Closers of the Eighties

Modern-day bullpen usage, can be maddening to baseball fans.  Tigers fans blame Jim Leyland for the team's bullpen problems this year, and maybe some of that criticism is legitimate, but many of the things they complain about are pretty standard in Major League Baseball today.  The closer role, in particular, is set in stone.

All teams have a primary closer and each has the same job description.  They come into games in the ninth inning, typically at the beginning of the inning with no outs and the bases empty, with a lead of three runs or fewer.  If they are able to close out the game with their team still in the lead, it is considered a success even if they allowed base runners and runs in the process.

It doesn't generally matter if another pitcher on the staff might seem to be a better fit for the particular situation such as a left-hander facing opposing left-handed batters in the ninth instead of the right-handed closer. Similarly, if the set-up man strikes out the side in the eighth and the closer has been struggling as of late, the ninth inning guy is still going to handle the ninth.  Generally, the only way a closer doesn't pitch the ninth in a save situation is if he has pitched too many days in a row and the manager decides that he is unavailable that game.

Not only do closers handle all save opportunities, but they are seldom used in any other scenario.  They are rarely used in tie games or with runners on base, two situations where it would seem to make sense to employ your supposedly most reliable reliever.   They also almost never pitch more than one inning.

A good example is Jose Valverde, the Tigers reliever who was designated for assignment just yesterday.  I'll go back to 2011 when he had is best year in terms of converting save opportunities into saves - a perfect 49 saves in 49 opportunities.  In every single case, he entered the game in the ninth inning with nobody on and nobody out and got three outs.  He had 15 leads of three runs, 18 of two-runs and 16 of one-run.  There was not a lot of creativity going on there.  He did pitch in 26 other games, but they often came in blow outs where he was only used because he needed work. 

One might argue that his role was logical that year as he was successful in it and was not pitching well in non-save situations.  However, it made less sense last year and this year when he was being used the same way even while struggling to close out games. 

In the case of truly dominant closers, it makes even less sense on the surface to restrict them to one role.  Why automatically use your best reliever with a three-run lead and nobody on base and never bring him into a game with runners on base in earlier innings?  Why not use him in a tie game?

The answer we are usually given is that pitchers are more comfortable in set roles and thus specialization makes a bullpen more effective.  While it may make for happier pitchers, I don't believe there is any strong evidence that teams are significantly better at holding on to late-game leads today than they were thirty years ago when bullpen usage was a lot different.  Like it or not though, the closer role is probably not going to change anytime soon, not until some daring and influential manager commits to changing it.

It hasn't always been like this.  Prior to extreme specialization or La Russarization, bullpens were used more creatively and seemingly with just as much or even more success in some cases than today.  Examples can be found on two of the best Tigers teams in the past 40 years - 1984 world champions and 1987 division winners.

The Tigers had their glorious 35-5 start in 1984 and went on to win 104 games before plowing through the Royals and Padres in post-season.  Willie Hernandez, their primary closer that year, was so good that he won both the Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards.  Whether he really deserved either award is arguable, but he was dominant in 1984 posting a 1.92 ERA and 0.94 WHIP in in 140 1/3 innings.

Hernandez also converted his first 32 of 33 save opportunities that year with his only blown save coming on the second to last game of the season.  The 32-save streak was actually a big deal at the time and probably the main reason why he won awards.  So saves were revered back then as they are today, even if they were not accomplished in such generic fashion.  .     

The first clue that Hernandez was used differently than modern closers that year was his 140+ innings pitched.  Of his 80 appearances, 44 were for more than one inning and 15 were for three or more innings.

Manager Sparky Anderson was not afraid to use his exceptional left hander with runners on base.  He inherited runners is 23 of his appearances including 10 of his saves. Because game-finishing relievers of that period were often brought in with runners on base in tight games, they were generally referred to as Firemen rather than closers.

 Another divergence from today's convention  was the use of Hernandez in tie games - 16 in all for the season. This was one of the main reasons for his 11 wins that year.. 

While he was the Tigers primary fireman, Hernandez was not the only Tigers pitcher with a lot of saves that year.  He was frequently unavailable due to pitching multiple innings in previous games and sometimes Anderson preferred to go with a righty against certain teams.  Thus, portly right hander Aurelio Lopez was able to net 14 saves in 15 opportunities.  Lopez also won ten games while posting a 2.94 ERA and 1.17 WHIP in 137 2/3 innings.

Senor Smoke also was not used anything like today's closers or set-up men.  He was a true fireman entering games with runners on base 29 times in 71 games for a total of 52 inherited runners.  He pitched more than one inning 41 times including 17 games of three plus frames.

With Lopez gone and Hernandez no longer effective or healthy, the Tigers had a different situation in 1987 than 1984.  They had no primary closer or fireman for most of the year and Anderson had to mix and match with young right handers Mike Henneman and Eric Steven King and and southpaws Hernandez and Mark Thurmond.  None had as many as ten saves, but this didn't prevent the Tigers from winning 98 games and an American League East division title.

They surely did not suffer in close games that year as the the Tigers were an an American League best 26-16 in one-run games. No Tigers fan of the time will ever forget the drama of four consecutive one-run victories versus the Blue Jays which secured the title in the final week of the season.

Two of those late-season victories were completed by Henneman, their most effective closer during the season's second half.  He was not dominant with his 2.98 ERA and 1.20 WHIP in 96 2/3 innings, but the 25-year old rookie helped steady a shaky bullpen after his debut on May 11 bailing the Tigers out of jams time after time.

Henneman only had seven saves and finished just 28 of 55 games, but he inherited an incredible, by today's standards, 71 base runners including eight games with the bases loaded.  He also pitched 30 games of more than one inning, including 11 of three or more.  He won 11 games - 5 where he entered tie games, 3 when the team was down and 3 when they were ahead before the 5th inning was over.

We will likely never see the big innings totals for relievers like Hernandez and Lopez in 1984 which might be wise, but a mix of today's more modest workloads and the creativity of earlier years seems achievable.  I, for one, would like to see it. 

Data for this post were extracted from Baseball-Reference.com. 

The Maturing of Rick Porcello

Many Tigers fans were ready to give up on 24-year-old Rick Porcello going into the this season.  He had always shown good control and an ability to induce ground balls, but he frustrated us with his inability to miss bats and failure to pitch deep into games.  With sophomore left-hander Drew Smyly seemingly ready for regular rotation duty, many felt it was time to trade Porcello.  There were rumors about trades for closers or minor league infielders prior to the season, but nothing ever materialized and the Tigers apparently made the right move in holding on to him. 

Porcello had a promising spring training replacing his ineffective slider with a curve and showing an improved change-up. Fans once again became impatient with the right hander though when he got off to a sluggish start and skepticism turned to grave concern when he allowed nine runs in the first inning on April 20 versus the Angels. With his ERA now up to 11.08, disappointed fans could not understand why the Tigers kept putting him out there while Smyly was seemingly being wasted as a long reliever. Even Porcello's most loyal followers were beginning to wonder if he would ever take the next step forward. 

Since that abysmal start versus Los Angeles, Porcello has posted  a 2.84 ERA and fantastic 56/10 strikeout to walk ratio over nine starts and 57 innings.  This is by far the best stretch of his career and the only time he has shown any consistent ability to strike batters out.  For the season, Porcello has struck out a career best 7.6 strikeouts per nine innings.  That is a remarkable improvement over a 5.5 strikeout rate in 2012 and 5.2 for his career.  This is no fluke - strikeout rates do not improve by two per game over 70 innings by accident.

Porcello has not sacrificed anything to increase his strikeout total as his walk rate (1.7 per nine innings) and ground ball rate (56%) are also career bests. His ERA is only 4.37, but that is mostly because of the one awful start.  Take away that one game and his ERA is 3.26. 

So, Porcello is experiencing sustained success for the longest period of his career, but we have to dig a little deeper to understand why.  The  top theories as to why he is doing better are:

• Less reliance on sinker

• Adopting the curve as his primary breaking pitch instead of a slider

• An improved change-up

The encouraging thing is that the data back up all these ideas.  Figure 1 below from Brooks Baseball shows the change in his pitch usage.  He clearly is is using his sinker less (down from 54% in 2012 to 40% in 2013) and his change-up more (14% to 19%).  The chart also confirms that he has essentially replaced his slider with a curve. 

FIGURE 1

Figure 2, also from Brooks, suggests why his curve is better than his slider. While the slider was very straight, the curve has quite a bit of horizontal movement, especially this year.  I'm not sure how much that is driving the results, but the numbers are excellent.  Last year, his slider was tattooed for a .410 batting average and .638 slugging average.  This year, batters have hit his curve at a very reasonable .238/.416 clip. 


FIGURE 2

Figure 3 gives us a clue as to the effectiveness of his change-up.  The Whiff Percentage (or percentage of change-ups that result in a swing and miss) has increased each year, with the biggest jump coming this year (13% in 2012 to 16% in 2013).  You'll notice that the Slider Whiff Percentage is also up, but you can probably ignore that as he rarely throws it this year.  Anyway, the more effective change-up is showing up in the results.  Last year, he allowed a .250/.410 BA/SLG on change-ups.  This year it's down to .215/. 308 and he has almost as many strikeouts on change-ups (17) as his trusted sinker (18).  

FIGURE 3

 Finally, Figure 4 shows where all the ground balls are coming from.  The ground ball rates on his sinker (60% in 2012 to 70% in  in 2013) and curve ball (43% to 63%) have both increased substantially.


FIGURE 4  

It's still too early to say that Porcello's career has turned around and that he will keep pitching like a number two or three starter as he has the last nine starts.  It's clear though that he is using a very different approach this year and getting much better results so far.

There are not a lot of fans asking for Porcello to be traded anymore and those that still want a trade are demanding much bigger returns. 

Cabrera on Pace for Best Batting Season Ever for a Tiger

There is much talk about the possibility of Tigers superstar Miguel Cabrera winning an unprecedented second consecutive triple crown.  That would be a remarkable feat, but most of you are aware of the limitations of the triple crown statistics.  From a sabermetric perspective, 2012 was not even Cabrera's best season.  According to more advanced numbers, his 2011 and 2010 seasons were even better.  This season, however, he is on pace to do something truly historic.

I'm going to use the Batting Runs statistic to show where Cabrera's prformance stands among the greatest seasons in Tigers history.  The Batting Runs metric was first introduced in The Hidden Game of Baseball by Pete Palmer and John Thorn in 1984.  It is an estimate of the number of runs a player contributed above an average player based on the number of singles, doubles, triples, home runs, bases on balls, hit batsmen and outs accumulated throughout the season.

Cabrera currently has 30 Batting Runs to give him a narrow lead over Orioles slugger Chris Davis (28).  This means that Cabrera has created an estimated 30 runs more than an average player would have been expected to create given the same number of outs.  If we project from the 60-game sample to 162 games, the Tigers slugger would have 81 Batting Runs by season's end.  How awesome is that?  As great as he was in 2010-2012, he accumulated only 55, 65 and 53 respectively in those years.

The table show that 81 Batting Runs would be the most in the history of the franchise eclipsing first baseman Norm Cash's 76 in 1961.  Not even the legendary Ty Cobb had that many in any season.  If we include base running, then Cobb's 1911 season might be better, but based just on batting Cabrera would be number one.


Table 1: Tigers Single-Season Batting Runs Leaders

Player	Year	Batting Runs
Cabrera	2013	81*
Cash	1961	76
Heilmann	1923	74
Cobb	1911	74
Cobb	1917	70
Cobb	1912	68
Cabrera	2011	65
Greenberg	1937	64
Heilmann	1927	64
Cobb	1915	63

*Projected for a full season
Source: Baseball-Reference.com

The 81 Batting Runs would also be the 24th highest total in American League history.  Cabrera would be in great company as he would join Babe Ruth (9 times), Ted Williams (6), Lou Gehrig (5). Mickey Mantle (2) and Jimmie Foxx (1) as the only American League players with more than 80 Batting Runs in a season.  Cabrera would be the first to do it since Mickey Mantle (84 Batting Runs) and Ted Williams (83) in 1957.  Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa have surpassed 80 in the National League since then.

There is a long way to go and it will be difficult for Cabrera to maintain his current pace, but he has chance to put together a season for the ages in 2013.

Smyly Among Top AL Relievers, But Is He Being Used Optimally?

In a recent post, I used the RE24 statistic to measure batting contribution including situational hitting.  The statistic is appealing because it gives batters more credit for hits with runners on base than for hits with the bases empty.  This concept can also be applied to pitchers, relievers in particular.

Statistical evaluation of relievers is difficult for a couple of reasons:

1. They pitch so few innings that their statistics can be influenced heavily by a couple of really bad outings.
2. Their actual value depends on game situations more than any other player (this problem will be addressed here)

Using ERA to evaluate relievers is problematic because relievers often make appearances with runners on base and give up other pitcher's runs. So a pitcher could have a low ERA without actually being that effective. FIP ERA which is based on walks, strikeouts and home runs allowed rather than runs allowed is better but it still does not consider the game environments in which a reliever pitched.

The RE24 metric estimates the number of runs a pitcher saved or cost his team based on his numbers of singles, doubles and all other events allowed including outs.  It also considers the situations in which these events happened.  For example, if Tigers southpaw Phil Coke enters a game with two men on base and nobody out and retires the side he will get more credit than if he comes in with the bases empty.  Coke gets more points in the first scenario because there was a greater potential for run scoring.  Thus, Coke saves the Tigers more runs if he frequently pitches well with runners on base than if he always starts an appearance with the bases empty.

The American League RE24 leaders among relievers are shown in Table 1 below.  Texas Rangers right hander Tanner Scheppers leads the league with a RE24 of 12.9.  This means that he has saved the Athletics an estimated 13 runs compared to an average pitcher with the same number of outs. This is not too surprising given his 0.64 ERA and relatively large workload (28 innings).  There are two Tigers in the top ten - Drew Smyly (10.6) and Joaquin Benoit (8.4).

Table 1: AL RE24 Leaders Among Relievers

Pitcher	Team	RE24
Scheppers	Tex	12.9
Smyly	Det	10.6
Cecil	Tor	9.7
Ross	Tex	8.7
Claiborne	NY	8.4
Hunter	Bal	8.4
Benoit	Det	8.4
Tazawa	Bos	8.1
Uehara	Bos	7.7
Coello	LA	6.8

  Data source: FanGraphs.com

Other Tigers relievers with 10 or more innings are listed in Table 2 below.  Darin Downs, Jose Valverde and Jose Ortega have all saved the team runs while Phil Coke and Al Alburquerque have been below average. This might explain why Alburquerque was briefly demoted to the minors.
  

Table 2: RE24 for Tigers Relievers

Pitcher	RE24
Smyly	10.6
Benoit	8.4
Downs	3.5
Valverde	2.4
Ortega	0.9
Coke	-1.4
Alburquerque	-1.7

Data source: FanGraphs.com

 

Smyly has been the team's most effective reliever, but has he been used in situations which help the team win?  Table 3 lists the average Game Leverage Index (GmLI) of the Tigers relievers when they enter a game.  Leverage Index, a concept developed by Tom Tango, measures how critical a given plate appearance is in determining the final result of the game by looking at the difference in win probability between the best and worst case scenarios.

For example, suppose Smyly enters a game in which the Tigers have a nine-run lead with nobody on base in the ninth inning.  In that situation, there is little difference between giving up a home run and getting the batter out on the probability of winning the game.  This is an example of a low-leverage situation. However, if Smyly comes into a game with two on and nobody out and a one-run lead in the ninth inning, then allowing a home run will be much more damaging than getting the batter out.  This is a high-leverage situation.

A value of one is assigned to an average game situation.  Higher-leverage scenarios have values of more than one and lower-leverage scenarios have values less than one.  These values are averaged together to get a pitcher's index for the season.  Coke has a GmLI of 2 which means that, on average, he has entered games in situations with twice the impact of an average at bat.  Smyly, on the other hand, has been used in only average situations (1.0 GmLI).  This is low for a reliever, especially a good one, as they are typically used at important moments in games.

Table 3: Leverage Index for Tigers Relievers

Pitcher	GmLI
Coke	2.0
Valverde	1.7
Benoit	1.4
Downs	1.3
Alburquerque	1.2
Ortega	1.0
Smyly	1.0

Data source: FanGraphs.com

This is fuel for the fire for those who think manager Jim Leyland is not using Smyly optimally.  Smyly is saving the team runs, but it's not usually happening at the most crucial points of games.  There is probably more to the story as I suspect it is an organizational decision to stretch out Smyly as a long reliever, so he can be ready to start if necessary.  One can certainly question though whether he would have more value to the team as a back-end reliever than as a starter in waiting.

Verlander Not the King This Year

While watching Verlander pitch against the Orioles today, I was thinking how he isn't the same electric pitcher he was in 2011 when he won the MVP and Cy Young awards and in 2012 when he probably should won another Cy Young.  We keep waiting for him to go off on an unbeatable streak where he is a threat to pitch a no hitter every time out.  Instead, he is not even the most exciting pitcher on the team (at least not so far this year) and fans now anticipate a start by Anibal Sanchez or Max Scherzer as much or more than a Verlander game.

It's not that Verlander has been terrible.  In fact, he has been good for the most part.  His 11.1 strikeouts per nine innings is the best of his career and third best among American League starters this year.  According to FanGraphs, he also has induced his usual high percentage of infield flies (14.3% of all batted balls).  So, he is still tough to hit, but when they do hit him they have hit him pretty hard.  His 24% line drive rate is third highest in the league and the highest of his career.  His control has also not been as good this year with 3.1 walks per nine innings, his highest since 2008.  The result is a solid but un-Verlander-like 3.70 ERA. 

It's not just the results though.  It's that he just seems so human on the mound this year.  While he still approaches 100 MPH from time to time such as a 98 MPH fastball today, his average fastball this year according Brooks Baseball is just over 93 MPH.  That's pretty unremarkable compared to 2009-2012 where he average 96 MPH.  He no longer is the fastest pitcher on the team as Scherzer's fastball has averaged 93.8 MPH.  In fact, Verlander is not throwing much harder than Rick Porcello who checks in at 92.4. 

The best way to illustrate Verlander's lack of dominance this year might be by looking at game scores (explained here).  He had six of the top ten game scores on the team in 2011 and generated five of the best ten in 2012.  That should come to no surprise to fans who would routinely planned their weeks around a Verlander start and seldom be disappointed. 

This year, Verlander has only one of the top ten game scores and that came versus the light-hitting Astros.  Sanchez has the top two game scores - his 17-strikeout game and his one hitter - plus one other in the top ten and  Scherzer has four of the top ten.

Verlander may return to his dynamic self over the last two thirds of the season, but a Verlander start is not the must-see event it was in the past.  For now, that title might belong to Sanchez or Scherzer.