Quote:
Originally Posted by packs
What do you consider Sparky Lyle to be? I mean, sure, he saved 26 games the year he won the Cy Young, but he also pitched in 72 games total, starting none, and threw 137 innings. Obviously he was being used in a hybrid role and while I can't tell from looking at baseball Reference, I would bet a lot of those saves were of the three inning variety.
Same goes for Mike Marshall. He started zero games, had 21 saves, but he appeared in 106 games and threw over 200 innings the year he won. That's not a middle reliever?
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I consider Lyle, like Gossage, a closer in an era when closers often went a couple of innings or occasionally longer. A middle reliever, in my view, is someone brought in with no expectation that he finish the game, typically in the 3rd to 6th inning?