Closer: The Best Job In Sports

Oh to be a closer. You have all the glory, all the money, and all the fame of an everyday player or a starting pitcher and a small percent of the responsibilities. You get to record the last out of a win (and usually of the world series). You get a salary of 7 to 8 figures. Fan love you. Writers love you. Announcers love you. And the best part is: you get to spend almost all your time hanging out in the bullpen.

A good closer will pitch between 60 and 80 innings per year. That is about 1/3 of what a starter will throw, and about 1/20 of the time an everyday player will play the field. Yet they are paid almost the same amount per season.

Lets apply this to a typical American's life. We'll ignore position players and compare apples to apples. Johan is one of the company's top salesmen. He works 40 hours a week, brings in many potential clients, and is paid a nice salary. Joe gets almost all the clients after Johan brings them in. He generally closes the deal, but the client is almost always ready to buy by the time they get to Joe. Joe works 12 hours a week and is paid almost as much as Johan. The boss values them equally. After a few years Johan begins to draw interest from other companies and rather than giving him the raise he has earned, his boss lets him go to a company in a different industry. Joe immediately gets a huge raise making him the companies highest paid employee. Joe continues to do the same job, but without Johan bringing in the clients, Joe is having a hard time closing as many deals.

It's gotten ridiculous. Team now draft and groom pitchers specifically to be closers. But you can't because closers are sort of like running backs in the NFL. There are a select few who are good every year, but there are many more who are good for a year or two and then flame out and disappear.

Guess who led the AL in saves last year? Not Rivera. Not Nathan. Not Papelbon. Not K-Rod, Street, or Jenks. Not even JJ Putz. Nope, Joe Freakin Borowski led the league in saves.

I heard some talking head recently say that they believed Mariano Rivera was the most important player during the Yankee's dynasty from 1996-2001. Um... No. It was not Rivera. It wasn't Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, or even Bernie Williams. It wasn't anyone in particular. It was their starting pitchers: Wells, Cone, Clemens, Pettitte, and El Duque. Those five pitchers carried that team from April-September and especially in October. The hitting helped, and Rivera was nice to have, but what happened when those pitchers got old? The team stopped winning in the playoffs. They tried to replace them with a long line of guys who didn't work out. Kevin Brown, Javier Vazquez, Jeff Weaver, Jose Contreras, Mike Mussina, Jon Lieber, Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, Randy Johnson, Chin Ming Wang, and second go-rounds with Pettitte and Clemens. Except for Wang, every one of those pitchers has had success elsewhere, but they were all either past their primes or not able to handle the pressure of winning in New York. The closest they came to winning was in 2003 when they were beaten by the better pitching of Josh Beckett and the Marlins.

A recent article on MLB.com discussed the move of Joba Chamberlain to the starting rotation and how team sometimes keep their best pitchers as relievers. The only reason to ever keep a pitcher in relief who could potentially be a front line starter is if a team already has plenty of starters, a situation which rarely occurs. Such was the case with Rivera in 1997. Coming off a stellar 1996 campaign in which he threw over 100 innings in relief he seemed destined to be a starter, but when John Wetteland left via free agency, the Yanks concluded that they had plenty of starting pitching an needed a reliever. With Wells, Cone, and Pettitte leading the way, I'd tend to agree with them that Rivera would not have been much more than a marginal improvement in their rotation. The rest is history. The same scenario occurred in Boston last year when the Red Sox kept Papelbon in the pen, and so far it's turned out quite well.

Don't get me wrong, relief pitchers are an important part of a team. But is the 9th inning guy that much more important than the guys who pitch the 8th inning, or the occasional 6th and 7th innings? And he certainly can't be considered as important as the guy who pitched 1-7, right?

The 4 best pitchers of the last 20 years are Clemens, Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, and Randy Johnson, and its not even close. With the exception of Clemens, they're all first ballot HOF locks and Maddux should set the all time % of the vote record. To consider mentioning any closer, even Rivera, in the same sentence with these four is an absolute insult to them and what they accomplished. They were just as dominant if not more that the best closers, and they did it throwing 3 or 4 times as many innings. Pedro has a career WHIP of 1.04, Rivera's is 1.03 in 1/3 of the innings. Pedro's career best is 0.74, Mo's is 0.87 despite only having to dominate for a much shorter portion of time. Can you imagine what would have happened if Pedro had been a closer for his career? His lifetime ERA would have surely been under 1.50, and he may have had a few years with a 0.00 ERA. The Red Sox however would have struggled mightily without their ace and likely would have missed the playoffs every year from the time he arrived until 2004 when they finally had put together a well rounded pitching staff.

Rivera has had a stellar career, no doubt hall of fame caliber, but I wonder how good a starter he could have become. I can say that almost every ace starter could be a successful closer, but I cannot say the same about closers becoming starters. It's interesting to see guys like Dempster, Smoltz, and Lowe go from starter to closer and back again successfully. Dempster has arguably been the best pitcher on the Cubs this year, and one of the big reasons for their success. He has made an impact that he could not have made if he was still closing.

All underrated team

Here is the rival team to last week's all overrated team. Most casual fans would probably pick this team to lose in a head to head series, but I think that this team would not only be better, It would be a lot better, and probably win 7 or 8 7 game series out of 10.

Catcher Brian McCann - Braves
McCann is best known for homering off Roger Clemens in the 2005 post season, but he turned into a star in 2006, funny thing is the Braves finally missed the playoffs, so no one noticed. McCann is the only catcher that I think has a chance to rival Joe Mauers dominance of the position for the next ten years. Someone else may emerge, but as of now only McCann, Victor Martinez, Michael Barret and Jorge Posada are close to Mauer's production at the plate. Barret will be 30 this year and Posada will be 35. Both have likely already peaked. Martinez can hit, but can't throw out a base runner to save his life, and there are reports that he may be moving to first base in the future. McCann will be 23 (younger than Mauer) and out performed him in OPS and RC/27 and was just behind him in EQA.

First Base: Travis Hafner - Indians
With apologies to Lance Berkman and Nick Johnson, Hafner might be the most underrated player in all of baseball. His production was matched only be Albert Pujols last season and he didn't even make the all star team. Hafner led all major leaguers in EQA with an incredible .355, was second to Pujols in OPS, 1st in RC/27, and second to Manny Ramirez in OBP by less than .01. What more does the guy have to do?

Second Base: Orlando Hudson - Diamond Backs
Chase Utley, the best player at the position finally started getting credit this year, and many of the best second basemen are established stars, but you never hear about Hudson who put together a hell of a year in the desert. He posted solid numbers with a .354 OBP and a .454 SLG, all while playing stellar defense. A very solid player at a position that is thin.

Third Base: Garret Atkins - Rockies
At one of the deepest positions in the majors, it is hard to stand out but is a crime when you post a line of .409 OBP, .556 SLG, .310 EQA, 8.4 RC/27 and an outstanding VORP of 62.7 good for 17th in the majors. According to VORP, Atkins was better than AL MVP Justin Morneau, $252 million dollar man Alex Rodriguez and New York Met stars Carlos Delgado, David Wright and Jose Reyes. Atkins may never eclipse the shadow of Miguel Cabrera, Chipper Jones, ARod or Wright, but he should be in the conversation.

Shortstop: Carlos Guillen - Tigers
With apologies to Bill Hall, Guillen was virtually unknown among casual fans prior to the Tigers playoff run, but he, not Justin Verlander, Jeremy Bonderman, Joel Zumaya or Magglio Ordonez was the key to the team's success. When he was out during August, the team stumbled bad enough to lose the huge lead it had built up over the summer, and upon his return, the team went on a very improbable playoff run to the world series. When looking at his stats, it's easy to see why. Guillen was second only to Derek Jeter among full time shortstop in EQA, OPS, OBP, and RC/27 and second to Hall in SLG. He also is a better fielder than people give him credit for. DMB rate him as average range, the same rating given to Tejada, Reyes, Rollins, and gold glovers Vizquel and Jeter. DMB is not perfect, but I have found that they do their homework when rating a player's range. They were one of the first to praise Andruw Jones's exceptional range in center, and also one of the first to point out that it had diminished. Guillen does make a lot of errors, but at the toughest position on the field, that's understandable.

Centerfield: Mike Cameron - Padres
A tough position to rate because centerfielders are almost overrated by definition as they are usually the most athletic player on the field. Cameron has somehow managed to do it. He has had some bad years, but for the most part he has put together a good career despite getting traded every two years or so. He has been traded for Ken Griffey and Paul Konerko among others. He had another solid year while playing in cavernous Petco Park posting a line of: .355 OBP, .482 SLG, 6.3 RC/27 and .291 EQA all while being perhaps the best centerfielder in the game.

Outfield: Matt Holliday - Rockies
I remember when all the Rockies were overrated (Bichette, Castilla anyone?) but today it seems they are underrated. Holliday just like Atkins was one of the top players at his position last year and it seems like no one noticed. Holliday posted an OBP of .387, a SLG of .586, an EQA of .304 an a RC/27 of 8.0. He also did ok in traditional categories with 10 SB, 34 HR, and 119 R. In short, he was considerably better than Alfonso Soriano who was treated like the greatest thing since sliced bread when he hit the market this winter.

Outfield: Jason Bay - Pirates
To be fair, Bay has gotten some love from the press. In part because the Pirates are so bad, but in 2005, he was one of the top 5 hitters in baseball and he was never acknowledged for it. Bay posted a line of .396, .532, .309 and 8.2. Very comparable to Holliday. Some outfielders like Bay seem to get crucified for striking out so much. Pat Burrell, Adam Dunn, are among them, but did anyone notice that Soriano struck out 160 times last year while batting lead off? Or how about Ryan Howard and his 181 ks? It never comes up, but Burrell especially has almost been run out of town for striking out a mere 131 times last season.

SP: John Lackey - Angels
How Roy Oswalt has not won a Cy Young this late in his career is truly astonishing, but the fact that Lackey has flown under the radar the last two years while pitching in Anahiem gives him the nod. Lackey posted an OPS against of .671 last season, better than Pedro Martinez, Jason Schmidt, John Smoltz and the aforementioned Oswalt. He also had a VORP of 47.1, 18th in baseball among starters. Lackey is not a guy who will contend for the Cy Young every year, and he shouldn't be treated like one, but he is definitely a solid front of the rotation guy who could have a year where he does put up Cy Young numbers.

RP: Joe Nathan - Twins
Hard to make the argument that he is underrated, but he actually is. He has been the best closer in baseball for the last 3 years, but still has had a hard time breaking into that top tier of the discussion that includes Mariano Rivera, Billy Wagner, KRod and Trevor Hoffman. Nathan was absolutely lights out last year allowing 7.2 R/9, .454 OPS, and striking out 12.5 per 9. Basically he turned every hitter he faced into a hitter of Tom Glavine's production.