HAVE YOUR SAY.
Join us in The Bullpen, where the members of the Scientific Inquirer community get to shape the site’s editorial decision making. We’ll be discussing people and companies to profile on the site. On Wednesday, August 17 at 5:30pm EST, join us on Discord and let’s build the best Scientific Inquirer possible.
Just a quick drive-by Data Dependent. The trade of Josh Hader, one of baseball’s premier closers, to the San Diego Padres got me thinking about how the current crop of saves leaders stack up against the all-time greats. And while there’s no shortage of new (and old) stats that allow you to compare players between eras (WAR, waaWL%, WHIP, WPA, cWPA, the list is endless), I was curious about how much pressure they were under while registering their save (or blown saves).
I turned to baseball-reference.com‘s handy Game Entering Leverage Index (gmLI) as my key data point. The definition provided by the site is as follows:
- Solely for relief appearances, this is the average of each appearances opening leverage index weighted by the batters faced in that outing. - The average pressure the pitcher or batter saw in this game or season. - 1.0 is average pressure, below 1.0 is low pressure and above 1.0 is high pressure.
So here are the top 30 closers all-time according to total saves and their gmLI:
| NAME | SAVES | INNINGS | gmLI |
| Mariano Rivera | 652 | 1283.2 | 1.81 |
| Trevor Hoffman | 601 | 1089.1 | 1.85 |
| Lee Smith | 478 | 1289.1 | 1.8 |
| Francisco Rodriguez | 437 | 976 | 1.63 |
| John Franco | 424 | 1245.2 | 1.74 |
| Billy Wagner | 422 | 903 | 1.65 |
| Craig Kimbrel | 392 | 667.1 | 1.71 |
| Dennis Eckersley | 390 | 3285.2 | 1.73 |
| Joe Nathan | 377 | 923.1 | 1.63 |
| Kenley Jansen | 374 | 745.1 | 1.6 |
| Jonathan Papelbon | 368 | 725.2 | 1.7 |
| Jeff Reardon | 367 | 1132.1 | 1.83 |
| Troy Percival | 358 | 708.2 | 1.8 |
| Randy Myers | 347 | 884.2 | 1.87 |
| Rollie Fingers | 341 | 1701.1 | 1.95 |
| John Wetteland | 330 | 765 | 1.81 |
| Francisco Cordero | 329 | 824.2 | 1.58 |
| Fernando Rodney | 327 | 933 | 1.52 |
| Roberto Hernandez | 326 | 1071.1 | 1.55 |
| Huston Street | 324 | 680 | 1.62 |
| Jose Mesa | 321 | 1548.2 | 1.45 |
| Todd Jones | 319 | 1072 | 1.54 |
| Rick Aguilera | 318 | 1291.1 | 1.75 |
| Aroldis Chapman | 315 | 630 | 1.64 |
| Robb Nen | 314 | 715 | 1.66 |
| Tom Henke | 311 | 789.2 | 1.78 |
| Rich Gossage | 310 | 1809.1 | 1.56 |
| Jeff Montgomery | 304 | 868.2 | 1.68 |
| Doug Jones | 303 | 1128.1 | 1.58 |
| Jason Isringhausen | 300 | 1007.2 | 1.44 |
I even made a pretty chart to make things easier to digest.
Back to Hader and today’s crop of Firemen and their career numbers. Here are the top closers and their gmLI:
| NAME | SAVES | INNINGS | gmLI |
| Josh Hader | 125 | 318.1 | 1.85 |
| Taylor Rogers | 78 | 358 | 1.55 |
| Edwin Diaz | 199 | 382.2 | 1.82 |
| Jordan Romano | 50 | 134.2 | 1.72 |
| Emmanuel Clase | 49 | 139.1 | 1.51 |
| Kenley Jansen | 374 | 745.1 | 1.6 |
| Daniel Bard | 54 | 388.1 | 1.61 |
| Liam Hendriks | 100 | 625 | 1.42 |
| Ryan Pressly | 65 | 511.2 | 1.37 |
| Gregory Soto | 40 | 183 | 1.43 |
And another nifty chart:
Surprisingly, there isn’t that much wiggle room between the top of the crop when it comes to how difficult the situation was when they entered the game. That said, if we’re going by gmLI (which we are), the winner’s trophy goes to Rollie Fingers, who was not only one of the game’s premier closers, but also had the best moustache of all time.
IMAGE CREDIT: mlb.com