Some More Pointless Cordero Data

First, if you missed it a few weeks ago, here's my post showing that Cordero has blown only one more save than an average closer would've over the last two seasons, when you adjust for the difficulty (ie: one-run versus three-run opportunities). In other words, he's dead-average in effectiveness in a closer (if you define a closer's job as racking up saves).

So here are some more comparisons. I took the three seasons since '05 and found all closers who have saved at least 35 games or more. There are 29 of them, which should tell you that at the bottom of the league, closer is a volatile position full of crappy pitchers.

Cordero is 6th in baseball in saves with 104. That's more than Mariano Rivera and Brad Lidge. He's just a few saves behind Billy Wagner, Joe Nathan and Todd Jones. So, really, the number of saves doesn't tell you a hell of a lot, other than it's a proxy for the consistency and quality of a reliever. Small difference in save totals mean nothing.

He's 6th in wins, tied with Houston Street. The underrated Joe Nathan and Mariano Rivera lead this category with 17 and 15 respectively.

He's 15th in losses, with 11, despite being a closer for all three seasons, unlike a few of the names on the list. Ryan Dempster, Danys Baez, Todd Jones and Derrick Turnbow lead the league, and none of those are pitchers any of us would think of as elite closers.

He's 12th in ERA with a 2.76, just behind Trevor Hoffman. The average of the 29 relievers (note: not adjusted for playing time, just the mean of their aggregate ERAs) is 3.03. Jonathon Papelbon laps the field with a 1.58 ERA. Turnbow, Borowski, Benitez and Baez all have sub-4 ERAs (despite averaging over 50 saves a piece).

If we look at ERA+, which adjusts for league strength and park effects with 100 being perfectly average, he's 13th with an ERA+ of 153.

The chief criticism of him is his homer-prone ways. The stats back it up. His 1.29 HR/9 is third highest behind Armando Benitez and Eddie Guardado. 8 closers succeed because of their homer stinginess with a HR/9 of under .5. The group average is .8 HR/9.

The other criticism of him is that he's too darn hittable. The numbers don't back this up. 13 others of this group are more hittable than him as measure by H/9. He's allowed just .2 more hits per 9 than Mariano Rivera. Bob Wickman, who has just a handful of fewer saves than him, allows 1.4 more hits for every 9 IP.

Another gripe about his pitching is his lack of control. He walks too many batters! Well, that's not true either. He has the 9th best walk total of any closer as measured by BB/9. He's sandwiched in between Papelbon and Wagner on the rankings. Among this group, Cordero walks .5 fewer batters for every 9 IP, a solid total.

Ah, but he doesn't strike anyone out! OK, you got me there. His 7.6/9 total (which, despite what Bob Carpenter thinks, is HIGHER than Jon Rauch's 7.2/9 IP total) is near the bottom, 7th worst among the group. (I'll just note that that's 2 places above Trevor Hoffman).

Finally, if we look at baserunners (using WHIP: Walks + Hits / IP), he's above average here, too. His 1.12 is 10th out of the 29 closers I looked at.

Look at the bigger picture. He's basically average at every test of a closer's (and relief pitcher's) success. He allows too many homers and probably doesn't K as many as we'd like, but those are overcome. He doesn't give up many more hits than an average guy. And he doesn't walk more. He has strengths and weaknesses.

We expect perfection from our closers. It doesn't happen. They fail. Even the best do. Nobody's arguing that Cordero's the best. He's clearly an average closer. Yet, we act as if he's the worst. Get a grip, and take a look at the bigger picture. Not every team has a Papelbon. Most teams, even good playoff teams like Cleveland, Detroit, Arizona, etc, don't have a truly elite closer.

Don't expect so much out of the guy at the end of the games that you ignore the things that he does well.

Could he be better? Sure. But if perfection is your standard for all things, then you're never going to be happy watching any baseball game.

If you want to see the full data, here's the spreadsheet with all the closer data.