Houston Astros Baseball

Closer Importance

The Houston Astros GM Ed Wade has made it clear that he is “bullpen crazy.” Crazy in a good way of course. He loves to offer our starters support and security in the form of a reliable bullpen. Sounds good right? Well it is, in 2007 The Astros had 25 Blown Saves. This is outrageous considering we only had 63 save opportunities. That leaves the Astros ranked 25th out of 30 with a save percentage of 60. This is significant because the better teams are teams with good bullpens. Example, guess who had the highest save percentage? The Red Sox had a save percentage of 80 leading all of baseball and won the World Series. Now, you may say well they won because of their potent lineup. This is a valid argument, however The New York Yankees with their extremely potent lineup barely made it into the post season and where quickly disposed of by a much younger and cheaper Indians. My point? The Yankees ranked 23rd of all teams in save percentage, where as the Indians ranked 2nd, with 78%.

Out of the top ten teams in save percentage all of them seem expected except one. The Texas Rangers ranked 6th in all of baseball with only 14 total blown saves over the 2007 season. This largely because of the success of their former closer Eric Gagne. Gagne leads all closers ever with a save percentage of 96.6%. His supremacy continued the first half of the 2007 season with The Rangers by converting 16 of 17 saves. I bring this up because at the same time Brad Lidge was with the Astros blowing 8 of 27 save opportunities. Where as Gagne has only blown 10 saves in the last 187 save opportunities.

For all of those like me who really, really like Roy Oswalt and feel bad that he has never been awarded a Cy Young award, think about this. What if Gagne was with the Astros in ‘07. If you take Gagne’s 2007 save percentage and applied it to the Astros 2007 save opportunities (63), over that whole span he would have blown only 4 saves. I understand at the same time that Gagne most likely would not have been in line for all those saves because of days rest or any other reasons, however my point is pretty clear. How many more games do you think Oswalt would have won this year if Lidge converted 95% of his save opportunities? Now some of you will also argue that Gagne stunk once he was traded to The Red Sox, and he did. However, Gagne wasn’t their closer and was thrown into the bright lights of Boston with very high expectations in a different role in the heat of a playoff race.

Should Gagne be our closer? I don’t know, I am not trying to persuade anyone that Gagne is some super hero who will fix our team. I am just trying to point out the important of a strong back end of a bullpen. Regardless of who Wade decides to be our new closer, I am confident that not only will we win more games, but our starters will be less likely to pitch longer into games, lessening the chances of injury and shortening games. Which will be extremely important with pitchers like Sampson and Patton in the mix. Just think, we were only 12 games out of 1st place this year, what if we only blew half as many saves. We would have made the playoffs!

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