Soooo....

[BarTopDancer]

I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

At least until Huston Street came along, Billy Beane made a killing using the closer position as an ATM machine. There's almost nothing easier than making an ok (and cheap) pitcher look like a fantastic (and expensive closer). Pump up a cheap pitcher and sell him the next season. Instant profit. Isringhausen, Koch, whoever was before Isringhausen.

Perhaps, but Gagne was a little different. He wasn't an ok starting pitcher, he was a worthless starting pitcher. He's the rare pitcher that is pure closer. If he's doing anything other than trying to get the last 3 outs of the game, he's awful (I used to cringe every time he was brought in with the game tied. He lost nearly every one). But as a closer he's pure brilliance.

When he's not injured. And that's really it. Had he not been so obviously falling apart at the seems, the Dodgers would have kept him, no doubt. Healthy, he's worth any price. He gets people to the games, he sells merchandise, and he's as close to a guarantee of winning as can possibly exist in baseball.

But he can only do that by throwing harder than his body can handle.

[Alex]

I don't deny he was good, but was he pure brilliance or just taken out of situations where winning and losing were equally likely and then put into situations where winning is extremely likely. Regardless of who is pitching, the team ahead in the ninth inning (99% of the Gagne's appearances) wins are all but guaranteed.

The average winning percentage for pitching in the ninth inning save situations in 2002 was (I doubt it has changed much in the last half decade):

Top 9th, lead by one: 84.2%
Bottom of the 9th, lead by one: 95.8%

Those number, obviously, go up as the lead increases to 2 or 3 runs. And therein lies what I see as the brilliance of Billy Beane: the recognition that since the difference between "average" and "pure brilliance" is so small that it is easy to manufacture extremely overvalued players and use the profit for investment in more important areas.

And if it is true that Gagne is truly useless unless starting an inning with a lead then he is even less valuable since he can only be used in a narrow situation of minimal incremental value. Where there has been some light shed on the relative unimportance of ERA and win-loss record it is amusing to see so much stock put into the even more silly save statistic.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Those may be the average numbers, but while San Diego has spent the last decade or so on the high end of that bell curve, the Dodgers spent far too much time at the bottom end of the bell curve. It is a matter of fractional percentage differences, but they matter. If you've got near 100% confidence that a 1 or 2 run lead is enough, you can alter the way you play the game offensively. You can play it safe, squeak out a run or two with sac bunts and situational hitting, increasing the number of times you get to the ninth with that 1-2 run lead. Rather than having to take more offensive risks to score bunches of runs and get a good sized lead, which more often than not fails to pan out.

[Strangler Lewis]

What, please, means this funny word "bunt?"

[Alex]

Bunts and playing for one run instead of several is almost never a smart move statistically. It may make you feel better but if you play "small ball" you'll come out on the wrong end more often than if you just tried to hit the ball.

[Not Afraid]

Don't you guys have baseball thread or something?

[wendybeth]

Originally Posted by Not Afraid

Don't you guys have baseball thread or something?

I was kinda thinking the same thing.

Let's start talking about shopping, 'kay?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by wendybeth

I was kinda thinking the same thing.

Let's start talking about shopping, 'kay?

Hey, I started by talking about baseball AND shopping.

[wendybeth]

Lol- so you did, GD.