Lidge of sighs

Brad Lidge

Why so unforgiving and why so cold?
Been a long time crossing Lidge of sighs.

In the spirit of Robin Trower’s meandering opus, the paragraphs that follow will pose many questions but answer few. Earlier this year, while searching for the worst closers of all time, I found some dreadful performances. Little did I realize that Philadelphia’s Brad Lidge soon would put them all to shame.

Lidge, in case you hadn’t noticed, struggled mightily in 2009, going 0-8 with a 7.21 ERA. He also was credited with 31 saves. Lidge’s ERA+ of 59 is easily the lowest among pitchers who have recorded 30 or more saves in a season.

On 16 different occasions, a pitcher has reached the 30-save mark despite an ERA+ below 100. Lidge has the honor of being the only one to accomplish the feat twice. In fact, both of his seasons rank among the five worst ever for a pitcher with at least 30 saves:

Player Year Team ERA+ SV ERA+/SV
Brad Lidge 2009 Phi 59 31 1.90
Shawn Chacon 2004 Col 69 35 1.97
Todd Worrell 1997 LA 73 35 2.09
Randy Myers 1992 SD 83 38 2.18
Brad Lidge 2006 Hou 84 32 2.63
Mike Henneman 1996 Tex 91 31 2.94
Joe Borowski 2007 Cle 91 45 2.02
Rod Beck 1995 SF 91 33 2.76
Jeff Reardon 1986 Mtl 94 35 2.69
Brian Wilson 2008 SF 95 41 2.32
Jeff Montgomery 1998 KC 95 36 2.64
George Sherrill 2008 Bal 96 31 3.10
Billy Koch 2001 Tor 96 36 2.67
Rocky Biddle 2003 Mtl 97 34 2.85
Jim Gott 1988 Pit 97 34 2.85
Dennis Eckersley 1993 Oak 98 36 2.72

A few comments are in order:

{exp:list_maker}That rightmost column is a garbage stat, but it’s kind of fun. Even though the ratio doesn’t measure anything, it gives some indication of how ineffective these guys were.
Props to Borowski and Wilson for breaking the 40-save mark despite their best efforts (and to their managers for having the, um, whatever to stick with them). Truly, I am in awe.
I had no idea Rocky Biddle was ever a big-league closer.
The Expos and Orioles both have two representatives on this list. Congratulations to them for that.
All of these pitchers worked for only one team during the year in question. One wonders if their employers kept thrusting them into save situations in the hope that they might get hot and draw interest from an even more desperate team.
Chacon, Biddle and Gott were nothing special, but the rest of these guys enjoyed considerable success (Eckersley is in the Hall of Fame) throughout their careers. {/exp:list_maker}

Not to belabor the point, but it’s worth noting just how historic Lidge’s 2009 campaign was. Only three men have broken double figures in saves while posting an ERA+ lower than 60, and one of them (Don McMahon) doesn’t really count because he did it in 1960, before the save was adopted as an official statistic.

The other pitcher is Mike Perez, who in 1994 saved 12 games for the Cardinals despite a 48 ERA+ (8.71 ERA). If you’re ever looking for ammo in the “anyone can close games” debate, point to Perez’s ’94 season. Be sure to mention that his manager was Joe Torre.

One more note on Perez, and then we’ll get back on track. His splits from that ’94 campaign are too delicious not to share:

Split PA BA OBP SLG ERA
Save situations 78 .290 .329 .406 3.38
Non-save situations 77 .500 .533 .766 16.78

Small sample or not, that is spectacular. Clearly the lack of pressure was getting to Perez.

Returning to Lidge, I don’t know where to begin, so I’ll throw out some questions for consideration:

{exp:list_maker}What the heck was wrong with Lidge in 2009?
Why did the Phillies run Lidge out there often enough for him to “earn” 31 saves?
Given that the Phillies won 93 games and gave the Yankees a run for their oodles of money in the World Series, how much did Lidge hurt his team?
If a guy can rack up saves for a playoff club despite being completely ineffective, how important is the closer role?
Have there been other cases where a closer dominated one season and tanked the next? {/exp:list_maker}

We’ll tackle these one at a time. Well, some we’ll tackles; others we’ll deftly evade.

What the heck was wrong with Lidge in 2009?

A knee injury may be partly to blame. My esteemed colleague Harry Pavlidis offered some theories of his own not long ago. Whatever the cause, Lidge was terrible no matter how you slice his numbers.

We looked at Perez’s situational splits a few paragraphs ago; here are Lidge’s in 2009:

Split PA BA OBP SLG ERA
Save situations 183 .312 .411 .513 7.78
Non-save situations 100 .282 .374 .518 6.23

That’s right, with the game on the line, Lidge turned the opposition into Edgar Martinez (career .312/.418/.515 hitter). What was wrong with Lidge? I’ll tell you what was wrong: Everything.

Why did the Phillies run Lidge out there often enough for him to “earn” 31 saves?

I have no idea. Neither does David S. Cohen at The Good Phight. Loyalty, I suppose, although at some point, that should yield to common sense.

Hindsight being what it is, we can see that almost anyone on the Phillies staff would have been an improvement over Lidge. Ryan Madson, who posted a 3.26 ERA (131 ERA+), did save 10 games — he stepped in while Lidge was hurt in June, then again in September, when Charlie Manuel evidently remembered why the ninth-inning guy is called the closer.

But of course, decisions are much easier to make after the outcome is known. Too bad they are irrelevant by then. Perhaps Manuel stuck with Lidge because he figured the veteran would come around. Lidge was a legitimate Cy Young Award candidate in 2008; that kind of recent success will buy you a pretty long rope.

There’s also the issue of money. If you’re paying one man $12 million and another $2.3 million, which do you give the greater responsibility? I’m not suggesting it’s always right to stick with the more expensive option just because he’s more expensive, but politically speaking, the choice might not be as clear cut as it appears from the outside.

Granted, these are the types of decisions managers are paid to make, but if you’re Manuel and you’ve been given a $12 million closer by your bosses, how anxious are you to replace him with a cheaper alternative? It’s not like sticking Madson in the role saves you money that’s already been committed to Lidge.

Then we get into weird areas… like why is Madson (a darned good pitcher) being paid so much less than Lidge (a darned good pitcher with saves)? Seriously, look at their respective career numbers:

Player G IP ERA+ SV
Lidge 517 529 122 195
Madson 374 516.1 117 15

Lidge has the better numbers, but not by much. There’s no way the difference between a 122 ERA+ and a 117 ERA+ (and to be fair, those numbers were 141 and 115 coming into the season, although that speaks to how volatile relievers are and raises the question of how wise it is to invest so heavily in such an unpredictable commodity, but I digress) in roughly the same number of innings accounts for their salary discrepancy. Maybe Lidge’s dominance (12.1 K/9 vs 7.3 for Madson) plays a role, but the real issue here is that Lidge has 195 saves and Madson has 15. Lidge has gotten the opportunities, Madson has not.

In essence, Lidge is being paid more — a lot more — because in 2004, when Houston traded Octavio Dotel away, Lidge was handed the keys and didn’t lose them. Since then, Lidge has continued to receive save opportunities and accrue exponentially more value than a comparable pitcher that hasn’t racked up those precious saves. Madson, meanwhile, continues to wait for his chance to earn saves and the money they bring. (Another esteemed colleague, Steve Treder, has done a nice job of articulating the relationship between saves and money.)

Like I said, we get into weird areas here. And we don’t answer the original question in any satisfying way.

Given that the Phillies won 93 games and pushed the Yankees to a Game Six in the World Series, how much did Lidge hurt his team?

Depends on whom you ask. The Dodgers and Rockies probably would say, “not enough.” But really, if the Phillies get adequate production from their closer this year, we’re talking maybe 98 wins? So they get home-field advantage against Los Angeles and… sweep instead of win in five?

Yes, Lidge imploded in Game Four against the Yankees. Before that, however, he was solid in the post season, winning one and saving three in five appearances against the Dodgers and Rockies.

Madson probably would have given his team a few more wins during the regular season, but I’m not seeing that those wins would have made much of a difference in the Phillies’ overall performance. On the basis of Game Four, you could argue that the difference between Lidge and Madson was the difference between losing and winning the World Series. Maybe you’d be right, maybe not; we’ll never know. (Corey Seidman addresses the Lidge factor in his discussion of why the Phillies lost the World Series.)

What we do know is the Phillies were National League champions and took a team that went 103-59 to six games. How is that not a wildly successful season by any reasonable standard? How much better could the Phillies have done with someone other than Lidge as their closer?

Which leads to my next question…

If a guy can rack up saves for a playoff club despite being completely ineffective, how important is the closer role?

You could write a book on this topic. How long have we had the one-inning closer? Maybe 20 years? The role ain’t what it used to be (as I noted some time ago, Goose Gossage faced more batters while saving 26 games in 1975 than Trevor Hoffman and Francisco Rodriguez did while combining for 93 saves in 2006), and before that, it didn’t exist. Yes, baseball has changed since the “good ol’ days,” but it survived for a very long time without closers.

I don’t mean to denigrate anyone who is serving as a big-league closer, but good pitching is good pitching, regardless of what additional labels we may affix. Many of today’s closers are excellent pitchers. Others, not so much. A good closer may make a difference, but as Lidge and the Phillies demonstrated this year (in admittedly anecdotal evidence), a bad one may not.

So, why the fuss? It gets back to the money issue. The closer role is important to players and agents because saves convert to money. And who doesn’t love money?

How important is the closer role to teams? Someone should study that question (maybe they already have), but I’m inclined to agree with the assessment of ESPN’s Jim Caple “that [Jerome] Holtzman’s well-intentioned attempt to measure a reliever’s worth has been cheapened, manipulated and bastardized to the point that the save is the most overrated stat in baseball and the closer is the most overrated and replaceable role in American sports.”

A closer’s usage today is dictated almost solely according to whether he has an opportunity to be credited with a save, without regard for the specific situation. In a sense, the closer role is important to teams in that it relieves the manager of any responsibility he might have when deciding which pitcher to send out for the ninth with his team leading by three runs or fewer. The rule dictates the move, and there is no second-guessing.

The downside is that if you’re up, 4-3, with one on and one out in the sixth, you can’t go to your closer, like Chuck Tanner did with Gossage on May 10, 1975, and ask him to get the final 11 outs to preserve the victory. Nowadays, there seems to be little room for using your best reliever in the most critical situations. Well, maybe.

Have there been other cases where a closer dominated one season and tanked the next?

Yes. There, I finally gave a definitive answer on something.

Looking back to my earlier article and the current one, we find several examples of closers alternating between dominant and useless (it’s that volatility thing again). I imagine there are others as well, but this piece is already sprawling enough, so we’ll concentrate on these few:

  Year 1 Year 2  
Player Year ERA+ SV Year ERA+ SV ERA+ diff
Derrick Turnbow 2005 246 39 2006 66 24 180
Brad Lidge 2008 225 41 2009 59 31 166
George Sherrill 2008 96 31 2009 262 21 166
Mike Henneman 1995 205 26 1996 91 31 114
Brad Lidge 2005 184 42 2006 84 32 100
Dennis Eckersley 1992 196 51 1993 98 36 98
Billy Koch 2000 193 33 2001 96 36 97
Brian Wilson 2008 95 41 2009 156 38 61

Other pitchers (e.g., Jeff Brantley, LaTroy Hawkins, Jose Mesa, Jeff Montgomery) reached severe highs and lows at various (though not contiguous) points in their career. It’s what relievers do, and it’s why I’m not comfortable throwing large wads of cash at such unpredictable skill sets.

Again, this list is hardly comprehensive. We aren’t conducting a rigorous study on the volatility of closers; we are simply demonstrating that the “Jekyll and Hyde” phenomenon can and does occur in the wild. Lidge isn’t the first closer to experience such fluctuations, and he won’t be the last.

Concluding thoughts

Don’t worry, we’re almost done. In a nutshell, here are your take-homes from this exercise:

{exp:list_maker}
If I’m not firmly in the “anyone can close games” camp, I very much lean in that direction; at the very least, it’s clear to me that a disproportionate amount of money is being spent on a skill set that may or may not exist.
It’s hard to stop using something you paid a lot of money for even if doesn’t work as advertised.
Saves are probably more important to players and their agents than to the teams that pay them for their services.
Robin Trower is a fantastic guitarist. {/exp:list_maker}

References & Resources
Baseball-Reference.


8 Comments
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Dave Studeman
14 years ago

One of the things I found in this year’s THT Annual is that no pitcher in the history of Fangraphs’ WPA (since 1974) had as big a decline in performance as Lidge did from 2008 to 2009.

JohnMcG
14 years ago

One more thing—it’s not a simple substitution of Madson for Lidge.  In doing this, it’s trading Lidge to Closer and Madson the Setup Guy for Madson the Closer and Lidge the Possibly Brooding Reliever.

Despite Madson getting the saves, given a choice, I think he always would have gone with Madson.  All of Lidge’s saves cam after Madson had already been burned in a high-leverage situation.  And Madson picked up the Game 5 save.

In Game 4 of the World Series, Madson had pitched the ninth already.  Maybe he should have been extended to two innings.  Madson’s good, but he’s not Rivera-good.

With JC Romero going down, the Phillies weren’t exactly stoked with options.  I’m sure it could have been handled better, but I’m not sure it would have made a difference.

Yamen
14 years ago

The Opeth cover of Bridge of Sighs is pretty good too.

Steve Treder
14 years ago

The cold wind blows, and gods look down in anger on this poor child.

OsandRoyals
14 years ago

Slight correction. Baltimore only has one closer on the list. I believe you meant San Francisco.

Is there any evidence that relievers who struggle somewhat their first year as an anointed closer perform much better the second year? You have both Brian Wilson and George Sherrill on the list struggling their first year and then bouncing back with much better years afterwards.
I know George Sherrill is a somewhat special case as he transitioned from LOOGY to closer and the year after adjusted his repertoire somewhat and then moved to the weaker league midseason

Davor
14 years ago

It’s better to have a shutdown reliever available in 7th and 8th when needed, and middling closer, than shutdown closer, and nobody to go in high-leverage situations. Lidge actually had higher LI than Madson, 1.55 to 1.41, but Madson pitched 20 more innings. Generally, I’d prefer to have my best reliever as 8th inning guy and go-to guy in 6th and 7th in really high-leverage situations, and merely above-average pitcher as closer.

Davor
14 years ago

Correction: 1.52 to 1.41 when entering. I read the wrong line.
Also, Rivera last two years entered, on average, in 1.94 and 1.84 LI situations (fourth highest LI this year). Very good use of the best reliever. On Yankees, Coke had 1.55 and Hughes 1.45.

Bigs
14 years ago

one thing worth noting here (interesting read and well done, by the by): when Madson was given chances to save (when Lidge was hurt), he was not much better. He blew about a half-dozen saves this year (forget the exact number), and was prone to making key mistakes in those situations that led to blown leads.

also, Cholly all year said how Lidge being in there just made things work the best for the personnel he had – and he was right. when lidge was on in the postseason – until two outs in the the ninth in Game 4 of the Series – it worked out perfectly: Chan Ho/Durbin in the 7th, Madson/eyre 8th then Lidge in the 9th.

so those are two reasons why