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January 6, 2005

Lies, Damned Lies

How Do You Rate Relief?

by Nate Silver

Here at Baseball Prospectus and elsewhere, there has been a lot of bandwidth expended on just what it takes to make it to the Hall of Fame. The analysis has run the gamut from the sophisticated, WARP-based scores devised by Jay Jaffe, to the amusing but utterly arbitrary standards applied by Bill Simmons.

Truth be told, as much as I like Jay's work, I also think there is something to be said for gut-feel. A metric like JAWS tells you a lot about a guy's value, but it doesn't tell you quite as much about the shape of his career. JAWS applies what I would call the sausage method for assessing player value: you mush everything together into a nice, cylindrical package, add appropriate seasoning, and come out with what is hoped to be a tasty product. JAWS is, indeed, a very tasty sausage, and it's a heck of a lot more worthwhile than the spoiled cold cuts that most of the press is munching on. But it's still a sausage.

Personally, I think of Hall of Fame candidacies in terms of seasons. I look at Ryne Sandberg's record, for example, and see four elite seasons (1984 and 1990-92), two outstanding seasons (1985 and 1989), three good seasons (1986-88), four average seasons (1982-83, 1993, 1996) and a couple of none-of-the-aboves at the tail ends of his career. It helps to frame a guy's career to look at it in this manner; in Sandberg's case, I think it makes it clear that he's a Hall of Famer.

Applying this sort of season-based standard has the potential to be especially useful in evaluating the relief pitcher candidates on the ballot. For one thing, it has yet to really be established just what constitutes a Hall of Fame reliever and what doesn't; the standards applied so far have been inconsistent at best. For another thing, applying a sausage-based method to relief pitchers is problematic because of the question of leverage--we almost certainly ought to be giving some extra credit to seasons in which a substantial proportion of innings are pitched in situations in which the game is on the line, but just how much we need to adjust an open question. Defining what constitutes a "good" season, an "elite" season and so forth is also subject to a lot of arbitrary factors, but it at least creates a readily-understandable standard that can be applied to players of different positions and of different eras.

Now on to that arbitrary part. Here, are some fiddling, are the standards that I came up with in order to evaluate relief pitchers. I should rephrase that slightly: these standards are meant to evaluate closers. Both modern closers like Goose Gossage and post-modern closers like Billy Wagner should be handled adequately under this method. Pre-Holtzman relievers like Hoyt Wilhelm won't be, but those aren't the guys under Hall of Fame consideration at the moment.

Onward:

• A "good" season is defined as a year in which:
  1. The pitcher has a park-adjusted ERA no greater than 75 percent of the league average
     -and he either-
  2. Accumulates at least 20 saves
     -or-
  3. Accumulates at least 10 saves AND pitches at least 100 innings.

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