The National League opened play in 1876. For the next 30-some years, pitchers were simply expected to finish what they started. But in about 1904, New York Giants manager John McGraw essentially invented relief pitching.
He didn't invent relief pitchers -- McGraw's early relievers were merely starters with a bit of free time on their hands -- but even though his starters ranked among baseball's best, he wasn't shy about lifting them. In 1905, the Giants won the National League pennant, but finished next-to-last in complete games (117) and first in saves (15, although they weren't counted as such back then).
McGraw, the greatest manager of his time, made it acceptable to pull your starting pitcher even if he was winning the game.
After McGraw, the evolution of relief pitching progressed, but in fits and starts. Mostly fits.
A fellow named Fred "Firpo" Marberry stands as the first great relief ace. From 1924 through 1926, Marberry saved 57 games for the Washington Senators, and also won 32 games. He pitched in 169 games, and started only 19 of them. Marberry had some good years after that, but over the second half of his career he started about as often as he relieved.
In the late 1920s, Wilcy Moore served as relief ace for the Yankees, then the best team in baseball. Moore pitched 41 games in 1929, and didn't start even one.
In the late 1930s, Johnny "Grandma" Murphy served as relief ace for the Yankees, then the best team in baseball. Murphy pitched 38 games in 1939, and didn't start even one.
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Evolution of saves record
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Player
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Year
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Saves
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3-Finger Brown
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1911
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13
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Chief Bender
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1913
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13
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Firpo Marberry
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1924
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15
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Firpo Marberry
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1926
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22
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Joe Page
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1949
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27
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Ellis Kinder
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1953
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27
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Luis Arroyo
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1961
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29
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Dick Radatz
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1964
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29
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Ted Abernathy
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1965
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31
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Jack Aker
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1966
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32
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Wayne Granger
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1970
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35
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Clay Carroll
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1972
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37
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John Hiller
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1973
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38
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Dan Quisenberry
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1983
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45
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Bruce Sutter
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1984
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45
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Dave Righetti
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1986
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46
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Bobby Thigpen
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1990
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57
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Moore and Murphy were, it must be said, anomalies rather than archetypes. Most of the "top relievers" of their eras were starters not deemed worthy of regular work. Other top relievers doubled as top starters. From 1930 through 1933, future Hall of Famer Lefty Grove went 90-20 (!) as a starter ... and also 18-7 as a reliever, with 27 saves. In 1934, Dizzy Dean won 30 games, and four of those victories came in relief; he also paced the NL with seven saves.
In the late 1940s, Joe Page served as relief ace for the Yankees, then the best team in baseball. Page pitched 60 games in 1949, and didn't start even one. He did record 27 saves -- 17 more than the No. 2 guy in the American League, and five more than anyone had ever saved before.
As it happened, no major leaguer topped Page until 1961, when Luis Arroyo -- yes, another Yankee -- recorded 29 saves. Arroyo pitched 65 games, and didn't start even one.
Arroyo did pitch 119 innings, though. And Page had pitched 135 innings. Both pitched significantly more innings than their Yankee ancestors, as Murphy had pitched just 61 in 1939, and Moore had also pitched 61 in '29. The trend, for pitchers used exclusively as relievers, was toward more innings rather than fewer.
By the 1960s, every team needed a relief ace, yet almost none of those relief aces lasted more than a few seasons. Neither had Page nor Arroyo, by the way. Maybe it was overwork, maybe it was something else, but of all the top relief pitchers of the '50s and '60s, only one enjoyed a Hall of Fame-worthy career. His name was Hoyt Wilhelm, and he threw the non-stressful knuckleball.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, the best relievers were Rollie Fingers, Rich Gossage, Bruce Sutter and Dan Quisenberry. Fingers, Gossage and Quisenberry, at least in their primes, all routinely pitched in the neighborhood of 130 innings per season, and Fingers and Gossage both pitched for a long time. Sutter, however, was a different story. In 1979, Sutter's manager with the Cubs, Herman Franks, decided that he would use Sutter primarily in "save situations."
Magic. Generally pitching around 100 innings per season, Sutter topped the National League in saves five times in six years. In 1984, however, Sutter pitched 123 innings. He set a career high with 45 saves, but never pitched effectively again.
Baseball's next great closer was Dennis Eckersley. From 1988 through 1992, Eckersley put together what might be the most dominating five-year span in the history of relief pitching: 220 saves, a 1.90 ERA and, oh yeah, a 24-9 record. And he did all that for the Oakland Athletics, the best baseball team on the planet. People noticed. They noticed Eckersley's success, and they also noticed that his work was tightly regulated: 310 games, but only 360 innings.
Eckersley might not have been the first successful closer limited to an inning per appearance, but he certainly was the first to win an MVP award doing so. That was in 1992, when he averaged slightly more than one inning per game, and since then the formula used by most managers has been simple: Save your closer for save situations, and rarely use him before the ninth inning.
And so that's where we are now. The only manager to seriously stray from the formula in recent years? Jack McKeon, who was 69 years old last year, and began his managerial career in 1973, when Rollie Fingers ruled the roost. McKeon's probably managed his last game, and we'll not see his like again.
Last May, shortly after Red Sox closer Derek Lowe had recorded his fifth save of the season consisting of at least two innings -- what I call a Long Save -- Peter Gammons commented, "The era of babying your closers is over."
Lowe posted exactly two Long Saves the rest of the season. This was due, in part, to the emergence of Hipolito Pichardo as an effective middle reliever. But it was also because Lowe went through a small rough patch in late May. There are powerful forces working against the current philosophy, and even when a manager decides to stray from that philosophy, he usually returns to safer ground at the first sign of trouble.
But does the current paradigm make sense, on the field? Well, here are two situations:
1. Top of the eighth, the score is tied.
2. Top of the ninth, your team is ahead by three runs.
Now, in which of those situations should you employ your best relief pitcher? Clearly, the first of those situations. In the first situation, a single mistake can cost you the lead. In the second, it will take a string of mistakes to cost you the lead. However, nearly every modern manager would not use his best reliever in the first situation. He'd use his second- or third-best reliever. But he would use his best reliever in the second situation. In the context of a single game, that simply doesn't make any sense. Or as Bill James recently wrote in an unpublished manuscript,
Essentially, using your relief ace to protect a three-run lead is like a business using its top executive to negotiate fire insurance. It's not that fire insurance isn't important. If you have a fire and you're not insured, obviously that's a huge loss. But the reality is that, even if you don't carry any fire insurance, you're not really likely to have a fire. And while you may desperately need insurance, that doesn't mean that it is therefore essential to assign your best executive to negotiate it. There are other people who can take care of that kind of work.
Managers, like the rest of us, have a finite amount of cognitive power. So most of them have adopted a simple, if not simplistic, strategy for their closers. But maybe there's more to it than that. Maybe managers know (or think) that players respond positively when they're assigned rigid roles. Maybe, too, managers worry about the health of their closers, and figure that a defined, somewhat limited role will ensure that their best relievers won't be overworked.
Or maybe not.
Rob Neyer is a Senior Writer for ESPN.com. His baseball column runs three times a week during February.
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