Are Closers Overrated?

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When the Yankees signed Rafael Soriano last year to a three year $35 million contract, it raised an interesting question: do productive set-up men deserve as much pay as closers? Traditionally, the resounding answer has been “no”, as most believe there is some intrinsic value in a closer that no set-up man could ever approach. But are closers really that much more valuable than an effective set-up man? I would argue the contrary. Table 1 shows the top relievers in baseball last year, in terms of WPA. Saves and innings pitched are also included as a point of reference.

WPA (win probability added) approximates how many wins a player contributed to his team over the course of a season. It takes the win expectancy before and after each batter a reliever faces, calculates the differences, and adds them all together over the course of a season. For instance, if David Robertson is called in with the bases load, no outs, and a slim lead, the Yankees win expectancy may only be .500. If he manages to get out of the inning without letting in any runs, maintaining the lead, the Yankees may now have a win expectancy of .850. In this circumstance, Robertson would be awarded .350 WPA.

Referring back to the chart, one notices that the top ten relievers in WPA are split evenly between closers and other relievers. Tyler Clippard, a middle reliever, actually accumulated the highest WPA last season. This was, in part, due to his high inning count, but also his effectiveness in those innings. Not all outs and innings are equally important, but clearly any inning pitched is valuable to a player’s team. Every inning pitched relieves other starters and relievers on the team, so there is an additional value to pitching the extra innings. In this group, non-closers averaged approximately nine more innings than the closers did.  The average WPA for the non-closers was 4.098, while the WPA of the closers was only 3.802. So taking the top relievers from the league, it appears that closers are actually less valuable to their teams than an affective set-up reliever in terms of innings and WPA.

This is not to say that closers are, on average, inferior to other relievers; to the contrary, I would say closers are typically the most skilled relievers on their teams. The problem exists in the way managers choose to use their relievers, saving their supposed best relievers for the ninth inning only. If Craig Kimbrel “won” the closing job out of spring training, then why did the Braves decide to pitch Johnny Venters 11 more innings? There is a glaring flaw in the system where teams manage their bullpens in a way that does not optimize the innings that their “best” reliever pitches.

So when the Yankees signed Soriano last year, with the intention of making him their set-up man, it was not necessarily the wrong move. Granted, Soriano underperformed horribly but if he had performed at the level he had in 2010, this time in a set-up role, he would have been more valuable to the Yankees than Mariano Rivera. A fundamental shift needs to take place in baseball, either with the way managers handle closers, or the way owners pay their relievers. With the increased focus on advanced statistics in management and scouting, this shift may occur sooner than expected.

Works Cited:

Baseball Statistics and Analysis | FanGraphs Baseball.Baseball Info Solutions. Web. 31 Jan. 2012. <http://www.fangraphs.com/>.