Poll: is Mariano Rivera one of the top 10 pitchers of all time?
 

I think the majority will vote no but let's see.

With almost no thought, I can name 4 pitchers in his own era that were better by leaps and bounds (if not more): Pedro, Clemens, Big Unit and Maddux....

+1 - Add to that Young, Matty, WaJo, Gibson, and Ryan and without even thinking about it, he's off the list.

To make a more immediate comparison, I would take Halladay over Rivera and probably Mussina if I thought about it. To me a HOF caliber starter is more valuable than the best one inning relief pitcher.

And for the record, and as a Red Sox fan, Rivera was the greatest reliever of all-time, no doubt and a slam-dunk Hall of Fame player. His body of work speaks for itself and I don't want to take anything away from his brilliant career.
Perhaps an interesting follow-up question, though, would be if Rivera's cutter was one of the top-10 pitches of all time...

Not in the top 40.

****as a side note, Mussina getting in is nearly as much of a disgrace as Baines/Trammel/Morris. Very disheartening trend for the sanctity of the HOF.

Add Koufax, Grove, Seaver, Carlton, Randy Johnson...

Never dis an inductee who wore a Yankee uniform on this forum.

Too many objective Yankee fans lurking here.:eek:

You make a good point. I may have made a catastrophic mistake of diminishing (2) Yankees in one post!

People keep saying that batters only saw Mariano once a game. That is true, but they often saw him multiple times a series and he basically threw one pitch. They knew what was coming—they just couldn’t hit it.

So what.

Are you telling me that if you had one of the 10 best pitchers of all time on your team you would only let him pitch 70 innings a season, most (if not all) coming in when you had a lead?

Seriously?

He was really really good, probably the best, at the job he was asked to do, I'll acknowledge that, but top 10 of all pitchers all time?

Come on.

Doug "Roy Gleason has a lifetime batting average of 1.000, slugging percentage of 2.000 and OPS of 3.000" Goodman

agree with this!

Off the top of my head...

Johnson, Mathewson, Alexander, Grove, Koufax, Gibson, Ryan, Carlton, Seaver, Clemens, Maddux, Johnson, Martinez, Kershaw

Best reliever of all time though

…for a few years, Sutter had that effect, but he was never considered the GOAT or even in the pasture.


Rivera added longevity, but he was still just a one-inning master, perhaps the best one-inning pitcher ever.

================================================== ================================================== ====

Some of the best starters could be just as dominant the first time through the lineup...even so-so pitchers could even be that dominant early in the game on in a while.


True that Rivera did it time and time again, but...

How many times did any one hitter get to face Rivera more than once in the same game?

I'll bet the answer is very few.

Hitting at the big league level requires one to adjust from at-bat to at-bat.

Starting pitchers also have to adjust from at-bat to at-bat.

One-Inning pitchers, even their GOAT, never have to make that adjustment.

=

According to Baseball Reference, as a reliever he faced 68 batters a second time in a game and 2 batters a third time.

What I am telling you is that if I had one batter to get out and I could choose any pitcher to do it I would choose Mariano.

So long as it wasn't Edgar Martinez

Martinez vs. Rivera (includes postseason): .579 / .652 / .1.053 in 23 plate appearances

You beat me to that one...

Nolan was the "Edgar killer", he was 1-19, with a walk

There was a great article in the WSJ sports section yesterday about Rivera and his matchups with Martinez. Edgar owned him early on till Mariano developed a sinker that broke in to righties. After that Edgar hit .200 against him in limited plate appearances. BTW, every pitcher has someone who owned him: Pujols hit .452 against Randy Johnson, Marquis Grissom hit .565 against Pedro, Shawn Green hit .543 against Smoltz. Ty Cobb hit .366 against Walter Johnson which was essentially his career average against all pitchers. Does that mean that Johnson was no better than an average pitcher? Well, against Cobb that was true, but obviously not true for most other batters.

What I am telling you is that if YOU had a GAME you needed to win, and you could choose any pitcher, you WOULD NOT choose Mariano to be anywhere near the mound until after your team had played 8 innings AND given him a lead.

"Edgar owned him early on till Mariano developed a sinker that broke in to righties."

Wait - I thought Mariano supporters are saying he only had one pitch and although everyone knew that one pitch was coming, they couldn't hit it?

"Over.....rated"
 

Let me ask you something: do you win the game in the 9th inning or not?

No more so than in any other inning.

3 in the first count the same as 3 in the ninth. Etc.

Not if you allow 112 runs in the third inning...

Is that right? I don't remember a game ending after someone got 3 outs in the first inning.

But it could end in the 6th, and Mariano wouldn't be warmed up...

So I guess your point is that the 9th inning is more important than the 1st inning?

Ok.

I respectfully disagree.

My point is the 9th inning wins you the game. You can talk about the 6th inning all you want. You aren't going to win the game because someone pitched well 3 innings ago. You only win after the 9th.

packs, how do you think Rivera would have fared as a starting pitcher? How long would he have been able to maintain a peak performance as a starter? Would he have been as effective going 7 or 8 innings?

And, if you're all about the 9th inning, what if Rivera had pitched for a team that had the lead to protect much less frequently than the Yankees?

None of that matters. You don't win the game without closing out the 9th inning. The question is who is the pitcher you want on the mound for the most important inning of the game. The answer is Mariano Rivera.

2013 article by a writer who was later fired by ESPN. I think he is now blogging about golf and will probably soon be left to bashing high school cheerleader competitors.

Yes, Rivera is the greatest one inning closer ever. We all agree on that. What we don't agree on is that he is the greatest pitcher of all time... or in the Top 10.

Define pitcher. Because if its the pitcher who wins you the game, Mariano is the best hands down.

Cy Young and his 511 wins say hello.

I would have these guys ahead of Rivera
Grover Alexander
Steve Carlton
Dizzy Dean
Bob Feller
Whitey Ford
Bob Gibson
Lefty Grove
Carl Hubbell
Randy Johnson
Walter Johnson
Sandy Koufax
Greg Maddux
Juan Marichal
Pedro Martinez
Christy Mathewson
Jim Palmer
Eddie Plank
Nolan Ryan
Tom Seaver
Warren Spahn
Cy Young

So #22 on my list.

I think we can agree on this point: getting the win and winning the game are not the same thing.

Nailed it.

Your hands may be down, I'm thinking that Cy Young (and others) have a different hand position...

You can't win the game if the pitcher(s) before you don't put you in that position. I think you are in a deep minority in considering Mariano the greatest pitcher of all time, but as you are obviously a diehard Yankees fan, I do understand it. As much as I appreciate what he accomplished over a long time in his role, I can't consider a one inning pitcher who probably would have failed miserably and not lasted anywhere near as long had he been asked to throw 250 innings a year, the greatest pitcher of all time. Not up against starting pitchers who, in many cases, were as dominant or moreso in their roles as he was.

You blew right past his point riding on top of a rocket ship. A game can be called after the 5th inning if the ump calls the game. Or the 6th, 7th, 8th and yes also 9th inning before the bottom of the inning.

https://goo.gl/images/HoUPbW

Stealing from the ESPN story from 2013 that Paul posted a link to below :

Let me again cite the work of Project Retrosheet founder Dave Smith:


Teams leading by one run after eight innings have gone on to win 85.7 percent of the time. That number goes up to 93.7 percent when leading by two runs, and 97.5 percent when leading by three runs.

Mull that over, and then please tell me why Rivera is so amazing for having an 89.1 percent career save rate (which, by the way, is lower than Joe Nathan's). Because, basically, Rivera was not used except in games the Yankees were going to win 88 percent of the time anyway. Actually, the percentages were usually higher than that. According to Elias, of Rivera's 652 career saves, just under a third (210) were with a one-run lead when he took the mound while 216 were with a two-run lead, 180 with a three-run lead and 46 with a lead of at least four runs.


To paraphrase, Mariano has :
210 saves when he came in with an 85.7% chance of winning
216 saves when he came in with a 93.7% chance of winning
180 saves when he came in with a 97.5% chance of winning
46 saves when he came in with better than a 97.5% chance of winning

The save is a stupid stat.

As I said before, he was really really good, probably the best, at the job he was asked to do.

Doug

Hahahaha, amazing.

I will grant you the point that they are different things, and Mariano wasn't good at either of them.

"Saving" the win (when bolstered by a 90% chance of winning due to the game situation when he pitched) is something that Mariano was good at.

"Getting the win" or "winning the game" not so much.

I see those numbers listed in the article but I still don't understand where they come from. I posted this the other day. The highest save percentage for a team in 2018 was only 75 %. So where does that 90% chance of winning come from? The league average for all of MLB was only 66%.

http://proxy.espn.com/mlb/stats/team...ded&order=true

It comes in your beloved 9th inning, when a team goes in while leading.

No, not even close.

Quoting what you are responding to keeps the rest of us from reading your response and thinking "huh?"

Then why is there such a disparity between what the article says and what actual yearly stats show from one season re: save percentage? Are you saying that the majority of those save percentage opportunities came with something other than a lead?

Trying to compare a starting pitcher and a relief pitcher is like trying to compare a first baseman with a shortstop. They are both infielders, but are asked to do two very different things.

Would you vote Lou Gehrig as the best infielder ever? Over Wags, Ripken, Brooks, Schmitty, etc?? Why, he didn't even have to throw the ball.

Of course not, they are two different positions, but both infielders. Just like relievers and starters are both pitchers, but different positions.

This is a baited question. It should be: Was Mo the greatest reliever ever?

The game changes. Roles change. Relief pitchers are now not just failed starters, designated hitters are a thing. And we are seeing even more changes with more defensive shifts, hitters swinging for the fence, higher strikeout numbers, managers handling pitchers differently, off-season conditioning, etc.

Mo was the greatest at what he did. He shortened the game to 8 innings for the Yankees on defense. He wasn't a starter any more than he was a shortstop. So don't try to compare him to one.

BTW, I voted 'no' on this question, but I think it was the wrong question.

Not every win has a save attached to it.

But when it does, the average for all teams saving the game is only 66%. So I don't really know what you're talking about when you try to diminish Rivera's ability to save the game.

When posting to the original question of is Mariano a top 10 pitcher and not to a quote, there will be no quote attached.

I agree with everything you said accept the last part. Based on conversations taking place since his unanimous induction it was a valid question, posed not so much to elicit a response but to make a point.

And I agree with your vote.

Ahha! Good point.

Doug

Strange that that list doesn't even contain the best pitcher of all time Roger Clemens.

I agree that Rivera is not a top 20 pitcher of all time but he is by far the best reliever of all time.

This argument leads to the conclusion that Mariano was over-utilized. He should have entered the game with the lead and two outs in the ninth. Instead of a one inning pitcher he could be immortalized as the 27th out pitcher. You can't win the game without the 27th out, right?

I would go another 20 starters at least before I got to my first reliever/closer. Who would be Rivera.

Or you could have saved him for the last strike. Lights out!!

Best pitcher at cheating. Gaylord Perry isn't on my list either because with cheaters you will never know how much of their success was skill and how much was because of their cheating.

Whitey Ford was allegedly masterful at scuffing up the ball, speaking of which.

Laughing out loud. Fantastic.

That's kind of where your twilight zone post was heading, I think.

Retrosheet founder (and my vote for unanimous induction to the HOF) David Smith found that the 9th may not be the most important inning :

https://www.retrosheet.org/Research/...0the%20Key.pdf

Good point, but if a pitcher is replaced while facing a batter due to injury or whatever, the count determines which pitcher gets the credit for the batter. If the batter has two strikes when the new pitcher enters the game, I believe the first pitcher gets credit for a strikeout.

So using this strategy Rivera could have saved 1500 games, with no strike outs and no innings pitched. Assuming a foul ball here and there his average pitch count would be 1.083.

Reductio ad absurdum arguments can lead to insight clarifying slightly less absurd premises.;)

Apologies if Smith's "The Myth of the Closer" has already been posted. The guy is a genius, makes Bill James look like a high school geek.

https://www.retrosheet.org/Research/...fTheCloser.pdf

I did not pick Mariano as one of the top 10 pitchers of all time. However, I'll add this. If I were playing something like an All Time All Star game, where me and someone else can pick any player from history for our teams to face each other in a best of 7 series, Mariano Rivera would be one of the top 5 pitchers that I would pick for my team. The reason is that most of the top pitchers on the list are starting pitchers, and wouldn't necessarily have the same success as a relief pitcher. Sure, some pitchers like Randy Johnson have worked well as closers, but others haven't. I'd still use Rivera to close out the last 2 innings over any pitcher if I had a choice.

Plus there are 2 guys on that list that if there was any way of really proving if and how many PEDs they done. I would bet the farm they done more PEDs than Roger Clemens.

I do completely understand his list and his right to pick who is on it and why. I know I am very bias when I make lists and talk a lot of smack about a few all-time greats as being PED users. Then other PED users I am a big fan of.:eek:

Thank you

Gary what starters other than Eck and Smoltz, both of whom were great closers, have enough of a track record that you can say they weren't effective as closers? A few games doesn't mean much at all due to sample size.

You are comparing apples and oranges. Save rate is not win rate. You can blow the save and still win the game so save rate is the more restrictive of the two. I think we can all agree that starter and closer are two different pitching positions. We can also agree that Mariano was by far the greatest closer ever. Mariano was superior to any other closer ever by more than the best starting pitcher ever (you fill in your choice)has been to the second best starting pitcher ever. I’ll stop there. If I had to get one hitter out and could pick one pitcher to do it it would be Mariano. If I needed a starting pitcher for game 7 of the World Series, and I would be hoping he could go deep into the game, it would not be Mariano.

Ahem.. Nolan Ryan

On a side note, I said yes. The ERA+ leader by a country mile, top 5 in WHIP and WPA. The guy was a beast.

I'm not comparing anything, I'm saying that while he was really really good at what he was asked to do, he was still very one dimensional and the difference between him and any other "closer" is best argued by the David Smith research paper that Peter posted below.

He was a really really good 1 inning pitcher when staked to a lead.

We never really got to see him pitch much in other situations.

Doug

Terrific stuff there! I wonder if anyone has taken this further by analyzing whether relief pitching itself is actually effective other than in situations where the starting pitcher has been hurt or isn't feeling well. In other words, when pitchers are getting bombed and are relieved, are the results any better than when they stay in and finish the game? You can't tell me that on the rare occasions when Walter Johnson was taken out of a game, every batter in the other dugout didn't say a little "thank you" under their breaths. Also, there must be a corollary analysis somewhere of how much or even whether starting pitchers do worse as the game goes into the last few innings. Ironically, Johnson himself appears to be the beneficiary of the first great example of relief specialization in 1924-25 when the big rookie Fred Marberry would come in to spell him in the 8th or 9th innings of close games. Of course, age as a reason for taking a starting pitcher out might be more accurately lumped in with the categories of injury or illness. In his latter days as a pitcher and then especially in his 7-year stint as a manager, Johnson got to witness the early days of the phenomenon of the relief specialist, and he didn't think much of it. "If pitchers aren't allowed to go deep into games, they will lose the ability to go deep into games," is a reasonable paraphrase of his attitude and quotes on the subject. To get back to Rivera, he was a dominating pitcher, there's no question about that. But if it turns out on close analysis that closing--or relief pitching itself--is an ineffective strategy even for the best of them, just how great can his career or that of any other relief pitcher be considered?

Yes.

Doug "That's all I have been saying" Goodman



PS - "He was really really good at what he was asked to do"

You have to wonder at his remarkably low inherited runner total. If he was indeed the best ever at getting that one batter out, why wasn't he used more in emergency situations, as opposed to starting the ninth with a lead? 8th inning, two men on, none out, down by a run, don't you want your best pitcher in there to keep the game in check? But I think Rivera was rarely the guy who got that call.

I'm really dreading the discussion that comes about when Jeter goes in. I'm sure he'll be considered the greatest ever by someone.

At least he played entire games...

It will be very hard to argue he was better than Wagner or Ripken or (assuming you count him as a SS) ARod. For Jeter I think much of your rating depends on how much you count defense for a SS -- if you count it a lot, that's going to take away from him because he was pretty average all told.

I would not say he is the greatest ever or even the best shortstop but I doubt you can name a singe player that tried harder while playing.:)

If you take Jeter out of the Yankees lineup, does Mariano have nearly as many save opportunities?

Depends on where you put the cutoff for IP. Craig Kimbrel has a 211 ERA+ (admittedly in 750 fewer innings).

Billy Wagner had a career 187 ERA+ that would be a fair bit higher without his injury-riddled 2000 season. Career 2.31 ERA. Career WHIP of 0.998 (better than Mariano). 86% save %.

Mariano was better. He wasn't MILES better.

An interesting read :

http://www.baseballgreatness.com/201...no-rivera.html