"Just because we don't know if a two-game swing will be important doesn't mean that we can't behave as if it will. Sure, these teams are going to play another 15 games, and there's plenty of time for story lines to develop."

But that's really the point, isn't it-- it's what really makes September baseball more exciting.

It's true that rhetoric like "win when it counts" is misleading and mostly just wrong, because all games count.And yes, all games have the same value when it comes to overall standings.

But the reason that September games have more importance in most people's eyes is that the time frame for "making it up" grows ever shorter. A 2 game swing in April is much easier to erase as the season moves on than a 2 game swing in September. The math backs that up as well-- a 2 game deficit with 10 more to play impacts your playoff probabilities much more than a 2 game swing with 160 games left to play. Thus each game means more in September than it does now.

That's what most people mean, I think, when they talk about September baseball "counting for more".

My only concern about "Figuring out who your best pitchers are, or more accurately, who your best pitchers are for various situations" is this:
You can't have everybody loose and ready in the bullpen for whatever situation might present itself, can you? Maybe my question should be this: Realistically, how long should it take a major league pitcher to warm up and be ready to come into the game? 5 minutes?
Any longer than that and I don't think you can predict what situation you might face to ensure that you have the right guy warmed up and ready in the pen, can you?

I hope you remain "a bit shrill" on this because there is nothing in baseball that irritates me more than the way managers use their bullpen. You are absolutely correct.

Here here.

Cecil Cooper is just (Dusty Baker - Barry Bonds). And I thought Trey Hillman had more sense.

Joe, I agree in general with your point here. In fact, I think that it makes sense to use your best people in April (or May) more than in September. In the standings, a one-game-lead is still a one-game-lead and no one cares where it comes from. So why not take advantage of managers "experimenting" (as Christina implies in her article today about Farnsworth) with their players in April and May and try to win a couple extra games with your best matchup guys? I understand some of your players might not be in the best form in April but this sounds like a pretty good gamble to me. One more added benefit of this approach would be that you wouldn't exert your best players in September (not to mention extra help from the expanded rosters) and thus keep them relatively fresh for the playoffs.

How about Cecil Cooper's decision last night to not sacrafice in the 9th of a tie game, 1st and 2nd, no outs and Michael Bourn at the plate? So he blows that chance and then in the 10th he does the exact same thing with Jason Michaels batting. Micahels managed a sac fly and the Astros wound up winning, but Cooper's ineptitude was on display.

Joe, you are anything but shrill on this subject. Bullpen mismanagement cheapens the game. I love seeing the big hits in the late innings as much as anybody, but when big hitters deliver "clutch" hits against clearly suboptimal pitchers, I get left feeling so....unsurprised. This is an issue that requires the escalation you are pushing here. I couldn't agree more.

Oh c'mon people. Joe is absolutely right. People are guided by this prevailing conventional wisdom. Be a contrarian.

One comment about reliever usage patterns that I think is often overlooked in these analyses: there is a difficult-to-measure cost associated with having a reliever ready at a given time, whether or not that reliever ultimately enters the game. Pitches thrown in the bullpen, while not as significant as pitches thrown in a game, do take their toll on a guy's body. If Hillman were to always have Soria ready for situations like this, it could compromise his durability over the course of the season.
You can make the argument that using an inferior pitcher in a high-leverage situation could be a legitimate probability play that panned out poorly, rather than simple bad judgment. I'm probably giving Hillman too much credit, but I do think there are valid excuses for not having your best pitcher on the pound with the game on the line. Of course, I stil can't come up with an excuse for using Farnsworth in the 8th inning to begin with.

Here's a tip for Hillman and others that may help them make better decisions.

In a close game, in the 7th inning or later, imagine yourself on the other team. What pitcher on the opposing team (that would be your Royals, Trey) would you least prefer to face right now?

If the answer is Joakim Soria, then maybe he's the pitcher you should have in the game right now.

I agree with both of Joe's main points. Bullpen usage is terrible, and I think contracts around saves is really why people are invested in the closer myth. Identical numbers in the eighth and ninth innings lead to very different free agency payoffs.

On the importance of April, one fun thing to do would be to write up a summary of the past season, played in reverse. Where the "important" games that "change the races" and have "clutch performances" are all the April games.

Joe: You're right in theory. But the problem is in preparing for the situation. Modern "closers" require more time to prepare, for whatever reason, than setup men. Maybe they're just lining up an excuse, but it's true for many. Sometimes it's obvious that the 8th inning is going to be key, and sometimes it's not.

I'd like to see more closers get up in the 8th inning at the sign of trouble, and I'd like to see more of these guys get 4 or 5 outs. But you do have to take preparation time into account, as Davey Johnson learned at the WBC (sigh).

On bullpen management:
The thing that drives me more nuts than what Joe is saying is when Leyland will pull a pitcher who's doing really well and replace him with another in order to satisfy a "righty-lefty" or "lefty-righty" match-up. Seay (a lefty I believe) was pitching really well against his *one* batter, then Leyland pulled him because a left-handed batter was coming up. He then put in Lyon, and you could feel through the TV that Lyon was going to blow it. (Please correct me if I have the "left/right" thing screwed up; I get these confused.)

A job of a pitcher, as has been said, is to throw strikes and get people out. If the pitcher is smokin', he should stay in regardless of the batter he's facing.

Case in point: Braves should have brought Gonzalez in in the seventh today.

I think there's an important distinction that's being missed. Major league managers are, by and large, risk averse. The decision to use the set-up guy in the 8th and the closer in the 9th -- regardless of situation -- may not be an optimal strategy for winning baseball games. It is, however, an optimal strategy for job retention.

Hypothetically, let's assume Trey Hillman started using Joakim Soria only in the most high leverage situations. The first time that Juan Cruz or Kyle Farnsworth blow a 3 run lead in the 9th inning against the bottom of the other team's order, Hillman would be hammered by the conventional baseball for not using his closer in a save situation. To the contrary, when Trey Hillman suboptimally uses Kyle Farnsworth in the 8th inning to pitch to Jim Thome, the story is about Kyle Farnsworth's failure, not Trey Hillman's.

To change bullpen usage patterns, BP's target audience should be the conventional baseball media (which is slowly coming around on things like OBP, for example). Bullpen usage patterns won't change until the Bill Plaschke's of the world start asking the right questions, and not giving Trey Hillman a free pass for decisions like yesterday's debacle.

Thank you for that article.

I always thought the home team should play "Knock Three Times ", or, " Tiptoe thru the Tulips " or some other nonsense when the visting team's closer came in looking all mean.

What I would be interested in knowing is how many games are lost due to the " closer " NOT coming in earlier ?
However, the " closer ", in a lot of cases, is not the team's best relief pitcher, so maybe NOT coming in early has actually " saved " ( new stat ) some games, and it all evens out.

Again, great article.

In response to the first part of the article about wins "counting" more in September (or not). I agree that a game in the standings = a game in the standings, but how does this fit with the idea of "per game" win expectancies? I'm not sure I'm understanding it correctly, but couldn't the concept of leverage (down by two runs in the seventh inning is a higher leverage situation than being in a tie ball game in the second, because runs given up/not scored in the former lower the chances of winning MORE than a run given up/not scored in the latter) also apply to the standings? Let's say the Phillies lost today - doesn't that hurt their playoff odds a lot less than being swept in their Sept. 18-20 series that will happen later this year (assuming they're anywhere close to being in the race then)? I'm a newcomer, so sorry if this has all been explained nicely elsewhere, and I'd appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

Well, if you want real silliness, you have Bruce Bochy. In yesterday's game, Bobby Howry pitched to 5 batters in the 8th, struck out 3 of them using a total of 18 pitches. His spot doesn't come up in the Giants 1/2, and the first batter in the 9th is left handed. Howry is pulled for Alex Hinshaw, another lefty, who promptly walks the lead off hitter. Why on earth waste a pitching change for no reason at all when they guy you have out there is pitching well and has barely thrown enough pitches to get warmed up?

Joe -- I have always felt like April games don't matter attitude was foolish. When I look at the Phillies' schedule for April, they could very easily rack up wins against Florida & Washington to get ahead.

The leverage of a September 8 win with a 2-game deficit is higher than the leverage of an April 8 win with a 2-game deficit.

The Nationals' highest leverage games are in April, and the Phillies' highest leverage games are in September.

The standard deviation of any team's performance relative to its abilities is about 6 games over the last 159 games of a season. Over the last 20 games in a season, the standard deviation is a just 2 games. There's a gigantic difference between a two-game swing when the vast majority of all teams will be within 3 wins of each over the last 20 games, and when most pairs of good teams will NOT be within 3 games of each other over the last 159 games.

Well, Rodriguez hit 7th tonight. Maybe Cooper read this piece?

I think Maddon is already altering the conventional use of bullpens. His "closer", Percival, is not his best reliever, which allows him to use Balfour, Howell and others in the situations for which they are most useful as he did last night. I realize he is still accepting the notion of a closer mentality, but he seems to add to it the determination to put relievers into the situations for which they are most suited.

What I really want to see is an expansion of his willingness to pull Percival if he gets into trouble in the 9th. Last year he did that, but only under extreme duress and with the excuse that Troy was hurting. If he can incorporate that into normal practice he will have moved very far from the current irrational bullpen usage.