If you only come in during save situations in the 9th inning and go 50-50 in saves in 50 appearances in 50 innings with a 4 era---that is really valuable. Just b/c its lolvariance, doesn't mean its not valuable.

that is why i only mentioned johnson , rodney , street , they had a higher save % than kimbrel. you cant compare that to qb wins , its not even close . there are many other factors that determine if the qb gets a W or an L. It's pretty cut and dry for a closer.

lol saves

Valverde was awful and went like 48/48

johnson had plenty of 1 run saves too to boot. he imo meant more to his team than kimbrel did to the barves.

So if you look at the calendar month splits for the top starters you end up dividing their season into 30-45 inning chunks. That should give them a decent chance to pick the best out of 6 roughly even chunks, all a bit smaller than Kimbrel's sample of 62.2. I took the usual suspects plus Fiers and McDonald just to see, so here are the best months:

It definitely looks a little more realistic in this context, but Kimbrel still held on despite the smaller sample for the starters.

nice man of straw you have constructed

lol no

i rather have valverde closing games with his antics and near heart attacks than a pitcher who has 6 1-2-3 9nths , followed by a bombing in the 7nth ,

theres value yes, but thats not what im arguing. im saying save % isnt the best way to judge a closers worth.

its the same concept of ignoring performance in favor of end results.

like managers that wont take a closer out of the closer role even if hes sucks and gets knocked around because he hasnt blown one yet

and head coaches that wont bench superscrub russell wilson for matt flynn because wilson is "winning games".

I'd imagine given current managerial tendencies a set up guy with 50 innings pitched in 50 appearances with a 4 ERA would have a higher WAR than the closer described in your hypothetical (all rate stats being equal). Obviously valuable to a degree, but nothing really notable about that type of performance.

Are rmt and charder the same person

well , with war placing a high value on sb's and defense, that will weed out just about every cleanup hitter in the league . right??

Well it is true that even if you go by WPA, Kimbrel was 3rd as a reliever, behind both Jim Johnson and Rodney, but a lot of that is just lack of opportunity.

Kimbrel is just better, and pitched bitter. Of course he has better stuff, but Ben's post nicely summed up why he had the best season as a reliever ever. This coming from a die hard yankee fan with a hobbled up Mariano Rivera as his avatar.

If we just go on WAR a reliever should never win, and this has always been one of my critiques of WAR wrt relievers. Because it's not just how much they produced for you, it's finding someone to replace that production. I remember having the Street vs. Pelfrey argument at the beginning of this year and when I said I definitely think the Mets should do that deal I wasn't even expecting Street to out-WAR Pelfrey for the season. But if Street pitched the same 1.0 WAR season that he did and Pelfrey had a 1.5 WAR, would he really be better? He'd be more "valuable" per se, but my argument was and still is that you could find a SP who would give you 1.5 WAR over a full season easier than a reliever who will give you 1.0 WAR over 40 innings.

What about Medlen?

ok maybe kimbrel has had the "best" + "most remarkable" season.





still dont think he should get the cy tho, but youve made your point

That's the beauty(?) of the BWAA awards. The criteria are basically non-existent. Gotta love it.

MVP isn't a sort by WAR award

is it an offensive player of the year award or a most valuable player of the year award?

because defense and baserunning affect your value as a player afaik.

well, those on the trout camp seem to say it is.

Good point. He gets lost in no-man's land. Let's see.

As ridiculous as his final months were, they still don't quite get there:

And Gold Gloves aren't awarded for defense. meh.

What about my post is wrong? Just because its variance and the pitcher isn't very good, it doesn't mean what they did is not very valuable.

No they don't. Trout has put up ~Carbera numbers on offense while playing far better defense with far better baserunning

trout has a better wOBA and a better wRC+ than miggy, so taking out defense entirely trout had a better offensive season.

a team of 9 trouts would have outscored a team of 9 miggys over the course of a season all things being equal.

agree on all counts , except opportunities, if anything, rodney and johnson having a bigger sample size makes it more impressive, as with relievers all you need is one major blowup and your numbers come back down to earth. (look at streets numbers before his last couple appearances)