Friday, September 02, 2011
Mariano Rivera is the best pure reliever in baseball history, Dr. Michael Hoban
- The following study considers regular season only. A bio on the author, Dr. Michael Hoban at The Baseball Guru.
- "“Mariano Rivera is the best reliever in baseball history.” If I were to make such a claim, there would surely be some fans who would agree with me and many who would not. And, of course, all would want to know on what basis I made such a claim.
- The CAWS Career Gauge (Career Assessment/Win Shares) uses win shares to measure how good a career a player has had.
In trying to establish reasonable benchmarks for Hall of Fame numbers, I naturally came up against the question: Since a relief pitcher who has never been a starter will normally pitch many fewer innings than a starting pitcher,
- how are you going to determine whether a relief pitcher has HOF numbers?
- Obviously, the same standards cannot apply for a starting pitcher and a relief pitcher (not to mention a position player).
Consider the following statement. Through the 2009 season, there have only been five pitchers in the modern era (since 1920) who have achieved a CAWS score of 150 while pitching fewer than 1700 innings. Here are those pitchers. (I have included Rollie Fingers because he was so close to 1700.) IP is innings pitched, CWS is career win shares, CV is core value (the win shares for the ten best seasons) and CAWS is the CAWS score [CAWS = CV + .25(CWS – CV)].
Player | IP | CWS | CV | CAWS |
Mariano Rivera | 1090 | 227 | 175 | 188 |
Lee Smith | 1289 | 198 | 152 | 164 |
Bruce Sutter | 1042 | 168 | 163 | 164 |
Dan Quisenberry | 1043 | 157 | 155 | 156 |
Rollie Fingers | 1701 | 188 | 144 | 155 |
- none of these pitchers comes anywhere close to what Mariano has achieved so far in his career –
- even though Bruce Sutter and Rollie Fingers are both in the Hall of Fame.
- Take a look at Lee Smith. He is still on the BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot. In 2010, he got 47% of the vote. Hopefully, that means that within the next few years he may be inducted and claim his rightful place in Cooperstown.
Consider the numbers for the following outstanding relief pitchers at the end of 2009.
Player | IP | CWS | CV | CAWS |
Billy Wagner | 833 | 165 | 143 | 149 |
Trevor Hoffman | 1042 | 187 | 135 | 148 |
Finally, in case you are wondering about some other pure relievers, here are the numbers for some of the best ever. Note that none of them achieved the 150 CAWS benchmark.
Player | IP | CWS | CV | CAWS |
John Franco | 1246 | 183 | 128 | 142 |
Mike Marshall | 1387 | 146 | 139 | 141 |
Kent Tekulve | 1436 | 159 | 135 | 141 |
John Hiller | 1242 | 146 | 136 | 139 |
Sparky Lyle | 1390 | 161 | 132 | 139 |
Tom Henke | 790 | 140 | 130 | 133 |
Doug Jones | 1121 | 146 | 128 | 133 |
Jeff Montgomery | 869 | 134 | 127 | 129 |
John Wetteland | 765 | 127 | 125 | 126 |
"If anyone would like to get a free e-copy of Professor Hoban’s 100-page monograph: A HOF HANDBOOK: Who Belongs and Who Does Not, just drop a note to mike_hoban@msn.com." (Mr. Hoban is a longtime member of SABR).
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Commenter to Mr. Hoban's article said:
"Tom Stone says:
Yes indeed. And add to his CAWS score his almost unbelieveable postseason numbers, which are: 88 games, 70 GF, 133.1 IP, 8-1 record, 39 SV, 0.773 WHIP, 0.74 ERA. That is just insane."
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