Billy Wagner Proves That Joe Nathan Deserved a Longer Look For the Hall of Fame

[jmlease1]

1 hour ago, TopGunn#22 said:

Jmlease:  I appreciate your excellent rundown of all those relief pitchers.  Very insightful.  I agree with your assessments. 

Thanks! I think one of the things we see is that only the really great relievers are able to be consistently dominant over an extended period of time. You'll see closers who are in the role for a decade or longer, but the reality is they're just pitching the last inning for a fair number of years and getting a fairly empty "save" rather than be consistently dominant. the smaller samples also have some relievers putting up big seasons scattered over 6-8 years, but rarely every season in a row. It is one of the things that makes it hard to differentiate who the truly great ones are without really digging in and looking at a lot of different metrics.

the evolution of the best reliever becoming a "closer" rather than a "fireman" and only being used in the last inning save situation was an unfortunate development by managers (aided by players and their agents, when they saw how big save numbers translated to bigger paychecks). It feels like that's shifting away again?