Jeter, in a career that has almost completely overlapped Rivera's, has played in more than 23,400 innings. Certainly, closers play a valuable role because they appear in high-pressure and pivotal innings. Whitey Herzog once said that the day he traded for Bruce Sutter was the day he became a "genius." But did Rivera himself really make such a valuable impact?
For his career he has an 89.1% save rate, almost always appearing in games in which his team already has a lead. Throughout all of Major League Baseball, teams that lead by one run after one inning go on to win 85.7% of the time. When leading by two runs, that number jumps to 93.7%. And you can also earn a "save" by recording the last three outs when your team has a three-run lead, and that league average number is 97.5%. And Rivera earned fewer than one-third of his saves entering in one-run games. Caple argues that Rivera had an 89.1% save rate for a team that would have won 88% of those games on average anyway.
Also, in statistical numbers far above those of ancient mariner (lower-case M) relief specialists like Sutter, Rollie Fingers, and Goose Gossage, Rivera typically pitched only one inning and almost always entered the game with the bases empty. The percentage of inherited runners that he allowed to score is good enough to rank him 142nd on the league's all-time list.
For years, it seemed like the Yankees were dominant because Rivera was dominant. His appearance in the ninth inning supposedly signaled doom for the opposition, and doom for every fan like me rooting hard for "whoever plays the Yankees." But Caple's numbers seem to indicate that a given ballgame's final chapter was typically written before Rivera even completed his warm-up tosses.
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Bud Selig issued a formal written statement today announcing his retirement in January 2015. The ever-suave baseball commissioner chose to make his statement the morning after a Dodgers fan was fatally stabbed in a team rivalry dispute outside the ballpark in San Francisco.
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The NCAA announced this week that they were reducing the sanctions against the Penn State football program that had resulted from the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Five gridiron scholarships are being added back annually beginning next season. Penn State earned the penalty reduction by not having any children raped by members of the coaching staff during the 2012-2013 academic year.
posted by CM @ 10:17 PM
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