You’d keep a standard bullpen of one-inning guys and left-handed specialists, but the “bridge man” would enter in the 5th, 6th, or 7th inning to replace a shaky starter with the intent of finishing the game (or, if you have a dominant closer like Mo Rivera, handing the ball off in the 9th) and pitch twice on every turn of the rotation.

So his stat line would be approx. 60 games, 150 well-leveraged innings, a lot of decisions, and, if you don’t have Mo to wrap up, 20 or so saves. I think it’s a fabulous outside-the-box idea.

Plus, the bridge man would give you an extra bench player (b/c you replace two 70 IP pitchers with one 150 IP pitcher).

That given, being a closer is more mental stress than almost any kind of pitching. Okay, I imagine guys like Webb, Santana, and Sabathia, in the heat of a pennant race, knowing their team *needs* them to do well to have a shot at the postseason, has comparable stress levels. But every game the closer pitches is almost by definition a close game, a game with little or no margin of error. Plus, starters are generally noted for an assortment of pitches, and hitters have a harder time sitting on just one pitch. And starters throw many innings per start. Their success is rarely limited by familiarity. Closers, on the other hand, often depend on just one or two pitches, usually throw just one inning, and the more their pitches get seen and can be reviewed on video, the less likely they are to be effective.

Frankie Rodriguez saved more games than anybody in the history of baseball this season, and on top of all that he did so for a playoff team, so the games were more meaningful than, say, the games the Wilsons or Soria saved. That’s more times he faced the mental stress of coming in to the game. That’s more times teams saw him pitch, and thus more times he had to go to his lesser pitches in order to fool guys who saw him pitch the night before as well.

Nothing against Soria, who had a great year. But K-Rod’s expected saves were ten higher than anybody’s actual saves, and of course his actual saves were ten more than that. I’d expect anybody to lose some effectiveness under that workload, just from the mental stress. So whatever formula you’re using (and why you didn’t publish it is beyond me; it’s not impossible somebody here would have made a suggestion that you would have accepted as an improvement) should have some tiny component that adds a fraction for each save situation entered, say +.05 for each save situation. As a computer game designer, I’d actually write an algorithm with a small bit of scaling (the 40th save opportunity, with its accumulated stress, is tougher than then 10th) but not knowing the proper inflection points, I’m not sure what numbers to use. It would be an interesting item for study, methinks, if I were a baseball professional of some sort. I’m not, though.

On the baserunning stats, do these take into account the unaccounted for in the stat sheet bases, when the runner “moves up” on the throw home?

Then again, I like to see the aftermath of really bad car accidents, too. I’m just that kind of sicko.

Then again, I tend to overvalue closers. I firmly believe that the Yanks would be better off leaving Joba in the pen, setting up Mo one more year, then taking over as a full-time (and utterly dominant) closer. There is nothing more demoralizing to an opponent than knowing the game is 7 innings long, and with Joba in the 8th and Rivera in the 9th, that is what it would be. The game has become that specialized.

With the increased awareness of pitch counts, the emphasis on OBP on offense and even effective starters now routinely going 6 innings or less (see Matsuzaka, Daisuke), the bullpen is of extreme importance, maybe to the point of being on par with the starting rotation (that’s an overstatement, but I think it is true with most teams, for starters 3-5 in their rotations). Thus, why not deal from strength.

In other words, with the paucity of good starting pitching, I see the script now as follows: you build a good bullpen including a reliable 8th inning guy and a 9th inning stud, and you hope your #3-5 starters to go 5-6 innings and keep the game close. Then you hope to beat up the other team’s bullpen and win it with your strength at the end.

Wouldn’t a team like the Royals be better off doing that? Good relievers cost much less than even average starters, so it fits the budget. Young flamethrowers who cannot make it as starters, because they don’t add in the secondary pitches, can be effective an inning at a time. And if you build an offense around big OBP in order to get the other team’s good starters out of the game based on pitch count (and here’s a BIG PROBLEM for the Royals, see Jacobs, Mike), you level the playing field a bit – my bullpen against yours.

Just a thought.

A big concern of mine with making him a starter is all the trouble he had with fatigue last year. He didn’t pitch for like a week (can’t remember specifically how many games) because of fatigue. They also rarely ever brought him in before the 9th to save him as well. If he is a starter how many innings can he go.

Right now I want him to stay a closer.

I’d like to see a rule change that gives the batter two bases but the man on first three. Or maybe draw a line on the centre-field wall and make anything right of that a triple for the runner.

Thank you. Back to closers.