I’ll soon reveal who the top 10 best relievers in baseball are by FanGraphs’ WAR (fWAR) and Win Probability Added (WPA), but I’d like you to take a moment to write down your top 10 on a list of paper. Go ahead. I’ll wait … Are we done? Awesome. But before we begin, let’s go over what makes a good reliever. Good pitchers obviously strike out a lot batters, walk few batters, and give up few home runs. This prevents runs from being scored, and the value of this along with innings pitched makes up fWAR. When it comes to relievers and closers, people add in the ability to handle pressure as the game nears its end, and WPA accounts for game situation and the importance of getting outs in those situations.
Usually, closers are the big names on the reliever scene. They pitch at the end of the game, and their successes and failures (especially their failures) are headline news. Closers are the ones who finish off opponents, throw big fastballs, and pump their fists while growing pop-culture reference beards. As for the rest of the reliever fraternity, we don’t really remember their names. They come and go with their fluctuating success, and the only ones we remember are the ones with sub-1 ERAs for a time. Then again, how many of us think of Brad Ziegler in 2008 or Arthur Rhodes’ first half of last season? Closers are the guys we know, but how have they fared so far?
The first thing you’ve probably noticed is that some of the names on this list are pretty new to you. Rivera and Papelbon need no introduction, and you may have heard of Hanrahan, Kimbrel, and Santos if you scrounge around for saves in your fantasy leagues. Even then, they probably weren’t the big saves names you are used to hearing. Of the top 10, 5 are not closers (Venters, Marshall, Lindstrom, League, and Clippard), but looking further down the list, only 4 of the next 12 are closers with 3 either newly or temporarily installed as closers. So far, it’s the middle relievers/set-up men that are getting the job done, and this isn’t new. 4 of the top 10 by 2010 season’s end were not closers, and 9 of the next 12 were not closers.
How are these relievers accumulating so many wins worth of production? On this year’s top 10, only Clippard has yielded a home run, and that simply won’t continue for any of these relievers. Pitchers generally give up a home run on about 10% of their fly balls, and unless your name is Jonny Venters (83% ground ball rate; which is insanely ridiculous, BTW, with the average MLB pitcher in the 40s), you are probably going to surrender a few more home runs over the course of the season. They also strike out a lot of hitters with 5 striking out more than one an inning and the rest, with the exception of Hanrahan (6.69 K/9), striking out near a batter an inning. These relievers also do not walk many. An outstanding (to me, at least), 8 of them walk fewer than 3 per nine innings, and 5 walk fewer than 2 per nine innings. Kimbrel (4.02) has the highest walk rate, but he also has the highest strikeout rate (12.64), which negates some of the walks. So each of these pitchers is doing what we would expect upper-echelon relievers to do—strike out hitters, not walk many of them, and give up few home runs—but several are doing it without the closer tag.
But what about the pressure thing? WPA takes context into consideration—inning, score, runners on base, etc.—and gives the pitcher a score based on how he handles it. Looking at the chart below, you’ll notice that 3 of the top 5 are not closers, but if you look at the actual leaderboard, 6 of the top 10 are closers. Looking a little further down the list, 8 of the next 15 are not closers. Of the top 25 pitchers (remember there are 30 closers), only 13 closers top the list of pitchers that are handling the most pressure-packed situations with success. 12 middle relievers/set-up men are handling adversity with aplomb, but because they lack the tag given to closers, they are generally ignored in the discussion of top relievers.
Pressure is a bit of a myth when it comes to relievers. For whatever reason, we have come to believe that pressure only exists in the ninth inning, and while it may contain quite a bit of pressure under certain circumstances (ie. 1-run lead with the 2-3-4 hitters coming up), the seventh and eighth innings also feature quite a bit of pressure as the game remains on the line. Jonny Venters and Tyler Cippard, for instance, may be the best relievers in baseball due to their high fWAR and WPA (the lists seem to flip with these two the best scorers on both). If they were closers, they could undoubtedly handle the pressure because they’ve been in high-pressure situations already this season and in past seasons, but they would also have quite a bit more fame. So remember, when you talk about the best relievers in the game, remember the little guys—the middle relievers and the set-up men—because while they aren’t “closers” they’ve been slamming the door on the competition all year long.
