Cordero's Blown

After last night's latest blown saves, the message board natives are restless. Never mind that most of the damage came on fieldable ground balls that went through the infield like me through chili nachos last year, the demin closer must b stoped1!11!

Whatever.

So what do the numbers say? How does his performance rank against other closers?

I looked at his performance over the last two years in his saves and blown saves, ignoring his other appearances for the sake of this exercise.

Over the last two years, he's 51-12 in save opportunities, an 81% success rate. That's by no means great. League average for closers is in the 85% range.

But that doesn't tell the whole story.

What do you think the Nats record is in his blown saves?

They're 3-5 in them this year and 1-3 last year, for a 4-8 record. Not great, for sure, but it's not the automatic L that most people think it is. Even if you want to pretend that any other replacement closer wouldn't have blown any games (which is utterly ridiculous; everyone blows the occasional save), the extra five wins would still have put the Nats behind six other teams for the Wild Card. If the team had an 'average' closer -- at least someone who saved at the league average rate -- that's just one extra win over what they've got now. Big Whup.

But that doesn't really tell the full story either. All saves aren't the same.

Cordero seems like he's had a lot of chances in one-run saves. I'm not sure how it compares to other teams in the league, but when he's in there, the Nats are barely hanging on, leading to lots of extra tension, at least in our fuzzy memories. We don't remember the routine saves that well, just the extraordinary ones or the blown ones.

             S   BS  %     LG Ave%
1-run saves  22  9    71     75.1
2-run saves  13  3    81     89.4
3-run saves  16  0   100     95.5

(to clarify something that came up in comments. the Lg Ave total is the percent of the time that that save is converted by a closer STARTING the 9th inning. It doesn't include middle relievers and other situations, so it's an apples to apples comparison)

Despite what you may think, Cordero is basically a league average closer. He's as effective as most every other closer in the league not named Hoffman or Rivera (the truly elite guys). But he's also not Latroy Hawkins or Jorge Julio, the absolute dregs.

If you want to tinker around with the numbers, if the Nats had that perfectly league-average closer, they'd have 1 extra 1-run save, 1 extra 2-run save, but one more blown 3-run save, for a net of one extra blown save.

Given how teams sometimes win their blown saves anyway, there's no guarantee that there'd be an extra non-curly L in the book in the first place.

Can Cordero do better? Of course. Four of this year's blown saves I'd note came before his grandmother's death. He's been 8-3 in one-run saves since, a rate that's right in line with league average.

But the constant bashing of Cordero for going out there and doing what 95% of all other closers do is over the top. He's an effective reliever who gets the job done as much as his peers, especially when he has defensive support behind him, which he most definitely did not last night.

Crap happens sometimes, as it has to the 44 pitchers the Nats have hung a blown save on over the last two years. Even 'stiffs' like Billy Wagner, Mariano Rivera, Tom Gordon and Jason Isringhausen pop up on that list.

No closer is perfect all the time.