2008 Closers
By Blake VandeBunte • Jul 12th, 2008 • Category: 2008 season, Todd JonesA while back a made a post about how Todd Jones stacked up against the other closers of his ERA. This was done with career statistics (including this season). However, I was also curious to see how Todd stacks up against closers this season using only this season’s statistics. It was fun and it turned out worse than I expected. Here’s the criteria I used:
- To select what players to use I just took the top 30 (30 teams in MLB) players in saves this season. This included obviously the best closers, but it also includes players who were just made closer (Brandon Morrow) and closers who have lost their jobs (Jason Isringhausen, Eric Gagne). I think this makes a pretty fair group for comparison. Todd shouldn’t necessarily be the worst at everything because he’s being compared to some guys who were so bad they lost their jobs.
- Saves: The players are ranked in the table by total saves. Saves is a bit of a flawed stat but it’s a good starting point for this table.
- Save %: It is often argued that while Todd is often ugly out there, he does get the job done. Save Percentage is compiled by taking saves divided by save chances (SV/SV OPP). If Todd really is ugly, but getting the job done he should rank favorably in this category.
- K/9: Strike out’s per nine innings is a decent way of showing how dominant a pitcher is. A player with a high K rate is often the sort of player who can get his team out of a jam situation. This is why Joel Zumaya was/is a valuable member of the Tigers. He can come in with a guy on third and one out and get the strike out to get his club out of a jam.
- K/BB: Strike out to walk ratio. This is to help us weed out the wild hurlers. Quite often there are closer who rack up huge K/9 numbers but walk way too many batters to make them effective. A player with a decent K/BB ratio is a guy who can get his team K’s but also avoids issuing the free passes that kill teams late in games.
- AVG: Batting average against the pitcher. Pretty self explanatory. A guy with a high number here allows too many men on base to have as a closer. He also increases his chances for blowing a game.
- ERC: This stands for Component ERA. This is a pitchers ERA taken from the hits and walks they allow, rather than the runs they allow. This often gives us a truer number to reflect how effective a pitcher really is. Sometimes a pitcher can have a lucky season and post a low ERA even though they didn’t pitch much better than they usually did. For more, check here.
Okay, now that we have that out of the way, here’s the data:
| Name | Saves | SV% | K/9 | K/BB | AVG | ERC |
| Francisco Rodriguez | 36 | 92.30% | 8.55 | 1.58 | .177 | 2.53 |
| George Sherrill | 28 | 82.35% | 9.76 | 1.79 | .221 | 4.05 |
| Jonathan Papelbon | 27 | 87.09% | 11.35 | 7.14 | .201 | 1.74 |
| Joe Nathan | 26 | 92.85% | 10.01 | 4.78 | .196 | 1.86 |
| Joakim Soria | 25 | 92.59% | 9.64 | 5.00 | .146 | 1.31 |
| Kerry Wood | 24 | 82.75% | 11.08 | 4.23 | .201 | 2.20 |
| Brian Wilson | 24 | 92.30% | 10.03 | 2.44 | .254 | 4.12 |
| Mariano Rivera | 23 | 100.00% | 10.63 | 12.50 | .158 | 0.80 |
| Jose Valverde | 23 | 82.14% | 10.64 | 3.25 | .247 | 4.43 |
| CJ Wilson | 22 | 91.67% | 7.59 | 1.48 | .239 | 4.59 |
| Billy Wagner | 21 | 77.78% | 10.42 | 4.89 | .197 | 2.10 |
| Brad Lidge | 20 | 100.00% | 12.23 | 2.79 | .173 | 1.75 |
| Troy Percival | 19 | 90.47% | 9.64 | 2.73 | .160 | 2.06 |
| Francisco Cordero | 19 | 82.61% | 9.91 | 2.04 | .191 | 2.90 |
| Brandon Lyon | 19 | 82.61% | 6.81 | 4.00 | .243 | 3.10 |
| Kevin Gregg | 19 | 76.00% | 6.75 | 1.22 | .200 | 2.98 |
| Bobby Jenks | 18 | 85.71% | 5.29 | 2.38 | .246 | 2.50 |
| Trevor Hoffman | 17 | 85.00% | 10.48 | 5.50 | .252 | 4.18 |
| BJ Ryan | 17 | 89.47% | 9.58 | 2.06 | .212 | 3.38 |
| Jon Rauch | 17 | 77.27% | 8.16 | 7.00 | .236 | 2.36 |
| Huston Street | 17 | 85.00% | 9.45 | 3.82 | .208 | 2.72 |
| Matt Capps | 17 | 77.27% | 6.47 | 5.80 | .250 | 3.00 |
| Takashi Saito | 17 | 85.00% | 11.29 | 4.25 | .224 | 2.49 |
| Todd Jones | 16 (24) | 88.89% (10) | 3.06 (30) | 0.92 (30) | .303 (30) | 5.52 (29) |
| Salomon Torres | 15 | 83.33% | 5.85 | 1.63 | .247 | 3.50 |
| Brian Fuentes | 14 | 77.77% | 8.75 | 3.18 | .243 | 2.77 |
| Ryan Franklin | 12 | 75.00% | 5.8 | 1.44 | .261 | 4.49 |
| Jason Isringhausen | 11 | 61.11% | 6.61 | 1.53 | .266 | 5.00 |
| Eric Gagne | 10 | 66.67% | 8.06 | 1.25 | .284 | 7.37 |
| Brandon Morrow | 8 | 88.89% | 12.27 | 4.00 | .144 | 1.60 |
As you can see Todd gets killed here. Some notes:
- Todd does is in the top 10 in save percentage. There must be some truth to the story of Todd Jones. The rest of his numbers are absolutely awful but that save percentage remains relatively high.
- Jones is the only player on the list who walks more batters than he strikes out.
- Major League batters hit for a higher average off of Jones than any other closer on the list. That includes guys who were so bad they lost their jobs.
- Todd strikes out fewer batters than any other closer and it’s not even close.
- To sum up the Jones portion, not only does he strike out the fewest batters, he walks more than he strikes out and allows more hits on average than any other closer. If you think that sounds like a recipe for disaster, you are not mistaken.
- Mariano Rivera is still an absolute monster. Impressive.
- Brad Lidge appears to have gotten his career back on track.
- JJ Putz may never take his closer job back from Brandon Morrow. Morrow is awfully tough.
- Half of the closers on the list had AVGs below .221. Todd is at .303. That is astounding.
- If the Tigers are going to make any noise down the stretch here or if they plan on making the playoffs, they will need a new closer. Todd’s getting it done with smoke and mirrors.
Blake VandeBunte is a posting fiend.
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Good work Blake. I eyeballed these stats about a month ago and he was really fallen fast since then. He was never doing well but it wasn’t so bad before. I think his save percentage is also going to head south pretty soon if they leave him in the closer role.
Lee