Daily Archives: February 22, 2007

By Chris DeRosa (Guest Columnist)

Reading Sherman’s book, I got to wondering how many analysts would choose 1996 as Rivera’s best season. It’s chief rivals are 2005 and 1999. It would probably be easiest to sort through the cases of the closer seasons, and then compare to the set-up year in ’96.

We can easily rule out 2002, when injuries limited him to 46 innings; his debut season of 1995, when he was a starter with a 5.51 ERA; 2000, with his career-high relief ERA of 2.85; and both 1997 and 2006, which were fine seasons but boasting no advantages over his very best seasons.

2005 was the year Rivera had his best conventional rate stats: a career low 1.38 ERA (and a career high ERA+ of 323). He allowed his smallest percentage of baserunners (.235 on base percentage against), and was just as effective in denying power (hitters slugged .230 off him, missing his career best by only .002). He also had his best ever-rate of stranding inherited runners, allowing only 2 of 18 to score. He threw 78.3 innings, went 7-4, and saved 43 against 4 blown saves. In an unspectacular postseason, he allowed 1 run in 3 innings with two saves against the Angels.

In 1999, he was nearly as sharp in 69 innings, allowing a .239 on base percentage and a .237 slugging percentage. He went 4-3 with a 1.83 ERA with 45 saves against 4 blown saves. Of 27 runners inherited, he stranded 22 and permitted 5 to score. He also was the most efficient he had ever been, notching an out every 4.8 pitches, a career best. At this point, you would still have to put 2005 first. But then you get to the postseason. 1999 is in his top three: 12.3 scoreless innings, with 2 wins and 6 saves (and the World Series MVP Award). Counting their postseason and regular seasons stats together, 2005’s ERA advantage shrinks to 1.44 to 1.55. And there’s more: Rivera allowed only 1 unearned run in 1999, whereas he allowed 6 in 2005. If charged for all runs, inherited, earned, and unearned, in the regular and postseason, Mo was less scored upon in 1999 (2.21, 81.3 innings) than 2005 (2.32, 81.3 innings).

Rivera allowed an even smaller average of total runs the year before, in 1998. In 61.3 regular season innings, he allowed only 13 runs, all earned, and allowed only four of 24 inherited runners to score. In 13.3 postseason innings, he allowed only 6 hits, 2 walks, and no runs at all. In 74.6 combined innings, he allowed 2.05 runs per game, a career best. He also his highest percentage of good results: 3 wins, 36 saves, and 6 postseason saves, against no losses and only 5 regular season blown saves. Overall, though, it is hard to pick 1998 as his best year. The results may have been the cleanest, but he was hit harder (.270 on base percentage, .309 slugging percentage) than in 1999, and he didn’t pitch as much.

2001, when he saved 50 games and got more batters out (236) than in any other year besides 1996, was his career high in win shares. I’m a big win shares fan. Asking them to pick a closer’s best season, however, is among the last things win shares should be asked to do. It was a really good year, but he wasn’t as dominating as in other seasons, and given that, I wouldn’t pick the year he got beat by the Diamondbacks in the World Series as the best of his career.

(more…)

Book Review

By Chris DeRosa

Chris DeRosa has been posting book reviews here for three or four years now. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Chris puts out a Yankee Annual each year that he sends around to his friends. The Annaual always contains book reviews, and Chris is generous enough to allow me to co-opt them for Bronx Banter. Here is one that I thought you guys might like…and there is a follow-up essay from Chris that I’ll post a bit later on.

Joel Sherman, Birth of a Dynasty: Behind the Pinstripes with the 1996 Yankees (2006)

There’s the requisite quote on the back, proclaiming that you don’t have to be a Yankee fan to enjoy this book. On the contrary, I’d say you might have to be a Yankee fan. The frequent invocations of the Yanks’ championship “destiny” would probably wear out the non-Yankee fan reader before long. But, you know, that’s fine. Remember when they used to make Star Trek movies? The studio would always say, “this time, it’s not just for the fans,” as if there weren’t enough friggin’ Star Trek fans to pay for their movie. Then more often than not, they’d make a lousy film trying to please a lot of people who were never going to be interested anyway, when they’d just have been better off aiming it right at the people who loved it. So there’s nothing wrong with Joel Sherman writing a book just for those of us who would like to wallow in the details of the Yankees’ 1996 title season. As such, it does not disappoint.

Sherman’s motif is “perfection.” Every chapter title is “The Perfect Manager,” “The Perfect Resolve,” The Perfect Whatever. Sherman knows that the Yankees’ flirtation with perfection was a couple of years down the road. What he actually means is that it took a perfect confluence of circumstances for this most imperfect 92-win team to pull it off. And indeed, the author chronicles both the little things that broke right—Jeffrey Maier made “The Perfect Catch (Almost)”—and the real strengths this team sported, including a quality in depth and a terrific cohort of young players: Andy Pettitte, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, and Mariano Rivera.

Some of the best parts of the book are about how those guys broke in and showed their stuff. In the chapter, “The Perfect Formula,” Sherman reminds us of the context of Mariano Rivera’s breakout season. It was the first full-length season under at the new mid-90s hitting levels, and American League pitchers were lit up for more runs per game than in any season since 1936, include a record barrage of 2,742 homers. Rivera, in 107 innings of stellar relief, surrendered just one of those. He was not only the most effective pitcher in the league; for a couple of months there, it seemed like he was the only effective pitcher in the league.

Sherman compares Torre’s quick recognition of Rivera’s value in 1996 favorably to Showalter’s waiting too long to get him into Game 5 of the ALDS in 1995 (when he had proved so devastating in Games 2 and 3). But here, Sherman’s own good reporting contradicts his instinct for the tidy storyline. In spring training, Torre saw “a straight fastball that made Rivera’s role murky.” Rivera himself is quoted as calling his fastball “straight as an arrow.” Sherman writes that that he was working on a change-up because he expected to be a starter. He might have added that it was Torre and Stottlemyre who were instructing him to do this. But as the season developed:

Torre kept defining a more and more vital function for Rivera, from mop-up man when the season began to a hybrid role that united middle and setup relief. Rivera was asked to get as many as nine outs to bail out a rotation that was proving far more unreliable than Torre had forecast.

Case in point, the Yankees led the Royals 5-2 in an April game when David Cone couldn’t make it past the 5th and Torre’s pen was already fried.

…Torre was staring at nine outs before he could summon closer John Wetteland. A concept was born—what Torre would come to refer to as the Formula. Rivera was asked to not only protect a lead but protect it for an extended period, to become a lone bridge between starter and closer.

In half of his 61 outings, Mo got six or more outs (22 two-inning stints, 8 three-inning stints, and 5 in between). But of course, Mariano Rivera in 1996 was not the first quality 100-inning middle reliever in baseball history. He was closer to being the last. The formula Sherman thinks Torre invented was pretty much the same one Cito Gaston used for Duane Ward in 1990, Sparky Anderson used for Mike Henneman in 1987, Jimy Williams used for Mark Eichhorn in 1986, and Dick Howser used for Ron Davis in 1980, and so forth.

It was the big hitting 90s that drove the division of setup chores, making the LaRussa bullpens more a necessity than a choice. That Rivera could still succeed in the older pattern was to his enormous credit, and was out-of-place enough that it fooled Sherman into thinking it was something new under the sun. And what is this nonsense about a straight fastball? Rivera may not have been throwing the cutter, but his fastball was explosive and jumpy, with irresistible illusory rise. If you want to see a straight fastball, try watching Kyle Farnsworth pitch.

(more…)