Phil Coke notched an adventurous first save yesterday, and he had some interesting thoughts about closing that he shared after the game. From the Daily News:
“It’s totally, totally different than I imagined it would be,” the 26-year-old lefty reliever said of trying to lock down the final outs. “It’s not the sixth, seventh or eighth – those are way easier.”
A few months ago, we discussed the art of closing and whether there is something different about the 9th inning from a behavioral point of view:
As baseball fans, we can extrapolate from this data a simple observation about the 9th inning. A team losing by one run entering the 9th may actually be giving more effort to avoid a loss than the team leading the game, who is thinking less about losing due to their being ahead at the time. This would suggest that a manager may want to head off disaster by pitching his best hurlers in the late innings, as the opposition may actually be trying harder in the 8th than the 1st.
In contrast, we saw the following from Tim Marchman about a month ago:
But for all the money teams spend on pitching, John Dewan of Baseball Info Solutions, a data company that works for major-league teams, is bewildered by situations like this. “In a three-run game,” he says, “you’d be better off bringing in your No. 2 reliever and saving your best pitcher, usually your closer, for the next game.” By probability, the most crucial moment in a game — the one where an out is the most valuable — often comes earlier, sometimes closer to the seventh inning.
It seems that Coke would side with the first excerpt, as he believes closing to be inherently different than pitching the 8th or the 7th. This would suggest that it makes sense to save your best reliever for the 9th inning. What do you think?
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6 Responses to Coke On The Art Of Closing
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TIQ IQ
I think there may be a psychological difference, especially to a guy like Coke who has never closed before. That said, it should not be an insurmountable difference, and I am still skeptical of there being a special skill required to not blow a 3-run lead in the 9th.
I’m not sure if anyone was watching the actual post game interview but my feeling is: Coke = Forest Gump.
I’ll stick with what I answered in the original post. Mo for the 9th but Bruney for the big spots.
Yeah, that was an interesting interview, and I agree with your bullpen idea.
I’ve often groaned when the game was on the line in the 7th, two and two out with the game tied and Joe brings in Edwar. Man, when he gets done and you are down 4, Mariano doesn’t do you much good on his runp. Use your best pitched when the time is most crucial, not with a 3-run lead heading into the 9th.
Since every bona-fide closer has bad outings, I have a hard time putting too much into Coke’s performance-especially since he emerged with the save. I think his post game comments were more along the lines of saying what he thought his audience wanted to hear.
I think so much has been made out of it, some pitchers tend to get too amped up in close situations, but too many fairly mediocre RPs do well as closers to believe there’s some special skill required.
I would love to see the best pitcher at the time that the game is on the line. That, however, is impossible to know at 100%. We can asume it`s the 8th with the heart of the order coming up and leading by 1, but that`s not always true.
Almost every player and manager that do this for living agree that those outs in the 9th are more difficult than those in the 7th ot 8th. I don´t know why, but maybe it`s becasuse managers use different strategies in the 9th than in any other inning (bunt, no doubles deffense, guarding the lines, pinch hitters and runners), and there´s the human nature that wants to react at all cost to the inminent result of loosing.