The All Important Closer
2017-8
It is a staple of October wisdom that you need to have a great closer to win the World Championship. I have long been skeptical of this notion. Skeptical is on the up side; I may have been dismissive. I may said and written things like "of course you need to have a good closer in the World Series, but you need to have a good second baseman or a good right fielder, too. One is not more important than the other."
But hearing this wisdom again during the 2016 World Series, I suddenly saw a way to check it out. Suppose that we rank all the second basemen in the majors, 1 through 30. How many World Championship teams have a top 10 second baseman? A top 5 second baseman?
In my youth, before Closers were invented, the conventional wisdom was that Championship teams had to be strong up the middle. . .catcher, second base, shortstop, third base. You still hear that sometimes, not as often as we used to hear it. But this research addresses THAT issue as much as it does the Closer issue.
OK, here is what I did. I ranked all players from the last 40 years (1977-2016) in two different ways, by Season Score and Win Shares, and formed a compromise of the two; not going to get into the details. I started in 1977 because:
1) I wanted as many World Championship teams as I could get,
2) You really can’t go back to 1967; the bullpens are just TOO different for teams from 1967 to be relevant, and
3) I sort of wanted to dodge the 1976 Reds, since they are such an outlier team.
  But after I started the work I realized that there is no World Champion in 1994, so I only had 39 teams. I wanted 40 teams, so. . .OK; I’ll include the 1976 Reds.
  But the BIGGEST reason I started in 1977 is that it’s an expansion year. The critical question that I am asking is, "How many World Championship teams actually do have a Top Ten closer? Is that number actually higher than the number of teams that have a Top Ten second baseman?"
Well. . . .Top 10, you see. Top 10 out of 30 is a whole lot different from Top 10 out of 16. If we go back to 1967, we would have 50 years of data rather than 40, which is better, but then you’re choosing the Top 10 out of 20 teams, which is quite a lot different from 10 out of 30. By 1977 there are 26 teams; 10 out of 26 is enough like 10 out of 30 that I’m not going to worry about it, but 10 out of 20 is a prohibitive problem. By including 1976 (to get 40 World Champion teams) we’re including one season of only 24 teams, which I guess is OK.
Anyway, to my great surprise. . .
The proposition that to win a World Championship you need a great closer, and that a great closer is more important than a great player at the other positions, appears to be true. According to this study, anyway, it’s true. Which is a shock to me; I didn’t expect to find that.
OK, let me detail the method a little bit. I ranked the players at each position based on their regular season performance, more or less as you would rank them if you were voting for the Most Valuable Player or a post-season all-star team. Playing time counts; a player who hits .280 in 300 at bats is not equal to a player who hits .280 in 550 at bats. A closer who has a 1.80 ERA in 45 games and 27 saves is not equal to a closer who has a 1.80 ERA in 70 games and 42 saves.
If the team has the best player in the majors at a position, that’s "1"; if they have the second-best, that’s "2", etc. You can’t score worse than 30; if the Championship team does not have one of the 30 best players in the majors at a position—which does happen sometimes, you’d be surprised how often—they are listed at "30". I did not look at the aggregate totals for the position; in other words, it might be that a team used four first baseman but the four first basemen combined hit .318 with 34 homers; I wouldn’t know. I didn’t look at that. If a team. . .let’s say, the 1979 Pirates; you can find some sources in which Phil Garner is not listed as a regular on the 1979 Pirates, although he was third on the team in games played and at bats, because one player played more at second base and another played more at third base. I didn’t do that; that would be silly for this purpose. A player like Garner has to be considered the regular SOMEWHERE.
If a team picks up a player at the trade deadline or even later, if he’s on the roster at the end of the season, he counts. The 1993 Toronto Blue Jays started the season with Darrin Jackson as a regular outfielder and Dick Schofield Jr. as their regular shortstop, but they ended the season with Rickey Henderson in the outfield and Tony Fernandez as their regular shortstop, so I credit them with Henderson and Fernandez (who were quite a bit better than Jackson and Schofield.) I didn’t look at career performance norms. I think one year when the Yankees won, Mariano was like the fourth-best reliever in baseball or something. Obviously you can argue that he was always the best; he just didn’t happen to have the best numbers that year. That’s up to you. If you want to study the same issue, feel free to make up your own rules however you like, but I just used the rules that made sense to me.
I evaluated the 40 World Championship teams at eleven positions—the eight field positions, #1 Right-Handed starter, #2 Left-handed Starter, and #1 reliever. I didn’t do Designated Hitters, because, of course, a 1-to-30 comparison would not be meaningful, since only one league uses the Designated Hitter.
As I said, the Championship teams were more outstanding at Closer than at any other position—actually, quite a bit better. Of the 40 World Championship teams, 31 (or 78%) had a top ten closer—four more than any other position. 20 of the 40 teams, 50%, had a Top-5 closer, which is as many as any position, and 11 of the 40 teams had a Top-3 closer, which, is the second-best of the positions, behind left-handed starter. The average rank of a Closer on a World Championship team was 7.9 among the 30 teams, which is much higher than any other position.
Only two of the 40 World Championship teams were ranked as having the best Closer in the majors—the Tigers in 1984 (Willie Hernandez, the MVP) and the Royals in 1985 (Dan Quisenberry). Four teams were listed as having the #2 closer in the majors—the 1976 Reds (Rawly Eastwick), the 1977 Yankees (Sparky Lyle), the 1978 Yankees (Goose Gossage), and the 1999 Yankees. In 1977 Sparky Lyle, the American League Cy Young Award winner, ranked second behind Goose Gossage, then with the Pirates. In 1978 Gossage, now with the Yankees, ranked second behind Kent Tekulve, now with the Pirates. In 1979 the Pirates won, but Tekulve ranked third, behind Jim Kern, who had an all-time great season with the Rangers, and Senor Smoke, Aurelio Lopez. In 1999 Mariano ranked second behind Billy Wagner.
Only 3 World Championship teams had Closers who ranked lower than 20th; that is, 31 teams in the Top 10, only 3 in the bottom 10. Those three were the 1987 Twins (Jeff Reardon, with a 4.48 ERA), the 2006 Cardinals (Jason Isringhausen, walking 38 men in 58 innings), and the 2014 Giants, who used Madison Bumgarner as their Closer in the World Series because they didn’t really have one.
The second-strongest position for World Championship teams was #1 Left-Handed Starter. While six teams really did not have a left-handed starter to speak of, and thus drew a "30" in this slot, six World Championship teams had the best left-handed starter in baseball—the 1978 Yankees (Guidry), the 1980 Phillies (Carlton), the 1996 Yankees (Andy Pettitte), the 2001 Diamondbacks (Big Unit), the 2009 Yankees (Sabathia) and the 2016 Cubs (Jon Lester). Four other World Championship teams had the second-best Left-Handed starter in baseball, and you could probably argue that any of those four was really the best (Fernando Valenzuela, 1981; Scott McGregor, 1983, Frank Viola, 1987, and Bumgarner in 2014.)
The point is, though, that you can’t win a World Championship without a great closer; well, you CAN, but it doesn’t happen a lot. In terms of Top 10-Bottom 10, the Closers are 31-3; the Left-handed Starters are 27-7, and they’re in second place. The 1984 Tigers, 1989 Athletics, 1991 Twins, 2004 Red Sox, 2006 Cardinals and 2007 Red Sox really had no left-handed starter most of the year. (The 1991 Twins did have one, Allan Anderson, but he was completely ineffective.) Jon Lester joined the 2007 Red Sox late in the season, recovering from cancer, and made one start in the post-season, which was the final game of the World Series, but made only 11 starts during the season.
Of course, the pitcher’s record is inextricably linked with the performance of his team, and one can never be TOO certain that you have the ratings right. Can I give any weight to the won-lost record, or do I have to throw that out? The problem is that if you throw that out, the things that remain are still colored by the performance of the team.
The other problem is that, of course, a team doesn’t have two starters; they have five or four or seven or eight; we COULD rank teams by their #1 starter, #2, #3, etc. That doesn’t actually work; the pitchers form a line, so that the World Championship team would virtually always have a Top-10 3rd starter or 4th starter. Every team has a #1 catcher, a #1 second baseman, a #1 reliever—and a #1 right-handed starting pitcher. You can argue the point, but I think it is reasonable to parallel the rankings of starting pitchers, in this form, with the other positions.
These are the average ranks of the players starting for World Championship teams, by position:
Closer 7.9
Left-Handed Starter 10.2
Catcher   10.8
Right-Handed Starter 11.1
First Baseman 11.1
Center Fielder 11.5
Second Baseman 11.8
Third Basemen 12.4
Shortstop 12.5
Left Fielder 12.7
Right Fielder 13.2
The overall average rank of a regular player on a World Championship team is 11.4 out of 30. . .well, out of 29.2 or whatever it works out to.
  So is the proposition that Championship teams are strong up the middle true? Well, maybe. The average rank at catcher/second/short/center is 11.6, whereas the average rank at the corner position is 12.1. I don’t know that I would want to base any conclusions on that.
Whenever you rank players you are walking on thin ice, but I have more confidence in the rankings for closers than for almost any other position. I am confident of the rankings for first basemen, because first basemen are basically hitters and it is easy to recognize a good hitter, whereas for catchers and shortstops more of their job is defense, and fielding is difficult to measure reliably. Relievers are fairly straightforward. I have a lot of confidence that the rankings are justifiable, although of course you might prefer one guy over another.
The other key metric for me was the percentage of teams which had a Top 10 player at the position, and here the data is a little different:
Closer 78%
Left-Handed Starter 68%
First Base 65%
Second Base 60%
Right-Handed Starter 55%
Center Field 55%
Catcher 55%
Shortstop 53%
Right Field 53%
Third Base 48%
Left Field 48%
Overall, 58% of the regulars on World Championship teams are Top 10 players at their position.
OK, three things to tie up here before we move on.
1) What were the greatest teams of that time period, compared by this method?
2) Which teams had #1 players?
3) What did I learn from doing this that surprised me?
1) The Greatest Teams.
  Analyzed in this way, the 1976 Reds are the greatest team of the last 40 years. The Reds have not only top 10 players, but top FOUR players at every position except center field, right-handed starter, and left-handed starter. Their center fielder, Cesar Geronimo, hit .307 in 1976 and was outstanding defensively, so he ranks 10th in that season, his best season, so the Reds rank in the Top 10 at 9 of the 11 positions. They rank first at four positions, two of which are surprises. Joe Morgan, National League MVP, ranks #1 at second, and George Foster, the 1977 MVP, led the majors in RBI in 1976, and ranks first in left field. Hall of Famers Johnny Bench and Tony Perez don’t rank first, and Pete Rose doesn’t, but they rank highly, while non-Hall of Famers Dave Concepcion and Ken Griffey Sr. do rank first at their positions. Concepcion hit .281 with 9 homers, 69 RBI. The 69 RBI led all major league shortstops in 1976, and only one shortstop (Toby Harrah) was in double figures in homers; Concepcion was second there. Ken Griffey in right field hit .336, stole 34 bases and scored 111 runs; with Reggie Jackson and Dave Parker having less than stellar seasons, Griffey ranks #1 at the position.
The ’76 Reds have an average position rank of 4.6, the lowest of any World Championship team in the last 40 years (OK, 41). That’s not a surprise, but second on the list is, or might be. The 1978 Yankees rank 8th at catcher (Munson), 8th at first base (Chambliss), 2nd at second base (Randolph), 3rd at third base (Nettles), 8th in left field (Lou Piniella), 6th in right field (Reggie), 8th at right-handed starter (Ed Figueroa), 1st at left-handed starter (Guidry), and 2nd at closer (Gossage).
The ’78 Yankees thus match the ’76 Reds (and a few other teams) in having Top 10 players at nine of the eleven positions, although their average rank is higher:
Year
|
Team
|
C
|
1B
|
2B
|
3B
|
SS
|
LF
|
CF
|
RF
|
RHS
|
LHS
|
Cl
|
Avg
|
1976
|
Reds
|
3
|
4
|
1
|
2
|
1
|
1
|
10
|
1
|
15
|
11
|
2
|
4.6
|
1978
|
Yankees
|
8
|
8
|
2
|
3
|
16
|
8
|
12
|
6
|
8
|
1
|
2
|
6.7
|
Mickey Rivers, the center fielder on the ’78 Yankees, had a down year in ’78, although he was a good player and would have been top 10 in other seasons. So the irony is that the Yankees’ weak spot in ’78 was shortstop Bucky F. Dent, who
a) hit one of the most famous home runs in baseball history in that season, and
b) was also the World Series MVP in 1978, hitting .417 in the World Series and driving in 7 runs in the six-game series.
Bucky was a good player, but the question I am trying to get to is why we have largely overlooked the greatness of that team. I think there are two reasons:
1) A third great team, coming on the heels of the great Oakland team (1972-1974) and the great Reds team (1975-76) just doesn’t fit in our minds. The ’77-’78 team—although a legitimately great team—were in the shadow of the other two great teams of that decade.
2) The Yankees had to beat the Boston Red Sox—ALSO a really good team—just to reach the post-season. The ’78 Red Sox were probably good enough to beat 80% of division-winning teams in that era. The fact that the Yankees needed a 163rd game to win their division gave the impression that they were lucky to reach the post-season, whereas the reality was that they were pushed to the wire by another very strong team.
With an average position rank of 6.7, the ’78 Yankees tie with a probably more popular candidate for the position of Greatest Team Ever: the 1998 Yankees.
Year
|
Team
|
C
|
1B
|
2B
|
3B
|
SS
|
LF
|
CF
|
RF
|
RHS
|
LHS
|
Cl
|
Avg
|
1976
|
Reds
|
3
|
4
|
1
|
2
|
1
|
1
|
10
|
1
|
15
|
11
|
2
|
4.6
|
1978
|
Yankees
|
8
|
8
|
2
|
3
|
16
|
8
|
12
|
6
|
8
|
1
|
2
|
6.7
|
1998
|
Yankees
|
7
|
10
|
6
|
5
|
3
|
19
|
3
|
5
|
5
|
4
|
7
|
6.7
|
The 1998 Yankees are the only team in the study who have Top-10 players at 10 of the 11 positions. But what you will notice above is that, whereas the 1976 Reds have four #1s, the 1998 Yankees actually don’t have anyone on their team who ranks #1 or #2 at his position for that season. Posada obviously was not on the level of Piazza or Pudge that season; Tino Martinez, hitting .281 with 28 homers, was nowhere near the level of Mark McGwire or Mo Vaughn. Second base, Craig Biggio and Chuck Knoblauch are somewhat similar players, but Biggio out-hit Knoblauch that year by 60 points. Third baseman Scott Brosius was a good player, but no Chipper Jones or Scott Rolen. Jeter ranks third in that season behind A-Rod and Nomar, who both beat him by about 40 RBI. Center fielder Bernie Williams was great, but not the equal of Ken Griffey Jr., who hit twice as many homers as Bernie and drove in 50 more runs. Right fielder Paul O’Neill was terrific, but not near the level of the two 1998 Most Valuable Players, who were both right fielders. The Yankees top right-handed starter (David Cone) was outstanding, but ranks below Kevin Brown, Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez; their top lefty, David Wells, ranks below Tom Glavine, Randy Johnson and the Mets’ Al Leiter. Closer Mariano Rivera (36 saves and a 1.98 ERA) cannot reasonably be rated ahead of Trevor Hoffman (53 Saves and a 1.48 ERA) or Robb Nen (40 Saves and a 1.52) ERA.
  The argument you would have to make—and maybe can make, I don’t know—to get the ’98 Yankees up to the level of the ’76 Reds is starting pitching. The ’98 Yankees certainly had better starting pitching than the ’76 Reds, and it is a reasonable argument that this accounting method does not give sufficient weight to that.
The 2009 Yankees have high-ranking players at catcher (Posada), first base (Teixeira), second base (Cano), third base (A-Rod), short (Jeter), left field (Damon), right field (Swisher), left-handed starter (Sabathia) and closer (Mariano); their only two weaknesses are center field (Melky Cabrera) and right-handed starter (A. J. Burnett and Joba Chamberlain), and those aren’t real weaknesses; they’re just not strengths. 1993 Blue Jays are fifth, 1979 Pirates sixth:
Year
|
Team
|
C
|
1B
|
2B
|
3B
|
SS
|
LF
|
CF
|
RF
|
RHS
|
LHS
|
Cl
|
Avg
|
1976
|
Reds
|
3
|
4
|
1
|
2
|
1
|
1
|
10
|
1
|
15
|
11
|
2
|
4.6
|
1998
|
Yankees
|
7
|
10
|
6
|
5
|
3
|
19
|
3
|
5
|
5
|
4
|
7
|
6.7
|
1978
|
Yankees
|
8
|
8
|
2
|
3
|
16
|
8
|
12
|
6
|
8
|
1
|
2
|
6.7
|
2009
|
Yankees
|
4
|
4
|
4
|
3
|
3
|
5
|
17
|
9
|
23
|
1
|
3
|
6.9
|
1993
|
Blue Jays
|
20
|
1
|
1
|
20
|
7
|
4
|
6
|
4
|
12
|
4
|
4
|
7.5
|
1979
|
Pirates
|
16
|
8
|
3
|
8
|
5
|
13
|
10
|
2
|
10
|
8
|
3
|
7.8
|
  The six WORST championship teams, by the same method, are these six:
Year
|
Team
|
C
|
1B
|
2B
|
3B
|
SS
|
LF
|
CF
|
RF
|
RHS
|
LHS
|
Cl
|
Avg
|
2014
|
Giants
|
1
|
30
|
28
|
12
|
9
|
13
|
26
|
7
|
30
|
2
|
24
|
16.5
|
2006
|
Cardinals
|
14
|
2
|
22
|
5
|
19
|
24
|
18
|
15
|
3
|
30
|
27
|
16.3
|
1988
|
Dodgers
|
25
|
30
|
7
|
29
|
30
|
2
|
11
|
13
|
1
|
9
|
11
|
15.3
|
2015
|
Royals
|
8
|
6
|
10
|
19
|
18
|
16
|
4
|
30
|
21
|
28
|
7
|
15.2
|
1997
|
Marlins
|
9
|
27
|
30
|
6
|
9
|
5
|
30
|
12
|
6
|
17
|
9
|
14.5
|
1987
|
Twins
|
24
|
7
|
20
|
8
|
9
|
28
|
4
|
14
|
15
|
2
|
24
|
14.1
|
The 2014 Giants had two great players, Posey and Bumgarner; otherwise they are kind of a mess. An average team would rank by this method at 15.5, so BY THIS METHOD, it appears that the 2014 Giants and the 2006 Cardinals were actually below-average teams; statement is not offered for the truth of it.
#1 Players on Championship Teams
The only championship teams in the last 41 years which had THE best catcher in baseball that season were the 2012 and 2014 Giants, with Buster Posey. Two teams had the best first baseman in baseball, the 1983 Orioles (Eddie Murray) and the 1993 Blue Jays (John Olerud). The 2006 Cardinals had Pujols, back when Pujols was Pujols, but the MVP that year was another first baseman.
Second base, there are three teams in this time period which have won the World Series with the best second baseman in baseball, the 1976 Reds (Joe Morgan), the 1993 Blue Jays (Alomar) and the 2008 Phillies (Chase Utley). Third base, the only two I have marked are the 1985 Royals (Brett) and the 2016 Cubs (Bryant). In 1980 the two MVPs were third basemen, and they met in the World Series; I have Brett (who hit .390 and drove in more than a run a game) ranked ahead of Schmidt for that season, not for his career. You can argue that one all night, and also it is not absolutely clear that Bryant is the #1 third baseman in 2016; you can go with Donaldson or Arrenado.
Shortstop, there are three World Championship teams with the best shortstop in the game that year, the 1976 Reds (Concepcion), the 1983 Orioles (Ripken) and the 1999 Yankees (Jeter). The only championship team that had the majors’ best left fielder was the 1976 Reds, George Foster; left field shows as a very weak position in this survey.
No team in the last 41 years has won the World Series and also had the best center fielder in baseball that season. The 1999 Yankees are the closest (Bernie Williams). In right field, the 1976 Reds (Griffey) and the 1977 Yankees (Reggie) are the only two; Parker ranks second in 1979. Four teams have had the best right-handed starter in baseball that season, the 1988 Dodgers (Orel Hershiser), the 1995 Braves (Greg Maddux), the 2001 Diamondbacks (Curt Schilling) and the 2004 Red Sox (Curt Schilling again.) Schilling is remarkable in that he appears twice on the list, the only player who does, and he did it with different teams, and the 2001 Diamondbacks are remarkable in that they had both the best right-handed starting pitcher in baseball (Schilling) and the best left-hander (Randy Johnson). Six teams have won the World Series with the best left-handed starter in baseball; I listed those earlier.
Teams with outstanding weaknesses are "30s" in this list; sometimes the player there would rank lower than 30th, but I mark it as 30. Catcher, nobody; all teams have at least a semi-legitimate catcher. First base, the weak ones are the 1988 Dodgers (Franklin Stubbs) and the 2014 Giants; Brandon Belt is a good player, but he had a very poor season. Second base, the 1995 Braves, 1997 Marlins and 2011 Cardinals had holes at second base. The 1992 Blue Jays had an issue at third base, Kelly Gruber hitting .229 with no positives on the side.
  Four almost consecutive teams in the 1980s had real problems at shortstop: the 1985 Royals, the 1986 Mets, the 1988 Dodgers and the 1989 Athletics all had shortstop shortages. Buddy Biancalana briefly became a celebrity after he played well in the 1985 series. No team had a huge hole in left field. The 1997 Marlins and the 2010 San Francisco Giants were weak in center field, while six teams—all from the 21st century—have won the World Series despite being weak in right field: the 2001 Diamondbacks, 2004 Red Sox, 2010 and 2012 San Francisco Giants, 2015 Royals and 2016 Cubs (Wayward Heyward). The 1996 Yankees, 2008 Phillies and 2014 Giants had no very impressive right-handed starting pitcher, and six teams (listed before) had no good left-handed starter. No team has won the World Series without some kind of a closer, although, as I discussed earlier, there have been three cases where the closer was pretty weak.
3) What did I learn from doing this that surprised me?
The thing that surprised me (other than the basic conclusion, which surprised me) was the 2013 Red Sox. At least three times I have been speaking to an audience somewhere, and an audience member has suggested that the 2013 Red Sox, while that was a thrilling season and a wonderful run, were not really as good as the other Red Sox World Series teams. I agreed with them; I don’t know, but it sounds true. We weren’t good the year before or the year after.
This is not at all the way this system sees it. By this method, the 2013 Red Sox rank as MUCH better than either the 2004 or 2007 Red Sox. They rank as the 8th best among the 40 Championship teams.
  See it the way you want to see it, but this is why this happens. First, the 2013 season was a pitcher’s year. The major league OPS was down 40 points from some of the surrounding years, so the numbers have to be re-calibrated. Second, the 2013 Red Sox had a bunch of players who may not have been great players, but who did have very good years in 2013:
Jarrod Saltalamacchia has not had a great career, but he was a top ten catcher in 2013. He hit 40 doubles in 121 games, had an .800+ OPS; his defense was good enough that you could live with it.
Mike Napoli was struggling with his sleep disorder thing, and we never could get the great hitter that we thought was in there to come out, but he did drive in 92 runs with an .846 OPS. There are not more than six major league first basemen who were better.
Stephen Drew had his last good year at shortstop. He was a Top 10 Player.
  Daniel Nava was a player with a long, long road to the majors and a fairly short career once he got there, but in 2013 he flipped between left field and right, and hit .303—the highest average of any major league left fielder. It wasn’t an empty .303; his .385 On Base Percentage was the highest of any major league left fielder except Matt Holiday, and he had a little power.
Koji Uehara, our closer at the end of the season, was 38 years old then and is not a Hall of Famer, but he had a Hall of Fame season, pitching 73 games, 74 innings, with a strikeout/walk ratio of 101/9 and a 1.09 ERA.
Those were all Top 10 players, as were, of course, Dustin Pedroia and Jon Lester, and Jacoby Ellsbury was. It’s actually a really solid team, based on how they played that season. The 2013 Red Sox had a Top 10 player at nine out of 11 positions—the same as the 1976 Reds.
And our DH was pretty decent.