Mariano Rivera's use in Saturday's Yankee game shows the absurdity of the closer role.

Mariano Rivera pitched his one and only inning, the 9th, in Saturday's 5-2 Yankee victory in Boston.  The maximum lead that a pitcher may protect and get credit for a save is three.

Heading to the bottom of the 8th the Yankees led 4-2.  Boston had the top of its batting order coming up.  That's the situation in which a manager should use his team's best relief pitcher.  Supposedly the Yankees have the best relief pitcher of all time.  You may want to differentiate and classify Rivera as the best closer of all time, the closer being the relief pitcher who starts the 9th inning with a lead of 1, 2 or 3 runs.

So what to do?  The dilemma is to decide between these two alternatives:
- do the logical thing and pitch Rivera in the 8th in a "hold" situation
- do the illogical and pitch your second best relief pitcher in the 8th.

The obvious advantage of retaining Rivera until the 9th is that the manager avoids the media slings and arrows in case something goes wrong.

Yankee manager Joe Girardi, no risk taker, used David Robertson in the 8th.  Robertson retired the side in order.  In the top of the 9th the Yanks scored a run so that Rivera was pitching to batters 4-5-6 with a three run lead.  Shouldn't just about any pitcher in the Yankee bullpen be able to hold that lead and get credit for a save?  Rivera "saved" the game allowing one single while throwing 16 pitches.  Robertson had thrown only SEVEN pitches and could easily have pitched the 9th.

But suppose that Robertson allowed a couple of base runners but held Boston scoreless.  Then Rivera would have been facing batters 6-7-8, a task even easier than the one he actually encountered.

Girardi also ran a risk similar to the one Jim Leyland ran while managing the All Star game: that Rivera's entrance into the game could have been rendered meaningless.  Maybe the Red Sox would blow open the game against Robertson in the 8th.  Or maybe the Yankees blow open the game in the 9th.

Thursday, July 18, 2013
Mariano Rivera's use in the All Star game shows the absurdity of the closer role.

In that post I exposed the silliness of Leyland's reason for using Rivera in the 8th inning.  However, during Friday's Yankee - Red Sox game Yankee announcer Michael Kay specifically agreed with Leyland and color man David Cone, a former Cy Young award winner, agreed.

All of this can be classified into constipated thinking that relegates baseball into an increasingly shallow place.  Nothing new.  Nothing imaginative.  Nothing creative.  Nothing inventive.

 Just orthodoxy, no matter how tired and boring.  Casey Stengel must be turning over in his grave.