Going against conventional thinking
First a quick recap. The Boston Red Sox publicly announced their attention to not go with a “traditional” closer, instead they will use their best relief pitchers in high leverage situations. In essence, they are saying that running your bullpen based on a statistic (the save) is folly.
This, of course, sent the baseball media world in a tizzy.
The thinking, which I agree with, is that bringing in your closer to protect a three run lead against the 7-8-9 hitters (a save situation) instead of a tie score in the 8th against the heart of the lineup (not a save situation) is crazy. The former situation can be handled by almost any pitcher, but the latter assignment should not be given to anybody other than your best.
What has been lost in all this is that the Sox have done two things. One is that they have decided to use a different strategy the bullpen usage (good idea). The other is electing to not have a top-tier reliever (not a good idea). While I like Embree and Mendoza, neither of them (or anyone else in their bullpen for that matter is great.
Ideally, you want to have great relief pitchers and use them in highest leverage situations as possible. Boston doesn’t have a great pitcher for those high leverage situations—and they will regret that.
I’m still hopeful that bullpen management will stop revolving around the damn Save statistic, but Boston’s approach solves only half of the problem.
