Closing thoughts

Any Braves fans out there wishing your closer was still John Smoltz? At the end of last Friday's telecast, after Atlanta closer Chris Reitsma blew the Braves' hard-earned one-run lead in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Arizona Diamondbacks, as his team was trudging, dejected, back to the dug-out, one commentator, perhaps Skip Caray, announced that it was Atlanta's eleventh blown save of the year. Ouch! At first I was astonished. But when I considered it a bit, I understood that this didn't mean Reitsma, or any other closer, had blown eleven saves. Rather, it was a statistic aggregated over the entire Braves bullpen. At that point, I realized that I had no idea what it meant.

I think I know what it "means". Eleven times in their first forty-two games, one Braves pitcher relinquished a lead that another had built. But, what does it mean? The biggest problem with statistics in sports is their presentation without context or implication. Statistics as a discipline is not just about counting things and occasionally dividing to get an expectation. It's also about comparisons and correlations.

The knowledge that already eleven times in forty-two games, the Braves have let go of their leads must invoke pangs of anguish in any fan. But, you can't expect every lead, however small, to transform directly into a win. The other team's going to score some runs. Maybe other teams blow leads even more often. It's possible that Braves fans should feel fortunate. But because the people with the numbers only give us little glimpses of them, we just don't know.

That's not what this post is really about, though. What I really want to know is, why can't the Braves have their cake and eat it, too? More concretely, why can't John Smoltz be a starter, and a closer, too? I'm not asking for him to close his own games. That would require moving him into right field during the seventh and eighth innings, or something. I'm not even talking about the games before and after his starts, when he can probably use the rest. But there are two other games in there when he could probably throw an inning without ill effects. (And they're not going to have 1-3 run leads in all of those games.) He's throwing on the side anyway, right? Why not put it to good use?

In fact, there are a number of starters around baseball who seem to have stuff the quality of a premier closer—guys like Oswalt, Schmidt, Beckett, Santana, etc. (please, suggest your favorite)—as well as some who have been closers at other times—Derek Lowe, for example. The Red Sox don't seem to need help in the ninth inning these days, so Beckett can safely stay out of the bullpen for now, but the Astros . . . .