The HoG25: The 25 Best Relief Pitchers of the Last 25 Years, Part II

(Editor's Note: For reasons I still cannot figure out, the image-upload feature is not working at the moment, so we will update when this technical error has been corrected.)


We're back for the sequel to relievers, and if you're just tuning in, there're two important things to catch you up to speed. The first is Old No. 7's reliever dissertation, which I implore you to both read, and filter out the parts in which he's right, or at least pretends to be. The second is part one to this installment, which, I promise, makes for decent reading material when consumed in between aforementioned dissertation, and the post-leap sequel.

In this series, prior to relief pitchers, we've covered NFL quarterbacks, American cinema, baseball hitters, readin' books, starting pitchers, television shows, wide receivers. Join us with a click, for the top 10.

10. Roberto Hernandez

bankmeister: I’d like to say that being only one of 11 guys in Major League Baseball history to appear in 1000 games warrants one’s place on a list like this one. I’d also like to say that I’m hung like a Clydesdale, that you should just take my word for it, but that isn’t gonna sell any papers. This fine Puerto Rican specimen debuted in the Majors as a September call-up in the 1991 season, and he didn’t do much then, but he did enough of something to earn himself a roster spot for the Chicago White Sox the following year, and it was in that season that Roberto Hernandez won seven games, earned a dozen saves, and did so with a 1.65 E.R.A., which, I’d imagine, earned some scout a bonus. He also struck out 68 dudes and surrendered a mere four home runs.

He turned into quite a work horse for the Sox after that, earning himself his first of two All-Star appearances, and leading the league in games finished for three straight seasons. Hernandez turned in pretty solid save numbers for more than half a decade, but then he turned into something else: a bit of a whore.

That’s right. After leaving the Windy City, Roberto Hernandez became a sort of pre-Lima Time Jose Lima, if you will, minus, of course the big-chested wife, and the raging case of Herpes. After his impressive stint on the South Side, Hernandez tossed baseballs for the San Francisco Giants for a minute, then signed with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, where his career saw a nice resurgence, and then, in 2001, Hernandez was part of a three-team trade. There are many aspects to the trade, but those worth mentioning involve the Kansas City Royals sending Johnny Damon to the Oakland A’s, the Oakland A’s sending Angel Berroa to the Kansas City Royals, and the Rays sending Hernandez to Kansas City. Hernandez would later become a Brave, a Phillie, a Met, a Pirate, a Met, and Indian, and alas, a Dodger.

Ultimately, I, as a Royals fan, should want to murder him for his affiliation with the Berroa-to-K.C. leg of that trade, but for the purposes of this feature, I must mention that he retired with 326 career saves, just under 1000 Ks, and an impressive 7.9 strikeouts-per-nine-innings-pitched ratio. Roberto Hernandez: colossal reliever, major asshole.

9. Tom Henke

Cecil: Tom Henke was an excellent closer. He powered the bullpen for the great Blue Jays teams of the mid-to-late ‘80s (remember them? No one in Canada does, either), striking out nearly 10 batters per 9 innings over the course of his career -- of course, he did that in small chunks, not 9 inning stretches, because he was a relief pitcher and all, so, uh, yeah -- and walked away from the game after a hell of a year with the Cardinals. But I remember him chiefly for his oversized novelty eyewear.

Alright, so, maybe he actually needed them to see, but still. Those things looked like the BCGs that Charlie Sheen’s character in Major League ended up wearing, like the goggles on one of those caricatures of Harry Caray. Was this some sort of bizarre intimidation technique? I’m thinking so. Major league hitters dug in against Henke and thought, fuck, not only does this guy throw pure cheese BUT THOSE GLASSES AAAAAHH. Ol’ Specs Henke* had the battle half won before he ever threw a pitch.

It clearly worked. Dude was a two-time All Star, won the Most Important Award Any Relief Pitcher Can Ever Win, Ever (Rolaids, bitches!) and played an integral role in bringing World Series glory to Toronto: his career postseason ERA is under 2, and he saved a pair of games in the ’92 classic. All, we’re sure, because of those terrifying cheaters.


*This is a nickname I just gave him.

8. John Franco

Cecil: Let’s get to brass tacks, here: John Franco was a hell of a pitcher, and one of the best closers of his generation, but what really stood out about his career was not any particular defining moment of brilliance, but rather the fact that he pitched until he was 89 years old and died on the mound in a night game against the Phillies, upon which sad event his withered, greasy corpse was buried under home plate at the old Shea Stadium (Note: this might be a blatant untruth.)

Before that, though, he was practically the definition of a workhorse, if you conveniently throw out all of the definitions involving actual horses doing physical labor. He played for the Mets for longer than any single human being should, from 1989 to 2004. No prima donna, the son of a New York Sanitation worker (thanks, internet!) wore an orange Sanitation Department t-shirt under his game uniform to honor his blue-collar roots and didn’t fuss when asked to switch to the set-up role he played for the last several years of his career.

Also: Saves, lots of them, R-O-L-A-I-D-S, World Series, All Stars, more than 1,000 games pitched, rinse, lather, repeat. If your last name isn’t Fingers, Gossage, Rivera, Sutter or Hoffman, your place on this list is largely irrelevant. Of note, however: I always figured that the dude wore a shark’s tooth necklace and wayyyyy too much Drakkar Noir.

7. Lee Smith

Cecil: First things first: I'm a fan of the Chicago Cubs baseball team. When I was a kid, my two favorite players were Ryne Sandberg and Lee Smith.

It may be hard to justify the fandom (I WAS BORN THERE YOU ASSHOLES AND THEY DIDN'T HAVE MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL IN COLORADO WHEN I WAS A LAD), but it's still there, even if it ebbs and flows these days, what with my thousand mile remove from the epicenter of Cubbery. I like the Rockies fine, and if I hadn't held on to those golden memories of youth and vitality so stubbornly I might count them as #1; but I did, and so I don't. And some of the goldenest of said memories are the ones featuring a glowering, Jheri-curled Lee Smith blowing 98 mph heat past humiliated batters.

I've heard people say that Lee belongs in the Hall--and despite my fandom, my initial reaction to that was always, I dunno, really? But then I looked at the numbers: Smith had 478 saves, good for third all-time (and I believe he was first when he retired), led the league in that category on four occasions, was a seven-time All-Star, finished in the top 5 of Cy Young voting three times and led in games finished thrice. Those are beyond solid--they're Gossage-esque. Certainly beyond any lame-ass Bruce Sutter territory. How'd that fucking guy get in, anyway?

Lee Smith was undoubtedly one of the very few best closers of the last 25 seasons. And yet, somehow, he was still traded for Calvin Schiraldi and Al Nipper. I hate you, Chicago Cubs.

(Editor's Note: It should be mentioned that our dear Cecil was so excited to write about Mr. Smith, that he did so twice.)

When I was a kid, my two favorite players were Ryne Sandberg and Lee Smith.

Given the fact that I've spent the majority of my life far, far away from the epicenter of Cubbery, I occasionally find it hard to justify the fandom to others (I WAS BORN THERE YOU ASSHOLES AND THEY DIDN'T HAVE MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL IN COLORADO WHEN I WAS A LAD). Yet it exists, even if it ebbs and flows these days, what with the Lou Piniella and the Carlos Zambrano and the century of crushing ineptitude. When I find myself growling in the corner over yet another failed campaign, I can always flip the memory dial back to 1987.

1987 was, like pretty much every year in Cubsville, sucky. I'm old now, and can't summon he suck-particulars the way I could have once, but you can go ahead and believe me. I think Don Zimmer was the manager. Or maybe he got fired before season's end? Can't remember. What I do remember: Andre Dawson's MVP season for a last-place team, the usual smooth criminal act at 2nd from Ryno and yet another dominant season for fireballing closer Lee Smith.

Smith was one of those guys that had the glower, the JuJu. And while he's got the stats, to be sure -- he held the all-time Saves record from '93 until 2006, when Trevor Hoffman passed him, led the NL twice and the AL once in that stat and, at the time of his retirement, owned the Major League career record for Games Finished -- the thing that this disillusioned former child recalls most is that ineffable Gossage-esque sense of menace. He stood 6'6", and with those big-ass sideburns and overflowing jheri curl, seemed to have walked through a door from the A's squads of the early '70s. His presence meant finality, a humiliating strikeout and, necessarily, a rare Cubs win. Naturally, he was traded soon after for Al Nipper and Calvin Schiraldi.

It's no accident that his greatest career successes came elsewhere. Pitching for the Cubs will do that to you. The fact that he's made this list at all is reflective of the mental toughness needed to shake off a tenure, particularly one as lengthy as Smith's, spent pitching in the House of Fail. For that yeoman's work we salute you, Mr. Smith. Even though you did give up that homer to Steve Garvey in the '84 NLCS. Asshole.

6. Dan Quisenberry

Cecil: You know what I love? Sidearmers. Submariners. Dudes who, for lack of a better term, get loowwww. Goofy-ass Kent Tekulve, for instance, in his meaty goggles, right arm nearly scraping the mound. Walter Johnson, the Big Train himself, had a little sidearm in him, as did Dennis Eckersley. Shunsuke Watanabe, Japan's "Mr. Sub-Marine," wears gloves to avoid bloodying his knuckles on the dirt. Of 'em all, though, no one ever captured my imagination like Dan Quisenberry.

Quis just looked goofy -- he and Tekulve both went way down south, much more so than most of their fellows, and there's pretty much no way you can make that severe of a pitching motion look pretty -- and always appeared to be diving sideways off the mound. But that unnatural effort, and the bucketsful of grounders that it produced, led to some impressive results.

For the first part of the '80s, Quis was arguably the best reliever in the bigs. He led the AL in saves five out of six years, from '80-'85, with a high of 45 in '83, which was also best in the Majors. He led both circuits in games finished four times, and topped the junior thrice in games pitched. He was durable, he was reliable, and he threw a funky, slow-moving ball that tied hitters into half-hitches.

As a kid in the backyard I used to practice throwing sidearm, far down as I could go, because even a sprat like myself could see the value in such unorthodoxy. Dan Quisenberry rode that funny-looking delivery all the way from the University of La Verne (!?!) to a World Series Championship and 244 career saves; my guess is he didn't really care how silly it looked.

5. Billy Wagner

bankmeister: As we move into the upper echelon of reliever artistry, it’s important to note that I don’t know the first thing about Billy Wagner. That is, I drafted him solely for his numbers, and am learning most everything about him just prior to writing it. That said, he played 14 of his 15 professional seasons in the National League, and debuted the season I pretty much quit paying attention to baseball for most of six years. But he’s due his honors, so here goes:

Wagner was a first-round pick by the Houston Astros, and he actually played for the team that drafted him, so winner-winner, chicken dinner. I like the guy already. Three hundred eighty-five saves? Criminy. That’s impressive. Wagner made six All-Star Games and was twice in the close running for a Cy Young Award. If you pitch in Major League Baseball and do so for 15 years, tally 833 innings of work, log nearly 1100 Ks, and keep your career earned-run average under 2.40, you deserve to be in the Hall-of-Fame discussions. One of the most impressive stats for Wagner, however, is his strikeouts-per-nine-innings pitched. Most dudes are around the high sevens and low eights. Wagner’s career average for this category lands at a swollen 11.8, which is nothing shy of tremendous. Hell, it’s Ken Tremendous. Add to that his home runs-per-nine-innings pitched, which is 0.8, and you’ve got yourself one heck of a pitcher.

After his stint with Houston, Wagner drifted in and out of the Phillies, Mets, and Red Sox organizations before finally winding up with the Atlanta Braves. His numbers are down, and hey – the kid’s been pitching professionally for a decade and-a-half. He’s nearly three years older than me, which is old, I tell ya’. Just ask Old No. 7 about being old; that dude’s like 49. Anyway, of course careers are going to taper, but for a small-framed guy that taught himself to throw South Paw when his natural style was righty, I like the guy. Billy Wagner: Future Cooperstown inductee.

4. Rich "Goose" Gossage

Cecil: There are a ton of historical factors that need to be weighed as part of any argument about the efficacy of closers -- saves didn't exist as an official stat until 1969, to begin with, and the firemen of previous eras were frequently asked to work two and three innings. Comparisons about who was best when are thus difficult and subject to the inclusion of (as you'll soon discover) personal favorites. So, when people tell me that Mariano Rivera is the greatest closer of all time, I only have two words for them: Goose Gossage.

Please don't cite me any of Rivera's stats. I've seen them. I'm no stat-suspicious baseball Luddite, either, so don't go all FJM on me. I have really only one cogent point, here, and even though I've already made it in my first graph, I'm about to do again because I think it's important and I need to take up some real estate in this post: Gossage was the most dominant closer in an era when closers had to do more. Rivera has made an entire career out of getting three -- and often, fewer -- outs. Sure, he's been great at it, but how good would Goose's numbers look if he'd spent his looooong career with that kinda workload?

Yes, yes, that's projection, and we must deal instead with cold, unforgiving reality. Fair enough. Goose's numbers by themselves are good enough to keep him in this argument: he led his league in saves three times (the majors, twice) but more impressively, the guy didn't finish with an ERA over 3 from 1977 through 1985, including a surreal 0.77 in '81. In '77, he struck out 151 batters in 133 innings. He won more games in relief than anyone not named Hoyt Wilhelm -- who, it should be mentioned, is one of the old school dudes who never benefited from the save, so his win totals are pretty high -- and finished his career second in career saves to Rollie Fingers. He recorded the out to clinch a division, league or Series title seven times. Until Rivera broke it, he held the record for most All-Star appearances as a reliever.

And he did it all pitching three, sometimes four times as long as the guy everyone anoints as the best evs. I call bullshit. You want Greatest, you go Goose.

3. Dennis Eckersley

bankmeister: I am still partially in shock that Old No. 7 is the proud son-in-law of that jersey-tuckin’ s.o.b. Dennis Eckersley, but I guess smaller things’ve surprised me. Eckersley is another one of those dudes that I associate with nationally televised (especially post-season) baseball, coming in out of the bullpen, and taking care of business. Dude never looked pretty, and his work wasn’t shiny, but boy did he, and it, deliver.

Having tried to tap into the well of memory, I’ve come up with two things: The first is that I was confused when, several years into my baseball-viewing life, Dennis Eckersley was suddenly coming out of the bullpen instead of starting games. As Dave Chapelle once never said, I didn’t know dudes could do that. The second thing was that I, for most of the 1980s, simply could not keep track of Dennis Eckersley. When I first saw his greezy self take the hill, he was a Red Sock. And then he seemed to disappear. I mean, I know he was still around; I simply lost him. But then, there he was again, appearing in Major League games, this time in an Oakland uniform. Then he was gone. And then he was a Red Sock again.

Couldn’t keep track. It’s worth mentioning that in those periods, he also logged time with the Cubs and the Cardinals, was originally an Indian, and, in fact, closed his career out in Boston. And some career it was. Though we’re focusing on relief efforts, it’s certainly noteworthy that, as a starter, Old No. 7’s father-in-law earned himself two All-Star-Game appearances, some Cy Young consideration, as well as some MVP chatter. He also won 197 games before making the transition, which, I might add, he was successful at to the tune of 390 career saves, good for sixth all-time if you’re keepin’ score at home.

As a closer, he earned himself four more All-Star appearances, and upped the frequency of Cy Young/MVP conversations, ultimately earning both in 1992. Eckersley struck out 2400 guys in his career, and that’s no small hill of beans. For the purposes of discussions of great pitchers, Dennis Eckersley definitely earned his place in the conversation. He may have demonstrated the strongest balance of starter/closer dominance of anyone in the game. He gets props for going the distance early, and points for closing contests out with fury in the second half of his career. For the purposes of this specific entry, he’s certainly top-three worthy. His stats might not be the prettiest out there, but that’s just fine, ‘cause across the board, I don’t think Dennis Eckersley was ever campaigning for style points.

2. Trevor Hoffman

Old No. 7: Like many, I lament the loss of the bullpen car. When I was a little kid watching NBC’s Game Of The Week, relievers were ferried from the bullpen to the mound in funny little cars shaped like baseballs, ballcaps or mascots. That bit of whimsy is long gone, and we now have to wait interminably while fat closers trudge in.

The upside is that closers now come on to a song, and they try to make it a badass one. At least they did try, until douchebags like Brian Wilson and Ryan Franklin forced us to listen to Nickelback. The best closer song, of course, is heard when Mariano Rivera comes into a game and “Enter Sandman” is played over the PA. It’s ominous, creepy and makes you want your blanky and nightlight.

Trevor Hoffman uses “Hell’s Bells,” which is pretty good. Nothing wrong with getting some AC/DC up in here. But it’s a blatant ripoff of Rivera, which is fitting, since playing second fiddle to Rivera is basically Hoffman’s lot in life.

Hoffman recorded his 600th save in 2010, and will almost certainly retire this offseason with 601, the all-time record. But Rivera has 559, and he’ll eclipse Hoffman in either 2011 or 2012. Anything Hoffman can do, Rivera can do better, which is far from the worst thing you can say about a guy. Shannon Sharpe is the second-best tight end to ever play the game, which means he wasn’t quite as good as Tony Gonzalez but still towers over everyone else at the position. And Hoffman’s career has simply been outrageously successful. Other than 2003, when he missed most of the year following two operations, he saved 30 or more games for the Padres from 1995 through 2008. He did it again for the Brewers in 2009. His last hurrah in Milwaukee was ugly, as he lost his job to John Axford and was given token appearances solely to get to 600. Then again, most great players’ careers do not end gracefully…(cough) Brett Favre.

Hoffman came into professional baseball as an infielder who had a good arm but couldn’t hit. He’s hardly the first guy with a story like this -- Troy Percival, Carlos Marmol and Keith Foulke were converted from catcher, Tim Wakefield was once a prospect at third base, and Rafael Soriano gave it a try in the outfield before sticking as a big league reliever. It seems like many of the converted position players who go on to pitch end up in the bullpen. Some have funky deliveries, weird pitches or a limited repertoire, and exposing them to a lineup only once per game is the best approach.

(Editor's Note: Having brought you from 25 on down to two, I'd guess that you've guessed who gets the one spot.)

1. Mariano Rivera

Old No. 7: I don’t know how else to say it: Mariano Rivera is simply the best relief pitcher of all time. By any measure, he is. If you want to go by bulk saves, he’s second to Trevor Hoffman and will certainly pass him in the next eight to 14 months. If you want to go by post-season success, Rivera is so far ahead of his competition it’s embarrassing to even point it out. He’s won five World Series, one as a setup man and four as a closer. His playoff numbers are disgusting: In 139 innings over 94 innings, he has a 0.71 ERA, 109 strikeouts against 21 walks, and he’s allowed two home runs.

By all of the traditional measures, he is the best. And if you dig on the sabermetrics even a tiny, weensy little bit, Rivera’s dominance is shocking. ERA+ is a terrific stat that encapsulates all aspects of a pitcher’s efficiency and weighs it against his league, historical era, and ballpark. Pedro Martinez has the second-highest in history at 154 (league average is set at 100, everyone over 100 is above average, everyone below is below), as Pedro put up fantastic numbers in hitters’ parks during an overwhelmingly offensive era. A few other Hall of Fame-level arms in the top 20 of ERA+ are Lefty Grove (148), Walter Johnson (147), Roger Clemens (143), Cy Young (138) and Roy Halladay (136).

Mariano Rivera’s ERA+ is 205, which is so much better than any other pitcher to have ever played the game, starter or reliever, that it looks stupid on the printed page.

You may not know or care about ERA+, and you may be skeptical about advanced metrics like it. That’s fine, I once was as well. But just look at the season-by-season destruction that Rivera has delivered to batters, good batters in a good division in a good league, for 15 years. Against baseball’s finest, throwing one pitch, he simply doesn’t allow anyone to make solid contact. He baffles and breaks bats, and he records out after out after out with greater efficiency than anyone who’s ever pitched.

And yet still, there are those who choose to disregard the greatness of Rivera and name someone else as the greatest of all time. Specifically, the two other writers on this blog prefer Goose Gossage. Now I’m not here to disparage these men, they’re my friends and I love them and doing that would make me a major dick. I do question their reasoning here, though, because they’d like you to believe that Goose was better than Rivera because his saves came while pitching multiple innings. Meanwhile Rivera (and every closer in this day and age) starts work only in the ninth, and only with the bases free of hostile combatants.

It’s true that Gossage and Rivera have operated under different working conditions. Closers in Goose’s day were asked to get more than three outs (although Goose had plenty of saves that were three outs or less), and closers today are almost never asked the same, except in the playoffs and must-win games (although Rivera is the modern exception, he notched five saves of more than three outs in 2010 while no other closer had more than one).

To my comrades, this difference in expectations makes Goose tougher and therefore better. I’m not sure if I buy “tougher,” but for the sake of argument I’ll concede it. As he’s reminded us in every single public appearance for the last 20 years, a campaign that finally led to Goose’s enshrinement in Cooperstown, Goose was one tough son-of-a-bitch. Look at the game log from his 1975 season with the White Sox. Goose threw 141 innings, which is double what closers throw today. He’d come in to games in the third and fourth inning and close them out. Of his 26 saves that year, only seven met the modern condition of recording three outs or less, while 12 required seven outs or more. This is truly epic, laudable, and it started the legend of Goose Gossage.

The problem is, for all Goose’s toughness, he simply wasn’t as good a pitcher as Rivera. His ERA was three-quarters of a run higher, his WHIP far higher (1.23 to 1.00), his K/9 rate lower (7.5 to 8.2), his K/BB rate lower as well (2.05 to 3.94). By every measure you can find, every tangible statistic, Rivera is superior.

Which is where Goose’s mythical toughness is inserted into the argument, as an intangible trump card of subjectivity. Rivera’s numbers were created in a vacuum, he couldn’t handle the crucible in which Goose thrived. Goose would have pitched just as well as Rivera throwing one inning at a time, if not better. And Rivera would have wilted if asked to pitch like Goose did. This is the argument.

The problem with this is that it just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Look at Goose’s numbers again. As his career went on, he was asked to go more than two innings less and less -- BECAUSE HE WAS FAR LESS EFFECTIVE WHEN HE DID. Tough as he was, Goose still got tired and wore down, and having him throw multiple innings each outing was simply bad for business.

Goose’s last year as a top closer was 1986, when he played for the Padres. He saved 21 games that year, and in only nine did he record three or fewer outs. Same old tough Goose. But what’s telling is that he was not asked to get more than six outs once. His manager knew that doing so hurt the team, and that the less Goose threw the better he was. Goose had proven his toughness, but he was dramatically less effective at the limits of his endurance, as we all are.

Beyond that, saying that modern players can not be compared to their forefathers on the grounds of toughness means that the old-time players can never be topped. Forget the luxury of only pitching the ninth -- that’s nothing compared to air travel in chartered jets, advanced medical science, state-of-the-art stadiums and clubhouses, and how easy it is to score pussy on the road with cell phones, the Internet and Twitter. Of course today’s players have it easier and aren’t as tough, that doesn’t mean a great player today is automatically inferior to a great player from yesteryear. You can indeed compare Albert Pujols to Stan Musial, no matter how soft you think Pujols is in relation to Stan The Man. Aaron, Mays, and Gibson had it made compared to black players in the '20s and '30s (as they were allowed to play in the bigs), we don’t downgrade their greatness due to the comparative ease in which they lived.

And there you have it, boys and girls. The 25 best relief pitchers of the last 25 years. Or so say we anyway. We've got three categories left in this installment. No tellin' when we'll get 'em up, but by Jove, we'll get 'em up.

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The HoG25: The Best 25 Relief Pitchers of the Last 25 Years

(Editor's Note: For reasons I cannot figure out, the image-upload feature is not working at the moment, so we will update when this technical error has been corrected.)

Don't soil your drawers. This ain't no indication of a regular re-appearance of those features you used to not read here on these pages. It is simply, our effort to finish up this series we started a handful of months ago. And make no mistake, it's a tricky one. The idea has been best summarized here by Old No. 7, and as he pointed out, we've touched on various other topics in this feature. Few have come easy; none have come so difficult. Important keys to remember are that the definition of the role of relief pitcher has changed over the years. Today, we don't even have "relief pitchers," as it were. What was once a single role of sorts for one hurler on a squad now falls under the relief umbrella that includes your middle relievers, setup guys, and closers.

What's also tricky is defining the point in time in which said definition of role began changing, or changed, or became accepted, acknowledged. It's a fluid concept, if you will, and that makes pinning down a window of 25, or any other number of, years even sketchier. Perhaps you will agree with our list. There's a chance that you don't like it. Or, maybe, we should've substituted a more concrete category. Either way, it's here, the pitchers are ranked, so we invite you to peruse.


25. Brian Fuentes

Old No. 7: It’s down in this region of our Top 25 that you realize we probably should have made it a Top 10. Not that Brian Fuentes is a bad pitcher, he’s not. It’s just that he has been, in my opinion, miscast for most of his career. He looks like a garden variety lefty specialist -- his semi-sidearm delivery seems tailor-made to sling sliders at dangerous southpaw sluggers and not much else.

Thing is, he’s done quite a bit more than just serve as a lefty specialist. Fuentes closed for the Rockies from 2005-2008, registering more than 20 saves each season. He moved to Los Anaheim in 2009, and he led all of baseball with 48 saves for a playoff team. This is one instance where the save stat fails us -- by looking at the traditional measure of a closer, Fuentes had a terrific year. But look at how Fuentes arrived at those 48 saves, and you’ll conclude it was nothing less than a miracle, a mirage. He struck out only 7.5 batters per nine innings pitched, the worst rate of his career. His ERA+ (112) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (1.92) were his worst since becoming a full-time closer.

But the Angels under Mike Scoscia play a very particular brand of baseball. They don’t score a gaudy amount of runs, but they scrap and claw and fight for every run available. They run the bases with aggressiveness and efficiency. Their starting pitching is always solid if not spectacular, and most of their games are close. Most important, Scoscia is more rigid with his bullpen hierarchy than any manager in the game. He names a guy for the seventh, a guy for the eighth, and a guy for the ninth, and he never wavers from that list. This is why Francisco Rodriguez saved an MLB-record 62 games for Scoscia in 2008 despite his worst strikeout-to-walk and WHIP rates. Just as pitcher wins can be deceiving if you don’t take into account context and opportunity, looking only at saves to measure relievers can leave you with the wrong ideas.

Fuentes lost his job as closer to Fernando Rodney this year, and after the Angels fell out of it he was traded to the Twins. Minnesota didn’t need a closer, so Fuentes adopted the role of lefty specialist, and he did a good job. Time will tell if he ever gets the opportunity to pitch in the spotlight of the ninth inning again, but he’s acquitted himself well there in his career.

24. Ugueth Urbina

Old No. 7: Among the many qualities we look for in a great closer is intimidation. We have an archetype of a big ol’ badass trotting out of the pen, preferably with impressive facial hair and poor hygiene, and mowing down his helpless opposition with nothing but high heat. Not to pick on Goose Gossage even more (because Goose was a great pitcher), but part of why Goose is so beloved is because he matches the archetype. He played the role to perfection.

Now intimidation can come in many forms. You can act like a lunatic, raving and screaming and huffing and puffing before and after each pitch, strikeout or save. These are your Jonathan Papelbons, your Joba Chamberlains, your Fernando Rodneys, your Dennis Eckersleys, your Brian Wilsons. You can look meek and frail, yet shut motherfuckers down for decades with lethal efficiency. This would be the Mariano Rivera model of intimidation.

Or you could go the route of Ugueth Urbina, who combined hard, wicked stuff, a fearsome scowl and genuinely nasty disposition, and an urge to kill people. I’m not even joking about that last part. Urbina is from Venezuela and has a bunch of land there. In 2005 he accused a group of dudes of stealing a firearm. The men were rounded up, hacked with machetes and doused with gasoline. Urbina is currently serving a 14-year term in prison for attempted murder. Combine that with his 237 saves (33rd all-time) and a record of striking out more than one batter per inning, and you can conclude that Ugueth Urbina had the intimidation thing down.

23. Rick Aguilera

bankmeister: Rick Aguilera spent significant time on the Minnesota Twins roster. Unlike few other Twins in our selection, however, he also did time in New York, Boston, and Chicago. Before landing a full-time gig in the bullpen, Aguilera got the nod for nearly 100 big-league starts. Actually, a small chunk of those were right in the middle of his career when he made a rotation curtain call in Minnesota, but it his work late in games that we’ll have a glimpse of today.

Aguilera’s a tough case, namely because there are probably two dozen other guys you could make just as strong a case for, but the thing I like about a guy like Rick Aguilera was that he was a nobody’s-man kind of reliever. That is, he did spend a lot of time with the Twins, but he also spent considerable time relieving in other cities, too, so he isn’t your face-of-the-franchise kinda guy. He doesn’t have dazzling numbers, and in fact, a hefty majority of them are quite pedestrian. What’s more is that his availability was about as consistent as spring weather. But there’s an aspect to his character that’s important not to overlook, and that is that he always made the grade. He was never a guy that would be forever DFA’d and forgotten; his 16 Major League seasons, 732 appearances testify to that.

Since we’ve moved into the numbers, though, it’s important to recognize that the guy had 317 career saves, over 1000 Ks, made three straight trips to the All-Star Game, and was pretty darn impressive in the strikeouts-per-innings-pitched category. So the guy wasn’t your top-three-rotation sort of hurler, and he was never going to pull out the smoke and mirrors, but a guy like Aguilera gives a general manager, a skipper, and a dugout the necessary confidence when it comes time to turn things over the closer. Rick Aguilera. He’s no Kyra Sedgwick, but he gets a spot on our list.

22. Jeff Reardon

Cecil: Jeff Reardon was a good relief pitcher with the Expos who, upon being traded to the Minnesota Twins in 1987, helped that team win a World Series against the heavily favored Saint Louis Cardinals. There you have it: Jeff Reardon’s baseball career in full.

Not really, of course, but I’m eternally suspicious of anything related to the Minnesota Twins. That’s because the very first pack of baseball cards I ever bought had like three of one Twin, name lost to history and a decade or two of hard drug abuse, who sucked, and sucked hard. He stood, bat at ready, glaring balefully at the camera -— look at him on the field like he someone who can play professional baseball. But he couldn’t. No, he couldn’t. Whatever his name was.

Kirby Puckett was an apple-shaped fraud machine who ate live mice. Kent Hrbek suffered from a lack of vowels. Gary Gaetti, well, he smelled like garlic and had sinister, European Socialistic leanings. Dan Gladden was the lead singer of White Lion. There’s always something suspicious going on up north.

So while Jeff Reardon briefly held the Major League Saves record —- along with, at one point, seemingly everyone else on our list -- and while he managed to stick around professional baseball for 16 years, the thing we should remember about Jeff Reardon is that he was arrested a few years back for Armed Robbery but found not guilty by reason of insanity.

21. Antonia Alfonseca

Old No. 7: Is Antonio Alfonseca on this list solely because he has six fingers on each hand? Maybe. If this exercise has proven anything, it’s that you need more than one stat to measure a great relief pitcher. You can’t hang your hat on raw saves alone, or ERA or winning percentage or championships won. Sometimes you need to think outside the box, and the digits that matter most are the ones dangling from your knuckles.

Alfonseca has a condition called polydactyly, which means he has six phalanges on each appendage where you and I only have five. Now extra fingers could come in handy for a lot of tasks -— for instance, if I had 12 fingers with which to type instead of ten, I might have met the original deadline for the essay you’re reading instead of being a year late.

Pitchers use their fingers even more than fat, lazy bloggers. They use them to grip various pitches, and if five fingers can create the drag needed for a nasty big-league changeup, what can six fingers do? THESE PROJECTIONS ARE INCALCULABLE.

Alfonseca was drafted by the Yankees, who wanted to immediately amputate his extra sausages so he’d conform to their bland corporate sameness. Luckily the suits were outvoted by wise baseball men, who saw Alfonseca’s forests of phalanges as little laboratories for new and unseen pitches. All of a sudden, the possibility existed for fastballs that travelled at the speed of sound, curveballs that broke backwards, sliders that could slice concrete to ribbons and cure cancer. And thus, El Pulpo (The Octopus) was born.

Unfortunately, Alfonseca wasn’t much of a pitcher. He grew a prodigious spare tire and gave up a lot of hits, although he did lead the NL in saves with 45 in 2000. Although he never reached the full potential his awesome genetic gift promised us, he did pave the way for future polydactyls to play major league baseball. He’s like Jackie Robinson, only for the millipede race. Some day, another Antonio Alfonseca will have a chance to play ball, give me six and hang 12 because of the bravery and courage of El Pulpo. It is you close-minded, five-fingered bigots who are the true freaks.

I’ve also been told there’s a used custom baseball glove for sale on the eBays.

20. John Smoltz

Old No. 7: Welcome, folks, to the only athlete to appear on not one but two HoG25 lists. John Smoltz was our No. 5 starting pitcher, and that’s the role he’s most associated with. But following a series of injuries and Tommy John surgery that made it difficult for him to stay in the Braves’ rotation for a full season, Smoltz took over for John Rocker as Atlanta’s closer in 2001.

He was not good in that role, but great. He set the NL record with 55 saves in 2002, and added another 91 saves combined in 2003 and 2004. After that, he returned to the starting rotation, where he ended his career last year. Smoltz and Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley are the only two pitchers to have recorded both a 20-win season and a 50-save season. If you know me, you know I’m pretty disdainful of judging pitchers by only tallying wins or saves, and especially by creating magic numbers like 20 wins to signify greatness. But that’s still pretty cool.

In a way, though, Smoltz’s foray into the bullpen signifies how random the numbers attached to elite closers are. Smoltz was a great starter who couldn’t stay healthy, so he spent four years closing and was dominant -— easily the best in his league and among the two or three best in baseball. Curt Schilling did the same for the Red Sox in 2005, taking over for Keith Foulke and serving as a fairly unhittable relief stopper. The fact that great starters transition so easily to the bullpen, yet great closers almost never become great starters, says something about the skill it takes to close games out. It’s not nothing, it is a valuable talent, but closers are often overvalued.

19. Keith Foulke

Old No. 7: Some might wonder why Keith Foulke is listed ahead of others who seem more deserving. It’s simple: I’m a Red Sox fan, I’m incredibly biased, and I like Foulke because he was the closer for the 2004 team that won the World Series. It’s my choice, not yours, and if you disagree with it you’re stupid.

If you want “facts and data” to support this pick, they’re all there. Foulke saved 30 or more games four times for the White Sox, A’s and Red Sox, and in 2003 he led the league with 43. He never walked anyone -— Foulke had a season WHIP under 1.00 four times in his career, which is remarkable even with the relatively low number of innings (and thus small sample sizes) thrown by closers these days. His career WHIP is 1.07. He simply threw strikes and got outs.

In the magical playoff run for the ’04 Sox, Foulke was called on to throw every single night, often when a single mistake would have ended Boston’s season. He hurled six innings in the ALCS against the Yankees, including a harrowing 2 2/3-inning stint in Game Four.

But what’s most important about Keith Foulke is that I was asked my opinion of the 25 top relief pitchers from the last 25 years, and my opinion is he belongs. To this point, no one has belittled that opinion or pointed out other opinions that are contrary to mine. It would be very easy for me to point out how the opinions of others differ from mine, and how others enjoy movies, TV shows or ballplayers that I think are horrible. But out of respect for my friends, I don’t do that. Because I’m not a fucking asshole (Editor's Note: Unsubstantiated). Keith Foulke rules.

18. Francisco Rodriguez

bankmeister: You could say that it’s hard not to like K-Rod. But not for me. I don’t particularly care for K-Rod, but that’s largely attributable to the fact that he molests little Venezuelan boys in the off-season. It’s either that or I don’t like his dumb glasses and his fist pumps and his heavenly finger-pointing, I can’t remember. But I suppose if I were a non-jaded fan of a team that didn’t struggle to not lose 100 games nearly every season, I might have a different perspective. K-Rod, be he a Met or an Angel, is kind of an arbitrary figure. He’s a guy you’d like to have on your team, but since you don’t, he’s always toying with tooldom. Sorry, bro. Facts are facts.

But if you just take a moment at look at his accomplishments, it’s hard not to appreciate what he’s done as a closer in his already-impressive eight seasons in baseball. In eight seasons, Rodriguez has earned himself four All-Star appearances: check. In eight seasons, Rodriguez has been among the conversations for Cy Young considerations, and tallied a new single-season record for saves (62): check. In eight seasons, Rodriguez has saved 40 or more games: check. And in eight seasons, Rodriguez has toyed with tripling his strikeout-versus-walk number, kept his E.R.A. around a cool 2.53, and averaged 74 innings worth of labor per season: check, check, and check.

Need we go on? Fine. His post-season numbers: Francisco Rodriguez has a .556 winning percentage in playoff baseball. He has finished eight games, saved three, struck out 41 while walking only 14, and yes, he does have a ring. In the World Series in which he won that ring, his strikeouts-per-nine-innings number was 13.5. So, there. Ask yourself if he belongs on this list. If you answered no, you’re probably a Canadian.

(Update: It's been a minute since I wrote this, and, as it turns out, opposing batters aren't the only thing that fall victim to Rodriguez's punchouts. Apparently, his father-in-law does, too.

17. Joe Nathan

bankmeister: There are two things that I don’t like about Joe Nathan: 1) He’s a Texan. 2) He pitches for the Minnesota Twins. The irony therein is that I like the Minnesota Twins, but for reasons I’ve never really been able to grasp, they always seem to have the edge on the Royals. The counters to those obviously personal takes are simple: 1) Not every person born in The Lone Star State is a dweezil (see: Lamar, Clark Hunt). 2) The Twins have, for better or for worse, run a pretty darn good organization for a long time. So let’s just dig into the dude’s performance.

Nathan barely squeezes into the top 30 in career saves, but he’s eighth among actives, and also in good company in the form of a multi-player tie for single season. He spent his first four MLB seasons as a San Francisco Giant and he was in the rotation for the first two of those four, going 12-8 over 29 starts. Since moving to the bullpen, though, he’s been super-reliable in terms of availability missing significant time in only 2003, and he averages about 83 innings a season, which is solid. He’s thrown 718 strikeouts to only 262 walks, and, barring any setbacks this spring, he’ll continue to give up a jack only once every 10 outings.

With four All-Star appearances and a handful of close calls in both league MVP and Cy Young races, Nathan’s portfolio warrants inclusion on our list. Add to the fact that he is a perennial front-runner in the games-finished category, and I’d love having Nathan on my team.

(Update: It's been a minute since I wrote this, and, it turns out, there were some setbacks in the spring.)

16. John Wetteland

Cecil: There are going to be a few entries on this list that don't blow your skirt up, and that's fine -- not everyone is Mariano Rivera or Dennis Eckersley. Such is the case with one John Wetteland.

Wetteland didn't amass stunning numbers of saves, didn't experience a long period of dominance and didn't make hitters' knees quake in fear the way some of our other Top 25 guys did, but he did do one thing that most of them didn't: win a World Series MVP award, and for the Yankees no less. One truly great season with the most famous sports franchise in the world (this could be quibbled with, I suppose, but we're jingoists here, so Manchester United and Real Madrid can suck on it) is, as it turns out, enough to gain recognition --at least from three dudes in flyover country -- as one of the Best Closers in Recent Memory.

To be fair, it was a pretty dadgummed good season: 43 saves, Rolaids Relief Man Award, four saves in four games in the Series and seven overall in the playoffs. And the guy did manage to find his way onto three All-Star teams. So, I guess, that makes him better than, say, Steve Bedrosian, but not as good as Bobby Thigpen or Tom Henke. There's worse company to be in.

Also, his current job is with the Mariners as the bullpen coach. It rains a lot in Seattle. So, Wetteland in a wet land, amirite? No? Never mind.

15. Bruce Sutter

Cecil: I’m no fan of the Saint Louis Cardinals. Such is my disdain that I purposefully spell out “St.” when writing about them, on the off chance that a Cardinals fan might see it and get peeved. Yes, Jethro, feel my disdain.

I probably shouldn’t, though, Cubs fandom aside. I grew up far away from the heat of the team’s traditional rivalries, as I’ve mentioned (or maybe I haven’t mentioned it yet? Well, wait until the Lee Smith bit, you’ll see), and my own dear dad was something of a closet Cardinal fan, if by “closet” you mean “team he actually liked more than any other growing up in 1920s and ‘30s California.” Pepper Martin, Ducky Medwick, Dizzy and Daffy-who-wasn’t Dean. Those were his guys. Stan Musial. Ernie Lombardi. I thrilled to tales of their baseballing derring -- do in an era where everyone’s pants seemed a size or two too large.

And yet, for some reason, his appreciation for the Gashouse Gang and the Musial-powered machine that followed eventually left me cold. Thinking back on it, I’m pretty sure I can blame Whitey Hertzog’s powerhouse Cards squads of the 1980s, staffed with guys like Vince Coleman, Jack Clark, Tommy Herr (YOU WERE NO SANDBERG MR. HERR) and Bruce Sutter.

Bruce Sutter was replaced later in the decade by the equally hate-able but unequally bearded Todd Worrell, but still, fuck Bruce Sutter. He’d been a Cub, and was a great Cub, but they traded him for Leon Durham and another dude who wasn’t Keith Moreland. That right there would be reason enough to despise the guy -— thanks for fielding that fucking grounder against the Padres, Durham, you begoggled coke snarfer -— but he didn’t even have the decency to fade into obscurity when he left Chicago. Rather, he continued to be what he was: baseball’s most dominant reliever.

Sutter led the NL in Saves every year but one from 1979 until 1984, and topped the majors in that category three times during that span. I’m not nearly as conversant with advanced stats as Ol’ No. 7 -— thus my meatheaded insistence on claiming Goose Gossage as the toughest goddamn fireman of all the histories, fancy numbers be damned -— but Sutter’s ERA + in 1984, the year he set a then Major League single season record with 45 saves, was 229. I’m pretty sure that’s good. He won the Cy Young in ’79. He made six All Star teams. In 1977 he struck out Gary Carter, Ellis Valentine and Larry Parrish on 9 pitches, and was at the time only the 19th pitcher in baseball history to accomplish such a feat. He also popularized the split-finger fastball, which is probably his biggest legacy, seeing as his Save records have fallen by the wayside.

He’s in the Hall of Fame, and I can grudgingly accept, after many minutes of rumination, that he deserves to be. And yet. Fuck him, fuck his chin curtain and fuck the Cardinals of Saint Louis.

14. Bobby Thigpen

bankmeister: Bobby Thigpen makes for a tough case. For a lot of players – position and pitcher alike – it’s tough to look at a guy that didn’t contribute 12, 13-plus seasons to the Bigs, and say, “That dude was awesome.” Now, you look at a guy like Thigpen, who debuted in 1986, which was right in the thick of when the actual reliever role was no longer defined as the guy that came in to spell the starter and hopefully finish the game. It was no longer a cloudy sort of role, wherein guys would sometimes come in to close. No, by 1986, teams were using starters, middle relievers, and closers. It’s not quite like today where you have a bunch of middle relievers, a setup guy, and a closer, but still: Thigpen’s role was clear. He started zero games as a professional baseball player. His job was to bring ‘er home, if you will. So you look at his career save total, which is 201, which ain’t bad, but it’s also 38th on the all-time list.

So the next thing you might look at would be innings pitched. Thigpen delivered 568.2 total through nine seasons. That’s an average of 31 innings a season, which tells me two things: 1) You’d better’ve dealt with some injuries, and 2) You’d better’ve closed some dang games. Luckily for Yancy Tyler Bobby Thigpen, he did both. Thigpen had some incredible years. Like 1990, where, as a 26-year-old, he saved 57 games. Fifty-seven! Now, Francisco Rodriguez took that mark two years ago when he saved 62, so he holds the number-one spot now in the single-season-save-total category. But the Anaheim teams for which Rodriguez played were far superior to anything happening in the South Side in the early ‘90s. Sure, the White Sox won 94 games that season. They were good. But they weren’t perennial contenders like these Angels clubs are.

More importantly: Mariano Rivera saved 53 contests six years ago. He’ll never touch Thigpen or Rodriguez, or Eric Gagne, or John Smoltz for that matter. Eat some steaming pig feces, Mariano Rivera. For the rough purposes of this particular entry, you blow.

Anyway, Thigpen averaged 31 saves a year over his nine years, and that’s including a total of two saves over his final four seasons, so the point is: For one quick, impressive flash in the pan that was about five years long, Bobby Thigpen was one of the best 25 relievers of the past 25 years. It has been said.

13. Dave Righetti

bankmeister: Dave “The Big Ragu” Righetti is a name that I will always associate with baseball play-by-play announcers of the 1980s. I don’t know why but I always admired the guy. Righetti was taken in the first round of the ’77 draft by the Texas Rangers, but for whatever reason, he debuted in the bigs as a Yankee. Rightfully so, Righetti won the A.L. Rookie of the Year award in 1980 when he started 15 games, logged 100-plus innings, and registered a 2.05 E.R.A. From there it was just a matter of time before Righetti would become one of the best relievers of the decade, earning back-to-back All-Star bids, along with MVP and Cy Young considerations in 1986.

It was in that fantastic season when the southpaw logged eight wins, finished 68 games, and earned 47 saves in the process. He did so with a 2.45 E.R.A., 83 strikeouts, and only 35 BBs. Throughout his career, however, Righetti averaged just over 100 innings of service per season, and just shy of 100 strikeouts per campaign, which basically identifies why the dude was as solid as he was: He got guys out with noteworthy consistency over a long period of time. Though he never won himself a ring, he did go 3-0 in post-season appearances, tallying 18 fans to seven free bases.

Dave Righetti is also the proud owner of one of my all-time favorite stats: He, until Dennis Eckersley joined him, was the only pitcher in baseball history to pitch a shutout and lead the league in saves in his career. That right there’s impressive. I don’t care who you are. Dave Righetti and Meatballs: worthy of HoG25 inclusion.

12. Troy Percival

Old No. 7: Right around here is where the quality of closers takes a serious upswing. If Percival was a hitter, he might be Steve Garvey -— not quite a Hall of Famer but a big name who put up good numbers for a long time.

Most closers flame out. They dominate for a short time, and then either their arm blows up or they simply can’t get the job done anymore. Eric Gagne, Bobby Thigpen, Mitch Williams and David Aardsma all had a huge year or two, but the rest of their careers were completely pedestrian. Look at the list of closers for the 30 MLB teams coming out of spring training, and then look at it in September. In an average year, half of the list turns over. Half. Guys either get hurt or get fired, and it’s not just rookies and journeymen. Jonathan Broxton began 2009 as arguably baseball’s best closer and the top pick at the position in fantasy baseball. The Dodgers finished the year allowing Hong-Chih Kuo and Kenley Jansen to finish games, while a healthy Broxton, in his prime at 26, filled a mop-up role. It comes and it goes in this game.

That’s what separates one-hit wonders from truly exceptional closers like Troy Percival. Percy nailed it down for nine full seasons in Los Anaheim, averaging almost 35 saves a year while the Angels transitioned from also-rans to contenders and finally 2002 World Series champs under Mike Scoscia. Percival answered the bell every time for almost a decade, which doesn’t seem like much until you measure him against his peers. Percival was a rock.

11. Rollie Fingers

bankmeister: Roland Glen Fingers is one of those bubble athletes that appear in each of these selections that flirts with our pre-determined window of time. Most of Fingers’ impressive career happened before our window opened, and I’ve no problem admitting that. I’ll own my selection, and I’ll state that some of my desire to select him was the ‘stache. You’d be a fool not to give that waxed piece of history its due props. It was the complete pitcher that threw me for a loop, though, every time he took the hill. I saw Fingers pitch quite a few times as a youngster and I was old enough to know that people just don’t come out of the womb looking like that, so I imagine that a part of me wondered if a person could invest time and energy into a look and still be an effective game-time performer. Turns out, a person can.

Funny thing about Fingers, though, was that he was, in my pea brain, a Milwaukee Brewer, pure and simple. It was a time when, to me, athletes simply logged a career in one uniform, and to be fair to myself, a lot of guys did. But imagine my shattered understanding of professional sports when I later learned that the mustachioed one had served nearly a decade with the A’s, another handful of years with San Diego, and only, at the end of his career, did he become a Brewer.

The numbers on Fingers are lovable, however, even if he hung up the spikes near the beginning of our segment. He won, as an A, three consecutive World Series, earned eight All-Star-Game appearances, and one Cy Young Award. Over 1700 innings of service, he netted 341 saves (good for Top 10 all time), tallied a career 2.90 E.R.A, and 1300 strikeouts. There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love and respect Rollie Fingers, and those that get stabbed in the appendix. Unless of course, you had your appendix removed before you had an opinion on the man.

That's 25-11, kids. If you remember the drill, we'll be back tomorrow for the remaining 10. Hope you enjoyed. Read more

A Vote For Pedro?

Coming into this World Series (that's the World Series of Baseball, not to be confused with the ongoing poker reruns), I felt that the Yankees had the better club and would win their 27th championship. Not much that happened last night changes my gut feeling, although a few things surprised me. I knew the Phillies had a deep, patient, AL-caliber lineup, but the fact that they could run C.C. Sabathia's pitch count up in seven innings and get to New York's vulnerable middle relievers was eye-opening. I also couldn't believe that Cliff Lee was that good against the Yankee bats. How in the world did this dude go 7-9 in the AL before his midseason trade to Philly?

I know the Phillies have an excellent ball club, but my biggest doubts concerning their title hopes lie in the remainder of their starting rotation, specifically tonight's pitcher Pedro Martinez. How can a guy who was unemployed for most of the summer after his disastrous four-year stint as a Met be the No. 2 starter for a Series contender? Did you see Pedro pitch the last two seasons? He was terrible.

I know, he's been solid in Philly thus far, and he helped clinch the NLCS with seven innings of shutout ball against the Dodgers last week. But seriously, what can you expect out of Pedro tonight, against baseball's most potent offense?

The media loves the idea of old guys shining in huge spots when everyone has written them off--this is because the media is packed with old guys. Cue Brett Favre leaping into the arms of a lineman, or Tom Watson chugging down a British Open fairway. If Pedro comes out tonight and mows down the Yankees, giving his team two road wins with the next three games scheduled for Philly, the aged sports-hack gallery will shower him with accolades. For his "grit" and "poise" and "defiance of Father Time," or whatever cliches they'll employ.

I'm not saying this can't happen, I'm just saying I seriously doubt that Pedro won't get hammered this evening. I don't want him to fail--Pedro is one of my favorite pitchers of all time and I'd love to see the Yankees lose this Series. I just can't suppress my rational side to allow my hopeful romantic self to believe in Pedro tonight.

What I can believe in, however, is the probability that the Phillies will pound A.J. Burnett just as hard as the Yankees abuse Pedro, and that this game will get thrown to the bullpens, and that Philly could end up winning anyway. That's an outcome I can get behind that doesn't involve a belief in unicorns, UFOs or Pedro turning back the clock.
Read more

The HoG25: The 25 Best (Starting) Pitchers of the Last 25 Years (Part Two)

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Yesterday we brought you installment number one of The HoG25's pitcher selection. We know by now that all two of our readers are familiar with what we're talking about when we refer to both the series and the individual features, so no explanations are necessary.

For the record -- and if you give it some thought you might understand -- determining those that will be included, as well as those who will not has not been an easy process. We've basically made selections, made fun of one another for making such selections, and then griped about in what order we'll list the selections we were just bitching about. It's good times all around, and we do it all for you. So hop past the skip and see who made the cut. Happy reading.

10. Kevin Brown

Old No. 7: The most overlooked pitcher of the past 25 years is Kevin Brown, bar none.

Brown wasn’t overlooked by baseball men, who put him on six All-Star teams and signed him to the first $100 million contract in baseball history in 1998. But he never won a Cy Young Award, despite 211 career wins and 2397 strikeouts. Brown was the ace of the 1997 Marlins that won the World Series (although he pitched like shit in that Series) and the Padres that made it to the Fall Classic the following year.

Brown threw a killer sinker, a gravity-sucking fastball that batters beat into the earth time and time and time again. In the parlance of the times, Kevin Brown’s sinker was heavy. It broke your bat and hurt your hands. For a span of about eight years, Brown’s sinker was right up there with Mariano Rivera’s cutter, Randy Johnson’s slider and Pedro Martinez’s changeup as the best single pitches in the game.

Best of all, Kevin Brown was one of the biggest assholes baseball has ever seen. His blind rage toward everyone —- opponents, teammates, umpires, fans, reporters, Joe Torre’s office wall -— rivals the pure unfiltered hate of one Barry Bonds. Barry was a dick, but even Barry never pulled a gun on his neighbor over a pile of lawn clippings. That particular delivery was trademarked by Kevin Brown.

9. Mike Mussina

Cecil: A few years back, Peter “20 Dolla Bill, Y’all” alluded to a major league pitcher -— a college-educated major league pitcher, no less -— with a big-time club who was a virulent racist in his private life. As far as I know, the actual name never came to light, but folks widely assumed that it was Mike Mussina.
He was basically the only choice anyone could come up with, because he was a Yankee and had a degree in Economics from Stanford. Is it true? Maybe. I honestly have no idea. Maybe Gammons was just letting his Sox-lovin’ Freak Flag fly. Or maybe Moose displayed a collection of genuine Nazi daggers in his locker. What is true, indisputably true, is that Mike Mussina is on the short list of the best pitchers I’ve ever seen in my life.

Let’s start with the fact that he owns the American League career record for most consecutive seasons with 11 or more victories, an impressive 17. He is the oldest first-time 20-game winner in Major League history, having hit the mark in 2008, his final season. His overall stats -— 250+ wins, overall career ERA under 3.70 -— put him in Hall of Fame company. Part of the story with Mussina, though, is how close he came to some spectacular career marks: He nearly pitched a perfect game on a number of occasions and finished in the top 5 of Cy Young balloting six times, but never closed the deal on either. Nor did he ever win a World Series, even though he appeared in two with the Yankees.

But he did spend his entire career in the Majors’ toughest division, the AL East, so maybe we need to look at his career through that particular prism. If he’d pitched in the National League he might have 300 wins. Even if he is a racist. A racist that likes crossword puzzles.

8. Roy Halladay

Old No. 7: It’s a shame that Halladay has wasted his career playing for unappreciative simpletons in Canada. Had he worked in an American market, even a backwater like Pittsburgh or Kans— I mean Milwaukee, he’d have multiple Cy Youngs and the adoration of millions of actual baseball fans. Instead he saddles up in front of 12,000 bored hockey freaks every fifth night and rockets BBs toward home plate.

The complete game is a lost art, we all know this and hear it all the time. No one finishes what they start, and today’ pitchers are perfectly content to put in their five or six and hand it over to the bullpen. Let’s all ignore the fact that this is the most effective way to win a game -— by using your freshest arms and maximizing platoon matchups late in a tight contest. It does seem less manly to pitch less than nine innings, compared to the old days.

Cy Young won 511 games, we all know that number. But ol’ Cy completed 749 games. Chew on that for a minute. Only three pitchers in history (Young, Nolan Ryan and Don Sutton) have ever notched more than 749 starts. But that was back in the dead-ball era, a time of one-man rotations, polio and unsliced bread.

In 1972 Steve Carlton posted one of the best seasons a pitcher has ever had. He went 27-10 with a 1.97 ERA, 310 strikeouts in 346 innings, and 30 complete games for a Phillies team that only won 59 games. Two years later Catfish Hunter finished 30 starts for the Yankees, the last time a pitcher achieved 30 CG. Once the five-man rotation took hold, league leaders in CGs dipped into the teens. Bert Blyleven’s 24 in ’85, Ron Guidry’s 21 in ’83 and Fernando Valenzuela’s 20 in ’86 are the last three times someone has exceeded 20 CG.

Randy Johnson’s 12 complete games in 1999 mark the last time a starter even hit double figures. Halladay has come close, completing nine games in 2003 and again last year, but even a bulldog like Doc fails to finish even a third of his starts despite leading the AL in CGs five times.

Does this make Halladay less of a man than Cy Young, or Steve Carlton, or even Randy Johnson? I don’t think so. Lots of things in baseball are different these days. Players in the 1800s didn’t wear mitts or batting helmets, pitchers in the 1960s had the advantage of a higher mound and bigger zone, and up until last year you could gobble as many amphetamines as you wished in the clubhouse. The game evolves, and even though the endless parade of relievers that Tony LaRussa imposed upon us is occasionally annoying, it’s always better when you see the best players facing one another. And without a doubt, today’s relief specialists and closers give batters stiffer competition in the ninth than a gassed starter.

Unless that starter is Roy Halladay, Arvada West High School Class of 1995. Halla!

7. Tom Glavine

Cecil: It’s hard to get worked up about Tom Glavine. He just isn’t that kind of pitcher. He also seems like kind of a boring dude, someone whose idea of a really rockin’ Saturday night involves a church barbecue. Nothing against churches, or barbecue, but you know he’s wearing pleated Dockers right now and drinking a glass of room-temperature skim milk.



Maybe that’s why he’s kinda flown under the radar when the sports talk turns to great pitchers of recent vintage -— he just did what he did, which was pile up double-digit wins almost every single year of his career for a team (the Atlanta Braves, in case you’re forgetful) that made the playoffs on a nearly seasonal basis. He never overpowered anyone like John Smoltz nor was he possessed of the mystic pitching skills of Greg Maddux; his superpower was consistency. He won 20 games five times, a pair of Cy Young Awards and led the league in games started on six occasions, including the final four years of his tenure in Atlanta.
He reminds me, in a way, of Don Sutton. A guy who had some excellent individual seasons but reached the 300 win plateau largely because he was good at being good, at sticking around without losing his game. Well, there was some controversy about whether Sutton deserved election to the Hall of Fame. There won’t be any with Tom Glavine.

6. Curt Schilling

Old No. 7: Throw out the bloody sock (please, it’s gross). Throw out the political dalliances, especially the current prospective run for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Throw out the blogging, the babbling, the bullshit and the faux humility. Get rid of all that distracting garbage, and what’s left is a borderline Hall of Fame career for Curtis Montague Schilling.

Hall of Fame? Are you serious? He only won 216 games, while the following gentlemen are excluded from Cooperstown with more career victories: Joe Niekro (221), Jerry Koosman (222), Luis Tiant (229), Frank Tanana (240), Dennis Martinez (245), Jack Morris (254), Jim Kaat (283), Bert Blyleven (287) and Tommy John (288)? That’s true, and as an aside I think Tiant, Blyleven and John deserve entry while Martinez, Morris and Kaat all have legitimate cases. But let’s look beyond the overvalued win count, and get into what made Schilling so effective.

Only 16 men have struck out more than 3000 batters, and every one of them is in the Hall with a couple exceptions. Blyleven is left out, despite the fifth-most K’s ever —- a fucking travesty. And Unit, Rocket, Maddux, Pedro, Schilling and Smoltz are not yet eligible.

Beyond simply compiling gaudy strikeout numbers, however, Schilling, has the 15th-best strikeout per 9 innings pitched figure for men who have thrown more than 1000 innings at 8.6. Throughout his career Schilling was able to get his whiffs -— when he was young and erratic in Baltimore and Houston, when he was maturing in Philly, when he was peaking in Arizona, and when he was fading in Boston.

Many masters of the strikeout, however, are inefficient pitchers. Nolan Ryan is famous for striking out more batters than anyone in history. But Nolan also walked more batters, threw more wild pitches, allowed more stolen bases, and yielded more hits per 9 IP than any man who ever pitched.

Schilling’s ratio of 4.4 strikeouts per walk is the second-best in baseball history. He hit only 52 batters in his career, in over 3200 innings -- Carlos Zambrano, Kerry Wood and Schilling’s old teammate Bronson Arroyo have all topped 20 HBP in a single season. Schilling simply never gave you a free pass. In this era of emphasizing on-base percentage, with more and more teams taking pitches, working counts and trying to boot starters early, Schilling pounded the zone relentlessly and forced you to hit your way on. If he would ever shut up about it, he might pick up a few more fans outside New England.

5. John Smoltz

Bankmeister: This 1996 Cy Young winner had the luxury of pitching for arguably the best rotation and the best team of the 1990s. Those “best”s aren’t measured by championships but rather season-by-season performances. Those Atlanta Braves teams of the ‘90s were a force seldom before seen, and much of their success was based on the notion of building successful baseball franchises through superior pitching. Naturally, the Braves had other good things going for them, like Mike Cox’s uncle Bobby, and John Schuerholz in the upper decks, not to mention some impressive sticks. But it was their pitching that set them apart, and the Smoltzenator certainly delivered.

In that decade, Smoltz averaged over 14 wins per campaign. He kept an earned-run average below three for four of the five seasons, and below four in all but one. He also struck out 1,893 batters while walking all of 669. And, in addition to nabbing that Cy, he earned three All-Star appearances, an N.L.C.S. MVP, and twice had a league-leading won-loss ratio. If then, we were charged with assigning one word to Mr. Smoltz, it would be efficiency. And that’s a concept that, for Smoltz, bled into the 2000s, when he, for a time, transitioned to the bullpen. In 2002, he led the N.L. with 55 saves. The following two years, he put up 45 and 44 more. But he wasn’t done there: Returning to the rotation in 2005, Smoltz quietly put together season-win totals of 14, 16, and 14.

One could argue, and I do, that fewer pitchers over the last 25 years have taken the mound, and delivered, with a greater efficiency, greater productivity, and greater versatility than John Smoltz.

4. Randy Johnson

Bankmeister: I’m probably the least qualified member of the Iron Triangle to write about Randy Johnson, given that he has spent a lot of time in the National League, and therefore, been mostly distant from my baseball networks. I can, nevertheless, tell you a few things about the Unit. He’s 1) a very large, very ugly man, 2) a southpaw, 3) probably had the best heater in our lifetime, and 4) been an amazing feat of pitching for over 20 years. And now that we’ve crept into the top five, it’s more difficulter to point out exactly what these guys have done, simply because they’re better known.

But in the end, the numbers don’t lie; you can start with them on either end. He’s got a career .646 win-loss percentage, a World Series championship ring, a 3.29 E.R.A., nearly 5000 strikeouts, 37 shutouts, 100 complete games, 10 All-Star appearances, five –- that’s five -– Cy Youngs (not to mention one from each league), a World Series MVP, and a Triple Crown for starters. In that 2002 Triple Crown season, by the way, he K’d 334 batters and finished the year with a 2.32 E.R.A. Unheard of. In fact, in the stretch from 1999-2002, he won four consecutive Cys, and during that time, struck out 1,417 hitters, which, quite frankly, is insane. It’s more than some guys on this list did in their entire careers.

What more can you say about a pitcher? What else is there to accomplish? He’s already over the 300-win mark, he’s thrown a perfect game -– May 2004, and became the oldest to do so -– a no-hitter, won a championship, defeated every club in the Bigs at least once, which, by the way, includes a smooth 20-9 record against the Royals, in case you were wondering. There’s no mistaking that Johnson is one of the best pitchers baseball has ever seen, a lock for this list, and a guarantee for baseball’s Hall of Fame.

3. Pedro Martinez

Old No. 7: I don’t know how much time you spend thinking about the essential point of baseball—is it to pitch or to hit? Is it scoring runs or preventing them? It’s often said that baseball is the only sport in which the defense starts the play with the ball. In this way pitchers dictate the action, but the current chapter of baseball gives most of the advantage to the hitters.

We may have banned steroids, but batters are still allowed to cover themselves with body armor and hang over the inside portion of the plate. Umpires rarely call a strike above the belt buckle. Most new ballparks are built to encourage extra-base hits and eliminate pop-up foulouts. Good hitters have found happiness and comfort in their workplace, the batter’s box.

Pedro Martinez’s finest skill, among the many he has displayed in his career, is the ability to destroy that comfort level.

Through pitch selection, change in velocity and movement, Pedro kept batters off balance from the first pitch. In his heyday he could bring serious gas, with his fastball exceeding 95 mph. His curve was tight and its break was measured in feet, not inches. But it was his changeup that generated preposterous strikeout numbers and made batters look foolish and miserable.

Pedro manufactured the rotational force in spite of his mortal physical attributes—he stands a mere five foot ten and might weigh 170 pounds soaking wet. His only notable anatomical traits are his fingers, which are insanely long. If you saw Pedro walking down the street, you’d be taken aback by those fingers (if you weren’t first shocked by his Jheri-curl mullet or the human dwarf he carries in his bat bag). Those phalanges gave Pedro’s cutter severe east-west shift, opened a trap-door on his curve, and mashed the brakes on that change. Being able to almost entirely wrap your digits around a baseball is quite an asset.

ESPN Classic and MLB Network occasionally show a Pedro start from his Boston days, and if you ever get the opportunity to watch one do so. You’ll see a magician on the mound, a composer of a nine-inning symphony. If you’re one of those evil sabermetric analysts that are sucking the soul out of the game (I kid), gander at his game-by-game diary of the 1999 season. Among the many incredible seasons registered by the pitchers on this list, that one stands alone.

2. Greg Maddux

Cecil: Greg Maddux should never have been.

Think about it. The dude is what, 6 foot, maybe? And he probably came into the league at around 150 pounds. He looked more like the clubhouse attendant than a future Hall of Fame pitcher —- no small curse in a sport where “looking the part” still matters to a significant number of decision-makers. But Maddux, the son of a Vegas blackjack dealer, had an advantage over his peers at the position that may have been unmatched in baseball history: his brain.

The stories are legion. Wade Boggs mentioned that Maddux must have had “a crystal ball in his glove,” because he seemed like he knew what the hitter was going to do before the hitter did. His preternatural accuracy and discipline allowed him to place pitches within centimeters of where they needed to be. One of his former teammates told of a time when Maddux, sitting in the dugout, said “looks like we might need to call an ambulance for the first base coach.” A swing later, the first base coach had taken a line drive to the chest. He played cat-and-mouse with some of the best hitters of all time, frustrating the likes of Barry Bonds into snarly incompetence. He played the mental game at simply a different level.

You want stats? The man’s lifetime ERA was 3.16. Over 23 seasons. He came as close as anyone has to Bob Gibson’s single season record, carding a nearly unfathomable 1.56 in ’94. He followed that up with a 1.63 in ’95. He won 355 games. He owns the career mark for most Gold Gloves by a pitcher. He led the league in BB per 9 innings 9 flippin’ times. He’s got four CY Young awards. And he did it all with only one season (’98) over 200 strikeouts.

Fireballers make the headlines, grab our attention, stir our poetic impulses. But there hasn’t been a better pitcher over the last 25 seasons than Greg Maddux.

1. Roger Clemens

Bankmeister: There are two things about Roger Clemens that are annoying. Well, at least two. The first is that 18 other teams passed him up in the 1983 draft before the Boston Red Sox nabbed him. The other is that he lives up to the old my-hero-is-an-asshole persona. I of course have never met the man, but, given the number of incidents he’s been involved with in recent years, asshole is the best word I can come up with. That’s not to say that he’s less assholey than any other hurler on here, but it’s a bit unfortunate that the hands-down, unanimous lock for the best pitcher in the last 25 years is also the sure-fire, you betcha’ most widely acknowledged asshole of the bunch.

I suppose you could have a conversation about the man’s incredible career without bringing that up, but I think you sort of have to. Roger Clemens has been two things: a phenomenal pitcher, and a massive prick.

Unlike the career of Randy Johnson, I’ve been in the semi-know regarding Clemens’ seasons and accomplishments for most of the time he’s been around. The first thing that comes to mind is how astonishing it is that his career went on for so long after his 12 years in Boston. For whatever reason, it just didn’t occur to me that dudes would still be able to pitch for 20 years anymore, let alone 24, which is stupid considering the shift in middle-relief roles that was, in some sense, congruent with the time in which he was drafted.

But he had consecutive 20+ win seasons in Boston. He took home Cy Youngs in both of them. He had impressive E.R.A.s. He struck out lots of dudes, and he won an MVP, not to mention Rookie of the Year in ’84. And before he moved on to Canadia, he nabbed one more Young. He hung around as a Blue Jay for two years, won 20+ games in consecutive years, a pair of Cy Youngs, struck out a bunch of dudes, and had even better E.R.A.s And then, asshole that he is, he became a Yankee. His third year in the pinstripes, he went 20-3, an .870 win-loss percentage, which earned him another Young. He would then go to Houston, which was supposed to be the grand coming home, win a championship, hang it up, call ‘er done, etc. Over three seasons as an Astro, he went 38-18, had impressive earned-run averages all the while, and even won himself, you guessed it, Cy Young number seven, the most ever.

And those Houston teams were good. They lost to the Cards in the 2004 NLCS, but earned redemption by beating them in it the following year, only to lose to the White Sox. It was a fantastic run, but it was over. At least until Clemens decided to re-join the Yankees, like an asshole, in mid-June 2007. He added a few more wins to his totals, a few dozen more strikeouts, and called it a day. We think. Make no mistake, though: Roger Clemens is, bar none, the finest pitcher we’ve seen in the last 25 years.

And there you have it, folks. The truth has been spoken. We assume that you either a) thoroughly enjoyed that, b) fell asleep before the jump, c) have major disagreements with at least one thing in the piece, or d) some combination of the above. Please: Let us know.
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