MLB’s surprise saves leaders are futher proof that saves don’t matter

By Stanford Crissey | Apr 20, 2015

Oct 5, 2014; Kansas City, MO, USA; A general view of baseballs and a glove prior to game three of the 2014 ALDS baseball playoff game between the Kansas City Royals and Los Angeles Angeles at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports /

You may see some surprising names atop the MLB save leaderboard, but that won’t tell you anything about those pitchers’ seasons.

At this early point in the MLB season, here are the two relievers tied for the league lead in saves, with six apiece: Jeurys Familia of the New York Mets and Jason Grilli of the Atlanta Braves, neither of whom was their team’s closer on March 30.

Grilli got the job thanks to the March 31 trade of the team’s spectacular former closer, Craig Kimbrel. Grilli isn’t exactly your prototypical dominant reliever; he is 38 years old and has a career WAR of 5.6, or a little more than half what Mike Trout was worth in his rookie year alone. Grilli was the Pittsburgh Pirates‘ closer for a few years, but lost that job last year, and remains perhaps best known for his entrance video at PNC Park, which featured him making a grilled cheese sandwich.

grilled cheese gif

grilled cheese gif /

Familia, meanwhile, only became the closer thanks to the suspension of Jenrry Mejia and the injury to last year’s closer, Bobby Parnell.

Scrolling further down the saves list, you find Seattle Mariners’ Fernando Rodney and his 12.46 ERA, sitting there with three saves, the third-highest total so far in the league.

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So why these two? Two major reasons: 1) We’re two weeks into the season; but more importantly 2) because saves are a terrible way to measure reliever performance.

A quick summary: the save stat was invented by Jerome Holtzmann 56 years ago in an effort to bring more recognition to underappreciated relief pitchers. He could never have intended what came next: managers running their bullpens based on the save rule, carving out highly specific roles for each reliever and refusing to deviate no matter the situation.

Basically, a save is granted when a reliever successfully defends a lead of three runs or fewer in the ninth inning. It doesn’t matter if a 5-2 lead gets cut to 5-4; it’s a save because the lead held. The stat also undervalues tie games, which are not recognized as a “save situation;” neither is a one-run deficit.

The horrendousness of the save statistic is common knowledge among statistically inclined writers and fans of the game, but it remains a major part of the game, influencing how managers put together their bullpens, and how much relievers get paid.

Take this April 9 game between the Reds and the Pirates. The game was tied 2-2 entering the ninth inning, but Pirates manager, waiting for the save opportunity, left Mark Melancon, the team’s closer and best reliever, out of the game, waiting for a save opportunity that never came as the Reds eventually won 3-2, as Mark Scahill, he of the 4.18 career ERA, closed the game.

The emphasis on pitching only one inning has also hurt teams, as managers like the Reds’ Brian Price are reluctant to use a weapon like Aroldis Chapman for multiple innings at a time, despite the fact that using Chapman, who was once expected to become a starter, in the eighth and ninth inning would put the team in the best possible situation for both of those innings.

It’s simply a terrible way to measure closers’ performance, and its proliferation throughout the game hurts far more than it helps. Closers aren’t soccer goalies; they can’t be judged by such a simple stat as how many saves they have. Relief pitching is hard to measure as it is, as these pitchers come in for such short stretches at a time that it’s hard to tell who’s good and who isn’t; we don’t need things mucked up by terrible measurements like this.

The other problem is that saves remain the primary way relievers get paid. Since stats like ERA don’t mean as much fore relievers, the market is mostly based around saves.

Tale last winter’s free agents. The highest paid reliever was David Robertson, who got a whopping four years and $46 million from the White Sox after racking up saves with the Yankees as Mariano Rivera’s replacement as closer. Meanwhile, Pat Neshek, who had a higher 2014 WAR and a longer history of relieving excellence, got less than 30 percent of that figure (from the Astros).

If MLB keep relying on saves to measure reliever performance, we’ll end up with more blown tie games, more outsize contracts for players with high save totals (and less money for their seventh- and eighth-inning counterparts). The ninth inning is not the be-all end-all; it’s one of nine innings that are all equally important, something MLB teams and managers would do well to remember.

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