I had a dream last night that I wrote a book about how the "Save" statistic ruined the game of baseball. I was doing a publicity tour for the book and realized that I didn't know what I had written in the book, nor could I come up with any justification for that claim.
However, thinking about it in the shower this morning, I did in fact realize how dumb the concepts of Saves and "closers" are. In a nutshell, I would be interested to see if, rather than inserting your most unhittable pitcher at the end of each reasonably close game to finish out the final inning...why would this pitcher not be inserted mid-game at critical junctures. Your team is in the field in the top of the 6th, 4-2 game, runners at second and third with no outs. You are a base hit away from a tie game. You have no idea what is going to happen in the final 3 innings. You could come out and score 10 runs in the bottom half. Or not. Point is, there is no way to predict that the game will warrant the entrance of your "closer" in the 9th. However, you do know you are potentially at a critical turning point in the game, right now. You will never see the Mariano Riveras of the world marched out in this situation...but is this not exactly when you'd want your shutdown guy in? Sure, he wouldn't get his Save, but you put your best pitcher in there to face the clear and present danger you know you have in front of you with a chance to preserve the lead. Perhaps if I think about this a bit I will be able to articulate it well...or realize it is stupid. Anyway, individual statistics aside, it makes a hell of a lot of sense to me.
