Cy Morong compares Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera and finds them closer that he imagined. One thing Cy didn’t consider is long saves, saves requiring four outs or more. Since 1993, the year first recorded saves, Marino recorded a long save 116 times. Hoffman is tied for second with Keith Foulke at 55.
If you look at the history of saves (1969 on), Rivera ranks 12th, Rollie Fingers first at 201. Rivera was a throw back to the 1970s and early 1980s, when pitchers like Goose Gossage, Bruce Sutter and Lee Smith came in when it mattered, not just in the ninth inning.
Thanks for pointing that out about long saves. It just didn’t occur to me. I guess one thing to look at might be IP per outing.
Hoffman had 1.052 IP per game and Rivera has 1.119 per game (not counting his first season when he made 10 starts). So Rivera’s outings, on average, lasted about 6.3% longer in terms of IP.
It would be interesting to know their conversion rate when they had those 4+ out save situations. I don’t know how much to make of this difference between them. Even for Rivera it is still just 19.2% of all of his saves.
In any case, is this enough to say that Rivera separate himself from his peers the way Young does with wins or Ryan does with strikeouts? It still looks to me that what is really different about Rivera compared to Hoffman is the difference in HR rates and SLG.
By the way, Gossage was critical of Rivera earlier this year and here is what I wrote about it
http://cybermetric.blogspot.com/2011/06/rich-gossage-vs-mariano-rivera.html
“He compares Rivera to Cy Young and Nolan Ryan. Young won 511 games and the next highest is Walter Johnson at 417. Ryan struck out 5,714 batters, 839 more than Randy Johnson. Does Rivera dominate his peers in a similar way?”
Of course that’s only using one statistic. To me, the one untouchable record is Young’s 749 complete games. Nolan Ryan and Don Sutton are the only others to have started as many games, and you can’t complete what you don’t start. With bullpens these days, you aren’t going to get many complete games.