I just figured something out. Saves are a weird stat. I say that because the top 10 save leaders in major league baseball are: Heath Bell (Padres) and Brian Wilson (Giants) with 28, Francisco Cordero (Reds), Joakim Soria (Royals), Neftali (cool name) Feliz (Rangers) with 27, Rafael Soriano (Rays) 25, Matt Capps (Nationals) 24, Leo Nunez (Marlins) 23, Billy Wagner (Braves), Kevin Gregg (Blue Jays), Jonathan Papelbon (Red Sox), Matt Lindstrom (Astros) with 22. What’s weird about this? Well Mariano Rivera isn’t in the top 10. His 20 saves even puts him behind the Mets Francisco Rodriquez (who has 21 saves) for fourteenth place. (Actually Mariano is tied for fourteenth place with five other relievers.) Now that’s just wrong.
Saves are a weird stat because if your team is blowing a lot of other teams away (like the Yankees tend to do) you don’t get a lot of save opportunities. Therefore you don’t get a lot of saves. It’s pretty simple math. It’s just not an accurate representation of how well a relief pitcher is actually doing. So I started looking for a more accurate stat. That’s when I found Win Probability Added (WPA). I’m not even going to pretend to understand the math here but from what I can gather is this stat tries to represent the difference in win expectancy based on a player’s contribution. The WPA leaders: Bard (Red Sox) 3.47, Soriano 3.07, Wilson 2.75, Bell (sigh who the Mets gave away) 2.68, Soria 2.50, Valverde (Tigers) 2.29, Hong-Chih Kuo (who is having a monster year no hits surrounded to lefties) 1.99 and then Mariano at 1.94. These seem more accurate to me that mere saves. Plus this stat lets a reliever who is not a closer (Kuo) be recognized.
Obviously no stat is perfect. And even though there is a stat for Clutch (really there is) I’m still not sure how accurately that can be measured. Sure Mariano is over 40 now. Sure he may not be quite the dominant lock he once was. But still with a strikeout to walk ratio of 8.76 and a WHIP of 0.63 combined with the history of saving more big games than any other reliever, when push comes to shove I still want Mariano to save the game over anybody else. Am I wrong here?
