According to the media, Mariano Rivera “officially” became the greatest closer ever a few days ago when he broke the all-time saves record. The assumption that Rivera needed to save one more game than Trevor Hoffman to be considered the greatest one-inning pitcher in history is laughable, but here we are. But the more heated discussion has been about whether Rivera or Derek Jeter has been more indispensible over the Yankees’ reign of dominance.

Rivera’s 602 saves (wait, the number is already up to 603) have all occurred during the regular season, which might as well be warm-up games for the modern New York Yankees. Since the 1994 strike, they have missed the playoffs just once. The 2008 season notwithstanding, has there really ever been any doubt of the Yankees making the postseason? Their payroll is consistently enormous, and if there’s a chance they might not make the playoffs, Brian Cashman makes sure to reload at the trade deadline. Making the playoffs is as routine for the Yankees as sub-.500 seasons are for the Pirates.*

*This reminds me of when I lashed out against a Yankee fan who said “preseason football > regular season baseball” on Twitter. This is because he prefers football and also because regular season baseball translates to preseason baseball in Yankeeland.

I don’t think it’s disingenuous, then, to focus on postseason performance. But I want to be clear here: there’s a difference between claiming a player has been a brilliant playoff performer and claiming he has been innately clutch (or, in contrast, a choke artist). Does Mariano Rivera’s superhuman performance in the postseason mean he’s going to continue having an ERA under 1? Almost definitely not, but his entire body of work as a closer does make him better suited for the role than anyone else. On the other side of the spectrum, Alex Rodriguez did kinda suck in a few postseasons with the Yankees, but that didn’t make him a “choker,” and he didn’t magically become “clutch” in 2009. This is the distinction between the actual value of past performance and the predictive value of said performance.

Mariano Rivera’s career postseason stats are absolutely disgusting: A 0.77 ERA and 0.766 WHIP, with 42 saves and 5 blown saves.* The number of blown saves might be shocking, but it shouldn’t be surprising that two of them occurred during the most famous collapse in baseball postseason history – the 2004 ALCS.** In fact, the only time the Yankees won a series where Rivera blew only one save was the preceding series against the Twins. The Yankees ended up winning that game anyway, though, because the Twins are fucking worthless against the Yankees in the playoffs. In October, as Rivera goes, so go the Yankees.

*I wish Fangraphs’ postseason shutdown and meltdown stats went back further than 2002. Since then, Rivera has had 19 shutdowns and 2 meltdowns. By comparison: Brad Lidge, 18-4; Jonathan Papelbon, 11-1 (wow); Joe Nathan, 2-5 (lol); Brian Wilson, 6-1.

**One of the blown saves was extremely unfair, as Rivera entered with runners at 1st and 3rd with no out and managed to allow only one run; he actually increased the Yankees’ chance of winning in that outing.

I’m a big proponent of FIP and xFIP, especially when it comes to closers, but the disparity between Rivera’s 0.77 ERA and 2.24 FIP and 3.21 xFIP over 139.2 IP definitely tests my faith in the metrics. Such a large disparity cannot be seen with some of the best individual seasons by other closers, who pitched in only half as many innings. For example, Dennis Eckersley’s 0.61 ERA in 1990 was backed up by a 1.34 FIP. I’m sure you could probably find seasons that disprove my general notion (Eric O’Flaherty this year is a candidate), but I think Rivera’s postseason tERA of 1.86 is probably closer to telling the true story of broken bat grounders, since it incorporates batted-ball data. He has managed to keep his career BABIP at .262, after all. The .216 mark in the postseason is definitely indicative of some luck, but it’s impossible to say how much. I think any way you slice it, it’s tough to envision a closer doing better over 16 seasons of postseason play.
In contrast to Rivera, Jeter’s postseason performance has been unremarkable when compared to his career. His postseason batting line of .309/.377/.472 is nearly identical to his regular season line of .313/.383/.449. It should be noted that these stats are still pretty great for a shortstop. And we’ve all seen the crazy plays he’s made in the field, and his clutch November home runs. He’s basically a great player in every situation. Yet Win Probability Added (WPA) tells me the craziest thing: Derek Jeter has hurt the Yankees overall chances when he’s been at the plate in the postseason (-0.58 WPA). Go ahead, look it up. Look at that clutch rating (-1.14)! Derek Jeter is a “choke artist”! But if you want to take leverage out of the equation with WPA/LI, Jeter manages to get into positive territory (0.56). I guess he’s ok.

I think you know where I’m going with this. Mariano Rivera’s postseason WPA is a whopping 4.86. Even if we strip out leverage (in the form of LI), which is going to heavily favor a closer, his WPA/LI is still 2.73. That’s over five times higher than Jeter’s. But there is an important point here, as WPA and WPA/LI do not factor in defense at all. Jeter playing shortstop is worth something — quite a bit actually. This is evident when you look at both players’ regular season Wins Above Replacement (WAR) total and see how far ahead Jeter is, despite Rivera being slightly ahead in WPA/LI. This is why for any other team I would emphatically say that Jeter is the more important and valuable player. But Rivera has been the perfect man for the perfect time and place in baseball history. He has arguably been better at his position than anyone other player, for the team that needed it most. Rivera has been used basically twice as much in the postseason as in meaningless April-September games.

I’m going to play fast and loose with some metrics here, but looking at the value of Rivera’s ~2.00 FIP seasons, he has probably been worth around 6 WAR in the postseason; Jeter, depending on defensive metrics, has been worth anywhere from 5-6 WAR. But WAR is context-neutral, and, as I’ve tried to show, Rivera has, in the aggregate, outperformed Jeter at the crucial moments. This is not to say that in an alternate universe, Jeter wouldn’t have performed better and Rivera would have seemed more human. Given a choice in 1995, knowing both of their true talent levels going forward and their career regular season performances, you would take Jeter. But looking back, Rivera has been more integral to the Yankees’ postseason success, and for them that’s literally all that matters.

Now watch Rivera blow up this October against the Red Sox.

I got invited into a league at the eleventh hour, and once I heard that there were seven Yankee fans among the twelve managers, I knew I had to fuck with them. Having the first nomination of the draft fall into my lap provided the perfect opportunity to kick off the festivities perfectly. But before I go into a short narrative of the draft, I guess I’ll do some explaining.

For the uninitiated, a normal fantasy draft takes the 12 (or 14 or whatever) managers and plops them in a random order, and flips the drafting order each round, e.g., whoever picks second in the 1st round picks second to LAST in the 2nd round. This goes for however many rounds as there are player slots designated for each team. But I’m sure anyone bothering to read this post already knew this.

Now, the auction draft — like all other fantasy drafts I’ve taken part in — was on Yahoo!, so I don’t know if the exact rules apply, but I’m sure that even within Yahoo! (yes, I’m totally gonna keep adding the exclamation point) there are plenty of options to fiddle around with, so not every fantasy draft is the same anyhow. But for my draft, each team was provided with $260 monopoly dollars to fill 21 slots (C,1B,2B,SS,3B,OF,OF,OF,Util,SP,SP,RP,RP,P,P,P,BN,BN,BN,BN,BN). Feel free to ask if you’re clueless and actually interested in knowing what those stand for. From there, the managers are put in a random order just like a normal draft, but in this case, each manager nominates a player instead of drafting him. This means that the manager effectively bids $1 for this player and from then on anyone can bid up to whatever they want, short of bankrupting themselves from filling all their slots — meaning $1 is left for each empty slot no matter what, limiting the maximum bid by a few dollars. For every player nominated, the projected and average draft values are displayed, so there is at least some sort of benchmark to which even the most clueless manager can refer.

Yet when I nominated Phil Hughes — whose average draft value couldn’t have been more than two — the Yankee fans fell over themselves and hilariously bid him up to $7. By comparison, Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman also went for $7 later in the draft. Sadly, I think that obscene bidding war might have been the high point of the draft. But the sprawling length of the draft did provide for many other moments, like when the lone Braves fan bid $20 for Mariano Rivera, assuming at least one of the Yankee fans would bite. They didn’t. I guess they had learned their lesson with Hughes. Or when the same Braves fan kept bidding up the price for Santana just to annoy me –even after joking for weeks about how his elbow is going to explode — and I finally conceded, much to his dismay. Or when one of the Yankee fans tried to bait me in particular by nominating John Maine. He ended up spending his first dollar and roster spot on John Maine. Awesome.

The high point of my draft personally had to be snatching Roy Halladay for $35. Not a huge bargain, but considering Tim Lincecum went for $47, and C.C. Sabathia and Zack Greinke for $39, I think I made out alright. He will totally decimate the NL, especially when you consider that he won’t be facing the best offense in the league. Oh, and somehow Chris Carpenter went for $37 AFTER I picked up Halladay, but that was someone who missed the draft having the computer draft for them. And that’s why you always make auction drafts.

So if you’re ever a manager of a fantasy league, make sure everyone can make the draft, and then set up an auction draft. It’s the American way.

How did I ever decide to root for the Phillies?

Actually, in practice I’ve been seemingly going back and forth by player this entire World Series.

Cliff Lee? Wow, he’s a pimp, I want him to throw a shutout.

Jimmy Rollins? Shut the fuck up and strike out, please.

A-Rod? You fucking suck. Six Ks? Is Kate Hudson on the rag?

Chase Utley? Oh my God, you truly are my forbidden crush.

Mariano Rivera? No way I want to see the Phillies beat you.

Shane Victorino? Die in a Hawaiian volcanic eruption.

Perhaps I need to take this advice, and just look at the bright side of each possible outcome. If the Yankees lose, A-Rod still doesn’t have a ring, Yankee fans turn on every possible player, and the Yankees lose any possible claim at team of the decade. If the Phillies lose, they won’t be the first NL team to repeat in over 30 years, Philly doesn’t become the new Boston, and Jimmy Rollins shuts up.

As for comments on the actual game tonight, it was another pitchers’ duel that this time fell on the Yankees’ side. Pedro’s line was dangerously close to my prediction (three runs instead of four), and A.J. Burnett pitched a great, if not brilliant, game. And then of course Mariano Rivera threw 39 pitches in another ho-hum two-inning postseason save. That was the 14th two-inning save of his postseason career, and the 33rd time he pitched at least 2 innings in any situation. Piece of cake.

Succeeding Rivera as Yankee closer will be the worst job in the world.

Let me repeat that. Francisco Rodriguez walked Mariano Rivera — a 38-year old pitcher with 2 career at-bats who’s played in the American League his entire career — to force in a run. You can’t make this shit up. According to Wikipedia, this has now disqualified him for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

This was after two games where the Mets were outscored 14-1 and outhit 22-4. I thought I might not actually have to put the word “embarrassing” in the title for this blog post, as the Mets were only losing 3-2 for basically the entire game. It turns out they ended up only losing 4-2, but that final run was an all-too-fitting end to this debacle of a subway series. This is what happens when the lineup is “David Wright and Friends”, and the frontman doesn’t get a hit the entire series. Johan Santana missing the series didn’t help either.

I can’t wait until this team is fucking exploded at the end of year. I wanted more done last offseason, but now that they are flailing so spectacularly, I hope it means the explosion will be that much more complete. To be clear, I want Omar Minaya to be engulfed in the all-encompassing fire. Also to be clear, I don’t want Minaya to even try to salvage THIS season at this point. The only reason this season even looks salvageable is due to the NL East being the worst division in baseball. Not only are the Phillies the only team (barely) over .500, they are the only team with a positive run differential. Even the NL West owns the East at this point. So fucking sad.

Thank you, NoMaas, for allowing me to add this picture to the post.