(this is an updated version of an article I posted originally on December 3, 2015)
In the stacked 2017 Hall of Fame ballot sit three premier relief pitchers, three of the five all-time saves leaders. Two of the three (Trevor Hoffman and Billy Wagner) are on the ballot for the second time, one (Lee Smith) for the 15th and final time. Hoffman, whose 601 career saves are second only to Mariano Rivera, has an outside chance to be a member of the class of 2017. He debuted on the ballot last year with 67% of the vote, just 8 points shy of the 75% needed for induction. In this piece, I’ll take a look at Hoffman’s chances as well as the long-shot hopes of Wagner and the nearly finished hopes of Smith.
Let’s start with the basics, taking a look at the top 5 all-time in saves plus the totals of the five relief pitchers already enshrined with a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown.
Rank Pitcher Career Saves Notes 1 Mariano Rivera 652 Eligible for Hall in 2019 2 Trevor Hoffman 601 67% of the vote in 2016 (2nd year eligible in 2017) 3 Lee Smith 478 34% of vote in 2016 (15th year eligible in 2017) 4 John Franco 424 4.6% of vote in 2011 (no longer eligible) 5 Billy Wagner 422 10.5% of the vote in 2016 (2nd year eligible in 2017) 6 Dennis Eckersley 390 Hall of Fame class of 2004 (1st year on ballot) 13 Rollie Fingers 341 Hall of Fame class of 1992 (2nd year on ballot) 23 Goose Gossage 310 Hall of Fame class of 2008 (9th year on ballot) T-26 Bruce Sutter 300 Hall of Fame class of 2006 (13th year on ballot) 39 Hoyt Wilhelm 228 Hall of Fame class of of 1985 (8th year on ballot)
(Incidentally, I did not include John Smoltz on this list: he spent just four seasons as a relief pitcher. He was an excellent one, with 154 saves, but his Hall of Fame resume rests predominantly on his years as a starter).
Before I started researching this piece, my gut reaction on Hoffman, Smith and Wagner was “none of the above.” It’s not that they didn’t have great careers but, when evaluating closers, I’ve always felt that success in big games was paramount to a Cooperstown resume.
Mariano Rivera (who will nearly unanimously gain entry to Cooperstown in 2019) won five World Series with the Yankees and was by far the most valuable player over the totality of those championships. Rollie Fingers was a crucial cog in the Oakland A’s three titles in the 1970’s (and was on the mound to save the clinching games in both 1972 and 1974). Dennis Eckersley was on the mound when the A’s swept the Giants in 1989. Goose Gossage on the bump for the Yanks to close the 1978 title, Bruce Sutter on the hill when the Cardinals won in 1982, and Hoyt Wilhelm saved Game 3 of the New York Giants’ four-game sweep of the 1954 Series.
For every baseball fan (and voter), a Hall of Fame player means something slightly different. When I think about relief pitchers in particular, specific images pop into mind. For the four living Hall of Fame closers, the images are of celebrating championships, jumping into the arms of their catchers.
Let me share the indelible memory etched into my brain about Trevor Hoffman:
It was October 1, 2007, I was sitting in the sports book at the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas with a great friend of mine, John Zentner. We were watching the Wild Card tiebreaker game between the San Diego Padres and Colorado Rockies. The Rockies were on an amazing run, having captured 13 of their last 14 contests, finishing the 162-game regular season schedule tied with the Pads at 90-72.
The Friars had their best pitcher, Jake Peavy, on the mound in the winner-take-all game; Peavy would win the Cy Young that season. But Coors Field is often unkind to hurlers and Peavy was tagged for 6 runs in in 6.1 innings. The Pads also managed 6 runs in the first nine innings and the contest went to extra frames. In the top of the 13th, San Diego scored two runs and manager Bud Black brought in the team’s long-time relief ace to close the game and send his teammates to the playoffs. In memory serves, one of the announcers referred to “potential future Hall of Famer Trevor Hoffman” as the man entrusted to finish the job.
John and I both had a few shekels on the home-team Rockies and it looked like we had losing tickets but I leaned over and reassured him: “Trevor Hoffman is not a Hall of Famer. The Rockies are still in this game.”
Hoffman was already the all-time leader in saves (with 524 at the time) but I had a few games fresh on the brain. He had blown a save against the Brewers two days earlier in a game that could have wrapped up the playoffs for the Padres. I also recalled two saves in he blew in three days to my hometown New York Mets in August. There was the 2006 All-Star game and a two-out, two-run triple by Michael Young to blow the game for the National League. And of course there was Game 3 of the 1998 World Series when the Padres, down two games to none and playing at home, desperately needed a win. Scott Brosius’ two-run home run resulted in a blown save by Hoffman; the Yankees capped a four-game sweep the next night.
My words that night proved to be prophetic: Kaz Matsui and Troy Tulowitzki both doubled for the Rockies; Matt Holliday then tripled off the right field wall to tie the game. He scored two batters later on a sacrifice fly by Jamey Carroll, sending the Rox to their first playoff appearance in 12 years and an eventual trip to the Fall Classic. In the heat of the moment, whether it was wishful thinking, false bravado or not, I felt that Hoffman was going to blow that big game, that he was a fantastic regular season pitcher but wouldn’t come through with the season on the line.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Despite his fantastic 18-year career on the mound, my indelible image of Trevor Hoffman is walking off that mound in 2007. My indelible image of Lee Smith is of him walking off the mound after giving up a game-ending home run to Steve Garvey in Game 4 of the 1984 NLCS, one of two Chicago Cub heartbreaks of the last half-century that ended this November in Cleveland.
Anyway, here’s a look at the post-season results for the five current Hall of Famers, the future Rivera and the three candidates eligible now (ranked by games pitched):
| Career Post-Season | Games | IP | Wins | Losses | ERA | Saves | Bl. SV | Save % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mariano Rivera | 96 | 141 | 8 | 1 | 0.70 | 42 | 5 | 89% |
| Rollie Fingers | 30 | 57.1 | 4 | 4 | 2.35 | 9 | 1 | 90% |
| Dennis Eckersley | 28 | 36 | 1 | 3 | 3.00 | 15 | 2 | 88% |
| Rich Gossage | 19 | 31.1 | 2 | 1 | 2.87 | 8 | 3 | 73% |
| Billy Wagner | 14 | 11.2 | 1 | 1 | 10.03 | 3 | 1 | 75% |
| Trevor Hoffman | 12 | 13 | 1 | 2 | 3.46 | 4 | 2 | 67% |
| Bruce Sutter | 6 | 12 | 2 | 0 | 3.00 | 3 | 0 | 100% |
| Lee Smith | 4 | 5.1 | 0 | 2 | 8.44 | 1 | 0 | 100% |
| Hoyt Wilhelm | 2 | 2.1 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 1 | 0 | 100% |
Obviously nobody has or ever will approach the great Rivera when it comes to the post-season. In the history of the game, Fingers ranks a distant second when it comes to post-season impact for a relief pitcher but he is significantly ahead of anybody else because of his integral role in three straight titles. Fingers as a Hall of Famer has been called into question by many in the sabermetric community because his peripheral numbers (ERA, WHIP) are not outstanding. For me, though, he’s a sure-fire Hall of Famer because of the three rings and his critical role in those wins.
Eckersley and Gossage had mostly good October records despite a couple of famous missteps (notably at the hands of Kirk Gibson for both).
Hoffman and Wagner had a decent number of post-season opportunities and the results were poor. If you count the Wild Card tiebreaker fiasco (which was technically the 163rd regular season game but in today’s format would have been the official Wild Card game and a post-season effort), Hoffman’s ERA rises to 5.54 and his save% drops to 57%.
Smith only made it to the post-season twice (with the Cubs in 1984 and the Red Sox in 1988) and did poorly both times, most notably in 1984 with the Garvey walk-off home run.
Is it fair to put so much significance on what is a limited sample size of post-season opportunities for Hoffman, Wagner and Smith? Maybe, maybe not. Personally, I think there is no other player role where post-season performance matters more than it does for an ace relief pitcher. Wasn’t that the #1 lesson of the 2016 post-season?
Think about how relief pitchers contribute to the overall success of a team during the regular season. Modern relief pitchers appear in less than half of their team’s games, they only face about 300 batters a year and contribute nothing offensively. Starting position players generally have 600 plate appearances (nearly double the number of batter-pitcher battles for relief aces) and most position players contribute defensively (with the DH being the exception). While it’s true that most of a closer’s batter-pitcher matchups occur in high leverage late inning situations, those situations are magnified and more frequent in a typical post-season.
So, for me, a relief pitcher has to have an overwhelming regular season resume if they did not contribute to any championships for their teams. So let’s look at the key statistics for the existing Hall of Famers, Rivera, and the three current candidates. I’ve also added John Franco, whose 424 career saves make him a germane comparison to Wagner.
There are some key stats for which the casual reader may not be familiar:
ERA+ takes the traditional ERA metric and adjusts it based on the ballparks in which the pitcher worked and the overall league ERA of the ERA (a low ERA in 1968 isn’t quite the same as a low ERA in 2000). Anything above 100 is above average, under 100 is below average.
IR (inherited runners) and IS (inherited runners who scored) are included. These are “on fire” situations, when a relief pitcher enters the game with runners on base, something very common in the ’70’s and ’80’s and becoming more and more non-existent for closers in the modern game.
IS% (inherited runners scored) is the percentage of inherited runners who wound up scoring.
WHIP = walks + hits per inning.
K/9 = strikeouts per nine innings.
BAA = “batting average against.”
(this information and all of the charts to follow compiled courtesy of the greatest website in the world, baseball-reference.com).
| Career | Saves | BSv | SV% | IR | IS% | ERA | ERA+ | WHIP | K/9 | BAA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mariano Rivera | 652 | 80 | 89.1% | 367 | 29% | 2.21 | 205 | 1.00 | 8.2 | .211 |
| Trevor Hoffman | 601 | 76 | 88.8% | 346 | 20% | 2.87 | 141 | 1.06 | 9.4 | .211 |
| Lee Smith | 478 | 103 | 82% | 510 | 28% | 3.03 | 132 | 1.26 | 8.7 | .236 |
| John Franco | 424 | 101 | 81% | 457 | 32% | 2.89 | 138 | 1.33 | 7.0 | .249 |
| Billy Wagner | 422 | 69 | 86% | 166 | 28% | 2.31 | 187 | 0.998 | 11.9 | .187 |
| Dennis Eckersley (as RP) | 390 | 71 | 85% | 349 | 26% | 2.85 | 136 | 0.998 | 8.8 | .225 |
| Rollie Fingers | 341 | 109 | 76% | 782 | 29% | 2.9 | 120 | 1.16 | 6.9 | .235 |
| Rich Gossage | 310 | 112 | 74% | 832 | 33% | 3.01 | 126 | 1.23 | 7.5 | .228 |
| Bruce Sutter | 300 | 101 | 75% | 445 | 31% | 2.83 | 136 | 1.14 | 7.4 | .230 |
| Hoyt Wilhelm | 227 | 72 | 77% | 701 | 35% | 2.52 | 147 | 1.13 | 6.4 | .216 |
sports.yahoo.com
When you look at these numbers, the most interesting case is Billy Wagner. He and Franco are the only pitchers on this list under 6 feet tall (both are 5’10”) but Wags was a beast on the mound, striking out batters at a rate far greater than his contemporaries Rivera and Hoffman. Despite his slight frame, Billy the Kid was able to hit 100 miles per hour on the radar gun (the New York Post’s Joel Sherman has called him the “mini-me” of 6’10” Randy Johnson). After facing one batter in 1995, Wagner had his true rookie season with the Houston Astros in 1996. The 12th pick of the 1993 draft, the highly touted Wagner was a starting pitcher in his brief minor league career but never started a game in the majors, ascending to the closer role late in 1996. Like most relief pitchers not named Rivera or Hoffman, Wagner pitched for several teams, plying his trade with the Phillies, Mets, Red Sox and Braves in his final seven seasons.
Wagner’s career ERA+ of 187 is the second best (to Rivera) in the history of baseball for any pitcher who has tossed at least 750 innings. His .187 batting average against, 0.998 walks + hits per 9 innings, and 11.9 strikeouts per 9 innings are the best ever. Those last two numbers lose a little luster when I reveal who is 2nd best all-time for BAA and K/9: it’s Armando Benitez, although Wagner’s ERA was a full run lower so the two are not truly comparable. Both Wagner and Benitez were one-inning wonders, a factor that I’ll delve into below.
The other really impressive statistic here is Hoffman’s inherited runners scored percentage. Although he wasn’t asked to put out fires as often as the Hall of Famers from before 1990, when asked to strand runners on base, he was dramatically better than anybody else on this list and, for anyone tossing at least 750 innings, is the best in baseball history. This is a highly relevant accomplishment. When asked to put out a fire, Hoffman did it with high efficiency.
Lee Smith, who spent the first half of his career in hitter-friendly Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, looks better here in many categories than the Hall of Famers Fingers, Gossage, and Sutter, the latter two who were peers who overlapped a significant part of their careers with Smith.
So, at first glance, the older existing Hall of Famer relief pitchers (Fingers, Gossage, Sutter and Wilhelm) don’t look very good when compared against the more recent closers but there is an apples to oranges factor here. Those four had something in common that Hoffman, Wagner (and, for the second half of his career, Smith) lack: they went multiple innings to save their games and thus, their task was more difficult than those who followed. So their successful save% was by definition not going to be as good as those for the current candidates.
Wilhelm was a pioneer and pitched until 1972, when he was 49 years old. Fingers, Gossage and Sutter all debuted between 1968 and 1976 when relief pitchers were true “firemen” and often called “stoppers” because they stopped the bleeding of an inning, frequently coming into games with runners on base. The result is that the save statistic cannot be fairly used to compare pitchers from the 1970’s or 1980’s to the closers of the 1990’s and 21st century. Simply put: saves today are cheaper than they once were. When Fingers retired 30 years ago, he was the only pitcher in history who had amassed over 300 saves; today there are 27 members of the 300-save club, with multiple members who will only get into the museum in Cooperstown at the turnstile.
Eckersley is the only mostly “one inning” closer in Cooperstown; it was his manager Tony La Russa who basically invented the concept that, more often than not, the relief ace would pitch in the 9th inning only. Today, the practice is commonplace and it’s rare to ask a closer to get more than 3 outs.
Take a look at the chart below: for nine great relief aces, it shows the total number of saves achieved in a “clean” 9th inning: that means that the pitcher entered the game with a lead of 3 runs or less and nobody on base. I’ve included the same scenario when a pitcher enters a game in a save situation in extra innings in the bottom of the inning because the same win probability dynamics are in play. At the bottom of this table, I’ve also divided Lee Smith’s career into two halves of his career because the distinction is significant.
| Saves in 9th or extra innings when entering "clean" (no runners on base, no outs) | Saves in "clean" 9th or extra inning | Overall Career Saves | % of career saves in "clean" 9th or extra inning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mariano Rivera | 479 | 652 | 73% |
| Trevor Hoffman | 479 | 601 | 80% |
| Billy Wagner | 361 | 422 | 86% |
| Lee Smith | 239 | 478 | 50% |
| Dennis Eckersley | 222 | 390 | 57% |
| Bruce Sutter | 66 | 300 | 22% |
| Goose Gossage | 51 | 310 | 16% |
| Rollie Fingers | 50 | 341 | 15% |
| -------------------------- | -------- | -------- | -------- |
| Lee Smith (1980-1988) | 52 | 209 | 25% |
| Lee Smith (1989-1997) | 187 | 269 | 70% |
A couple of things jump out at you: one is how infrequently Hall of Famers Fingers, Sutter and Gossage had the relatively “easy” save that is today’s norm. Also notice that, in the first half of his career, Lee Smith had fewer overall saves than in his second act but had drastically fewer 3-out saves. Essentially, Smith was a contemporary of Sutter from 1980 to 1988 and a contemporary of Eckersley from 1989-1997.
So the point here is this: you cannot compare Hoffman/Smith/Wagner with Fingers/Gossage/Sutter based on the total number of saves they accumulated.
Now, I am not trying to claim that a 3-out save is necessarily an “easy” save. If the closer is protecting a one-run lead, there’s nothing easy about it. In 2016, if a closer entered the game in the top of the 9th with a one-run lead, the odds of victory for the team were about 85%; if entering the game in the bottom of the 9th with a one-run lead, the odds of team victory were about 80% (the precise probabilities are dependent on the ballparks). So, if your team has an 15%-to-20% chance at blowing the game, that’s a good spot for your closer.
However, when a closer is summoned to protect a 2-run or 3-run 9th inning lead, that starts to creep into the category of an “easy” save. A two-run lead has a 91%-to-94% chance of victory; a three-run lead has a 96%-to-97% chance at victory. The truth is you don’t have to be a Hall of Fame caliber relief pitcher to protect a two or three run lead when entering the game with only three outs to get and no runners on base.
So, what percentage of saves were truly “easy” for the nine relief pitchers we looked at? Concurrently, how many “tougher” saves did each earn in their career (for simplicity, defining loosely every save that isn’t a 3-out save with a two or three run lead).
| "Easy" defined as entering game in 9th or extras with 2 or 3 run lead, no outs, no runners on | Total Career Saves | Total Career "Easy" Saves | "Easy" Save Success Rate | % of Career Saves labeled "Easy" | Total Career "Tougher" Saves | "Tougher" Save Success Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rollie Fingers | 341 | 25 | 93% | 7% | 316 | 75% |
| Goose Gossage | 310 | 30 | 91% | 10% | 280 | 72% |
| Bruce Sutter | 300 | 41 | 91% | 14% | 259 | 73% |
| Lee Smith | 478 | 148 | 94% | 31% | 330 | 78% |
| Dennis Eckersley | 390 | 143 | 94% | 37% | 247 | 80% |
| Mariano Rivera | 652 | 316 | 97% | 48% | 336 | 83% |
| Trevor Hoffman | 601 | 307 | 94% | 51% | 294 | 84% |
| Billy Wagner | 422 | 232 | 95% | 55% | 190 | 77% |
| --------------------------- | --------- | --------- | --------- | --------- | --------- | --------- |
| Lee Smith (1980-1988) | 209 | 26 | 93% | 12% | 183 | 79% |
| Lee Smith (1989-1997) | 269 | 122 | 95% | 45% | 147 | 78% |
What’s the takeaway here? It’s that Trevor Hoffman, when it comes to the “not as easy” saves, looks pretty darn good when stacked up against the Hall of Famers and also the Great Rivera. Another takeaway is that the 300-save club boasts 27 members but only three of those members saved over 300 games that weren’t the “easy” ones (Rivera, Smith, Fingers). And speaking of Smith, he does compare pretty favorably to Sutter in the first half of his career and to Eckersley for the second half when it comes to save conversion %.
Now, whether the BBWAA voters realize it specifically as delineated in this table or if it’s just instinct, this table explains why Wagner received just 10.5% of the vote last year. His 5th best 422 career saves don’t look so impressive when you realize that he only saved 190 games in which he didn’t have a cozy 2-to-3-run 9th inning lead. His performance was dominant but he just wasn’t used enough in super high leverage situations. I’ll give Wagner credit for this: he went out on top and retired at the age of 39. In his final season (2010), he posted a career-best 1.43 ERA with 37 saves. He retired because he wanted to spend more time with his family but, in doing so, may have severely hampered his Cooperstown chances by not piling up the raw save total.
The list below shows the all-time saves leaders through their age 38 seasons (defined as your age at midnight on June 30th of that year). Wagner turned 39 on July 25th, 2010.
Rank Career Saves Through Age 38 Season Age 39 Season and Later Total Saves 1 Mariano Rivera 482 170 652 2 Trevor Hoffman 482 119 601 3 Lee Smith 473 5 478 4 Billy Wagner 422 0 422 5 John Franco 416 8 424
Now, I still think that Billy the Kid deserves a longer look by the voters. I worried last year that he wouldn’t even get 5% of the vote (and thus would get booted off future ballots) and I still worry about that happening to him. He deserves to have a longer presence on the ballot and get the kind of 9-year look that Gossage had.
Let me explain: as highlighted earlier, Wagner’s dominant peripheral numbers (ERA, ERA+, Batting Average Against, strikeouts/9 innings and Walk+Hits per 9 innings) are among the best in the history of the game. That deserves a long look from Hall of Fame voters.
However, regarding Wagner’s fantastic run-prevention numbers, the question I have on my mind is whether those numbers will still look quite so uniquely extraordinary five to six years from now. In this new era of one-inning closers, we’re seeing more dominant relief pitchers posting microscopic ERA’s, BAA’s and prolific strikeout rates. Three of the current crop of dominant closers (Craig Kimbrel, Aroldis Chapman, and Kenley Jansen) all have numbers similar to and in many cases better than Wagner’s. All three just completed their age 28 seasons and have only pitched around 400 innings so it remains to be seen whether any of them have the long, productive career that Wagner had. Another 8-to-10 years of perspective is warranted to see whether Wagner deserves to be in Cooperstown.
Wagner is the all-time leader for batting average against and strikeouts per nine inning if you use a minimum standard of 750 innings. However, if you cut that standard in half, the ranks change. Take a look at the career ranks for strikeouts per 9 innings, batting average against, and ERA+ for today’s top closers along with Wagner, Rivera and Hoffman.
| Career: min. 375 IP | K/9 IP | Career: min. 375 IP | BAA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Aroldis Chapman | 15.18 | 1. Aroldis Chapman | .155 | |
| 2. Craig Kimbrel | 14.49 | 2. Craig Kimbrel | .157 | |
| 3. Kenley Jansen | 13.92 | 3. Kenley Jansen | .170 | |
| 4. Rob Dibble | 12.17 | 4. Billy Wagner | .187 | |
| 5. Billy Wagner | 11.92 | 5. Troy Percival | .188 | |
| 36. Trevor Hoffman | 9.36 | 18. Mariano Rivera | .211 | |
| 58. Mariano Rivera | 8.22 | 19. Trevor Hoffman | .211 | |
| Career: min. 375 IP | ERA+ | Career: min. 375 IP | WHIP | |
| 1. Craig Kimbrel | 210 | 1. Koji Uehara | 0.864 | |
| 2. Mariano Rivera | 205 | 2. Kenley Jansen | 0.893 | |
| 3. Aroldis Chapman | 192 | 3. Craig Kimbrel | 0.949 | |
| 4. Billy Wagner | 187 | 4. Sergio Romo | 0.955 | |
| 5. Jonathan Papelbon | 177 | 5. Aroldis Chapman | 0.992 | |
| 7. Kenley Jansen | 169 | 6. Billy Wagner | 0.998 | |
| 21. Trevor Hoffman | 141 | 7. Mariano Rivera | 1.000 | |
| 18. Trevor Hoffman | 1.058 |
Now, let’s remember that Kimbrel, Chapman and Jansen are all just finishing their age 28 seasons so there’s plenty of time for their numbers to drop as they age. But there are other up-and-coming one-inning closers who are putting up ridiculous numbers.
Just in the last three years:
- Wade Davis had a 1.18 ERA (351 ERA+) and a .163 batting average against.
- Zach Britton had a 1.38 ERA (302 ERA+) (this year, his ERA was 0.54 and he was 47-for-47 in saves)
- Andrew Miller had a 1.83 ERA (232 ERA+) with 14.8 strikeouts per nine innings
In the last five years (among relief pitchers with at least 200 innings)…
- Six relievers had an ERA+ better than Wagner’s career mark of 187.
- Six relievers gave up an opponent’s batting average less than Wagner’s career mark of .187
- Seven relievers had more strikeouts per nine innings than Wagner’s career mark of 11.9
- Ten relievers had a better WHIP better than Wagner’s career mark of 0.998
The point here is that, as truly dominant as Wagner was during his career, multiple one-inning closers are putting up those kinds of numbers year after year. This is why I wouldn’t vote for Wagner on this year’s ballot, certainly not above Hoffman and also because there are so many other terrific candidates.
More time and perspective is needed. However, I do hope that at least 5% of the voters choose to vote for him so that he gets that long-term chance. If, seven to eight years from now, he still is the all-time leader in BAA and K/9 with the 750 inning standard and he is still 2nd best to Rivera in ERA+, you’ve got a really solid case.
Like Wagner, Lee Smith also left the game at the age of 39 but he was finished as a productive pitcher when he retired. As for Franco, he pitched until the age of 44 but was a set-up man for the last 6 seasons of his career. Rivera of course remained one of the premium pitchers in baseball all the way to the end. Hoffman, after getting cast off by the Padres, had a superb season in 2009 at the age of 41 (1.83 ERA) with the Milwaukee Brewers; he retired after the 2010 season in which he was a set-up man and no longer effective (5.89 ERA).
So what about Smith, who is (and will remain for quite awhile) third on the all-time saves list and almost certainly would have accumulated over 500 if he had started his career a little later, when closers got more “cheap” saves? Smith, from the moment of his debut, was a fearsome relief ace. He was a bigger and taller version of Goose Gossage; at 6 foot 5, 220 pounds, he looked like he could have played linebacker or tight end in the NFL. He achieved stardom in his fourth season (1983) when he saved 29 games in 103 innings while posting a 1.65 ERA. It was a season that put him in the group of dominant stoppers but also a season he would never come close to matching. After his prime years with the Chicago Cubs (1980-1987), Smith pitched for 7 different teams in his 30’s (Red Sox, Cardinals, Yankees, Orioles, Angels, Reds and Expos).
My problem with Smith as a Hall of Fame candidate is that he never had a long period of time (five years or longer) where he was the best or even second best relief pitcher in baseball. Using Baseball Reference, I created a series of leader boards that tracked who was the top relief pitcher for five year periods of time, using the metrics ERA and park-adjusted ERA+ (since Smith pitched in hitter-friendly Wrigley for his first 8 seasons). Not one time in his career was Lee Smith even in the top 5 of ERA for a five-year period among relief pitchers. Once (from 1979-1983) Smith was 5th in ERA+, behind Gossage, Tom Burgmeier, Dan Quisenberry and Steve Howe. If you extend the window to a seven year period (which generally favors somebody with longevity), there’s one period of time (1982-1988) where his ERA+ is 2nd best (to Quisenberry) but barely ahead of the good but not all-time great Jesse Orosco, Kent Tekulve and Guillermo Hernandez.
Take a look at where Smith ranks in both his “first” multiple-inning closer career (1980-1988) and his “second” one-inning closer career (1989-1997) with his contemporaries. The “Top 10 ERA rank” lists how each player ranked among the ten men listed who had the most saves during each time frame.
| 1980-1988 | Most Saves | ERA | ERA Rank among top 10 | 1989-1997 | Most Saves | ERA | ERA Rank among top 10 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dan Quisenberry | 233 | 2.68 | 3 | Dennis Eckersley | 370 | 2.84 | 5 | |
| Jeff Reardon | 233 | 2.96 | 5 | Randy Myers | 313 | 2.98 | 7 | |
| Lee Smith | 209 | 2.91 | 4 | Lee Smith | 298 | 3.15 | 9 | |
| Goose Gossage | 201 | 2.62 | 2 | John Franco | 282 | 2.57 | 2 | |
| Bruce Sutter | 195 | 3.14 | 9 | Doug Jones | 269 | 3.08 | 8 | |
| Dave Righetti | 163 | 3.09 | 7 | Jeff Montgomery | 256 | 2.81 | 4 | |
| Dave Smith | 151 | 2.53 | 1 | Rick Aguilera | 237 | 3.46 | 10 | |
| Steve Bedrosian | 138 | 3.27 | 10 | Tom Henke | 234 | 2.44 | 1 | |
| Greg Minton | 138 | 3.08 | 6 | John Wetteland | 211 | 2.81 | 3 | |
| Guillermo Hernandez | 125 | 3.13 | 8 | Rod Beck | 199 | 2.97 | 6 |
stltoday.mycapture.com)
In both periods of time Smith was third in saves but only 4th and 9th in ERA.
Now, you might notice that Hall of Famer Bruce Sutter, the pioneer of the split-fingered fastball, ranked 9th in ERA among the ten listed from 1980-1988. So am I applying a double standard here? The answer is no: there’s a primary difference between Sutter and Smith and that is that Sutter thoroughly dominated his profession for a seven-year period of time (1976-1982). He had the most saves, best ERA, best ERA+, best WHIP, second best BAA (to Gossage) and 2nd most strikeouts (also to Gossage). He won the 1979 Cy Young Award, was in the top 6 three other times and won a championship with St. Louis in 1982. In the history of Hall of Fame voting, if you’re able to dominate your position for a seven year period of time, that usually results in a plaque in Cooperstown.
Compare Sutter’s first seven seasons to Smith’s best years (from 1982-1988):
| 7-Year Peak | Years | Saves | ERA | ERA+ | WHIP | BAA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bruce Sutter | 1976-1982 | 194 | 2.50 | 159 | 1.077 | .213 |
| Lee Smith | 1982-1988 | 208 | 2.85 | 139 | 1.243 | .234 |
Sutter is better in all categories but the raw total of saves, which is influenced by starting his career earlier. Now, it’s true that Sutter didn’t have much of a career after those first seven seasons. He had a great 1984 (45 saves with a 1.54 ERA) but four of his last five seasons were mediocre (all with an ERA over 4.23). So it’s legitimate to ask whether his eight great seasons are enough for a Hall of Famer. The voters clearly wrestled with this question, since he didn’t get inducted until his 13th try.
By the way, considering that they’re both ex-Cubs and Smith’s longevity and ability to perform at a well-above-average level for so long, I think it’s entirely justified to feel that he belongs in the Hall of Fame as much or more than Sutter does. Smith did hold the all-time career saves mark from early in 1993 through September of 2006 (when Trevor Hoffman passed him), a period of over 13 years. But Smith is not on the ballot against Sutter right now: he’s on a ballot with Hoffman and over a dozen superb pitchers and position players. He was really good for a long time but there was always someone better. I went back and looked at every season of Smith’s career: even during the two years he led the majors and other two years he led his league in saves, he still was not the best relief pitcher in the sport (measured by a variety of metrics like ERA, ERA+ and WHIP). Only once, in 1983 (his best year), was he the second best (to Dan Quisenberry).
During a 25-year stretch, between 1971 (Fingers’ first high-quality season) to 1995 (Smith’s last high-quality season), there were 53 pitchers who, in a single season, accumulated at least 20 saves with an ERA under 2.00. Nine different pitchers achieved this more than once: Gossage (4 times), Fingers (3), Eckersley (3), Sutter (2), Bryan Harvey (2), Gregg Olson (2), Jeff Russell (2), Tom Henke (2) and Tug McGraw (2). Smith only did this one time (1983). Dominant seasons like that are the type that attract the notice of Hall of Fame voters.
Incidentally, although it was in a different era of the one-inning closer and therefore more commonplace, Mariano Rivera had a whopping 11 different seasons with over 20 saves and a sub-2.00 ERA proving that, as always, there has never been anyone quite like him.
otherleague.com
Incidentally, Rollie Fingers has a similar lack of presence on the 5-year ERA and ERA+ leader boards that I created and there are only one or two seasons (most notably 1981, when he won the MVP and Cy Young) where one could argue that he was the best closer in the sport. So, in my view, Fingers is the pitcher whose career is most similar to Smith’s. His 341 saves equates to Smith’s 478 when you consider that he debuted more than 10 years earlier and never pitched during the “easy save” era. Fingers probably would not be a Hall of Famer either except for the fact that he had the most impact (by quite a bit, actually) of all of the members of the Oakland A’s during their three-year championship run. That Fall Classic trifecta, plus having held the all-time saves lead for 11 years, makes Fingers Cooperstown worthy in my estimation. Plus Fingers gets bonus points for his trademark handlebar mustache, the greatest facial hair in baseball history.
Anyway, despite never really dominating his profession for a short or even medium length period of time, on the strength of his overall save total, Lee Smith debuted on the 2003 Hall of Fame ballot with 42% of the vote. The six players on the ballot ahead of him (Sutter, Eddie Murray, Gary Carter, Jim Rice, Andre Dawson and Ryne Sandberg) were either elected to the Hall that year (Murray & Carter) or in subsequent years. In the history of the Hall of Fame balloting, every player with a vote total as high as 42% in their first year eventually has gained induction into Cooperstown in subsequent years. But Eckersley hit the ballot the next year and, even though Smith had 88 more saves, the voters correctly put Eckersley into the Hall of Fame on his first try. Smith, suffering by comparison, saw his vote drop from 42% to 36%.
vesphoto.net
Eckersley had something unique that today’s candidates don’t: he had two careers. His first career was as a very good starting pitcher (he won 149 games as a starter), his second career was as the type of closer nobody had ever seen before. He had a five-year run (from 1988-1992) in which he saved 220 games, posted a 1.90 ERA and walked a grand total of 38 batters in 359.2 innings. The Eck eclipsed the 300-save plateau in just nine seasons, also something that had never been done before. Eckersley is the one Hall of Fame relief pitcher whose peak can be fairly compared to the three men on the ballot today, especially Smith, who had a significant career overlap.
As far as the ballot history is concerned, Lee Smith peaked at 51% of the vote in 2012 (you need 75% to get elected). He held serve (sort of) at 48% in 2013 but has plummeted to the 30’s in the last three years with the presence of so many obvious Hall of Fame candidates on the ballot. On a ballot with so many Cooperstown-worthy names, there’s no room for a relief pitcher whose resume doesn’t match up with two other relief pitchers who are coming down the pike (Hoffman currently and Rivera in 2019).
So, with Rivera an absolute and likely nearly-unanimous lock, we return to the question, the one that I posed in the title of this article: is Cooperstown ready for Trevor Hoffman?
My answer is not the same one I had on October 1, 2007. Trevor Hoffman is almost certainly a Hall of Famer. I didn’t put him in my top 10 last year but he’s on the doorstep now (gaining 67% of the vote last year) and it’s time to push him into the Hall.
cbs8.com
Trevor Hoffman made his major league debut in 1993, at the age of 25, with the Florida Marlins. On June 24th, he was traded to the San Diego Padres in a five-player deal that sent Gary Sheffield to the Sunshine State. The PED-tainted Sheffield, incidentally, is also on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot. Once in San Diego, Hoffman became the team’s closer in 1994 and would not relinquish the role (except for 2003 when he was injured) until after the 2008 season. At both Qualcomm Stadium (and later PetCo Park), Hoffman, when summoned from the bullpen, entered to the lyrics of AC-DC’s “Hell’s Bells.” It was a tradition that started in July of 1998 and continued for the rest of his career.
Hoffman, the brother of former player and manager Glenn Hoffman, was an icon in San Diego second only to the late Tony Gwynn. Like Gwynn, Hoffman was a gentleman. I personally met both of them several times during my ESPN years and they could not have been nicer. As a pitcher, Hoffman featured an incredible change-up. Like Rivera’s cutter, the change was Hoffman’s signature pitch. As we’ve chronicled, Hoffman rode that change to 601 career saves. He was not in Mariano’s class but that is not an insult. Rivera was the Babe Ruth of relief pitchers.
What Hoffman was, during the totality of his career, was the 2nd best relief pitcher in baseball. As I compiled the five-year leader boards, Hoffman appears in 2nd place (behind Rivera) on many of them. Although the save is “cheaper” than it was during the careers of Fingers, Gossage and Sutter, 601 saves is still 123 more than the man in 3rd place (Smith) and only 51 behind the king (Rivera). If you’re closer to Mariano Rivera on the plus side than you are Lee Smith on the down side, that’s a nice feather in the cap.
Besides his 601 saves (even as we acknowledge that many were relatively “easy”), there are two statistics that make me feel that Hoffman is Cooperstown-worthy. One we have already seen, the fact that he only allowed 20% of inherited base-runners to score, significantly better than anyone else, including Rivera, who allowed 29% of such runners to cross the plate. Hoffman’s 20% mark is the best in baseball history for any pitcher who saved at least 150 games and inherited at least 150 runners on base.
Hoffman’s stranded runner success translates into another statistic that elevates him as a stopper and partially puts him into the “fireman” category and not just a “show up in the 9th inning” closer. The chart below shows eight of the relief aces we’ve discussed in their career success of saving games when entering the game with runners on base (the data for Wilhelm, who debuted in the 1950’s, is incomplete, so he’s not included here).
| Career, entering game with runners on | Saves | Blown Saves | Save % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trevor Hoffman | 115 | 14 | 89% |
| Dennis Eckersley | 125 | 28 | 82% |
| Mariano Rivera | 145 | 33 | 81% |
| Lee Smith | 154 | 36 | 81% |
| Rollie Fingers | 203 | 71 | 74% |
| Billy Wagner | 56 | 21 | 73% |
| Bruce Sutter | 148 | 56 | 73% |
| Goose Gossage | 181 | 74 | 71% |
Now, this chart is not meant to slam the existing Hall of Famers (Gossage, Sutter, Fingers) who have low save percentages when entering with runners on base. They all entered many, many games with runners on base in the 6th, 7th or 8th innings, when they had to not only put out a fire but keep the fire out until the end of the game. But Hoffman’s numbers again are significantly better than his contemporary Rivera and near-contemporary Eckersley. I’ll give some of the credit here to his long-time manager Bruce Bochy, who skippered the Pads from 1995 to 2006. Bochy has proven (with three World Series titles to show for it) that he is a master of bullpen management. Still, you can only manage what you have and Bochy got the very best out of Trevor Hoffman.
Finally, let’s address the issue of Hoffman’s big-game failures chronicled above. Despite Hoffman’s superb 89% save conversion rate in games in which he entered with runners on base and his best in class 20% career inherited runner strand rate, is there evidence that the high-profile blown saves represented a trend that was carried over from the regular season? The answer is “no.” Hoffman’s success with runners on base and in high leverage situations translated into wins for his teams.
One of my favorite advanced metrics is WPA (Win Probability Added). You can look at any play in nearly the last 100 years (in the game logs on www.baseball-reference.com) and it will tell you to what degree that play increased or decreased the player’s team’s chances of winning. As I discussed earlier, if you’re a relief pitcher entering the game with a one-run lead in the bottom of the 9th inning, your team has about a 80% chance of winning. If you enter with a a three-run lead in the bottom of the 9th, your team’s odds are at about 96%. So, if you close out a one run win, you have increased your team’s chances of winning from 80% to 100% and thus are awarded with 0.20 WPA points, the 0.20 representing the 20% increased odds of winning. If you think about this logically, you’ll realize that it can also go the other way: you can have -0.80 WPA points if you blow that one-run lead.
Anyway, if you look at the career leaders in WPA (the top ten plus the pitchers we’re talking about in this piece), you can get an idea of how many times each pitcher performed deeds on the mound that either led to a win or a loss while acknowledging up front that the Great Mariano stands alone at the top of the class.
Rank 50% of games as RP Career WPA 1 Mariano Rivera 56.6 2 Trevor Hoffman 34.4 3 Goose Gossage 32.5 4 Hoyt Wilhelm 31.3 5 Dennis Eckersley 30.8 6 Joe Nathan 30.6 7 Billy Wagner 29.0 8 Jonathan Papelbon 28.4 9 Francisco Rodriguez 27.6 10 Troy Percival 23.6 14 Lee Smith 21.3 25 Bruce Sutter 18.2 28 Rollie Fingers 16.1
Now, remember that this isn’t a “rate” stat like ERA or WHIP. This is a “counting” stat like strikeouts or saves. Despite 720 fewer innings pitched, Hoffman bests Gossage in the key game-specific situations of increasing his team’s odds of winning. By the way, if you’re wondering what it means that Hoffman is “only” 5.4 points ahead of Wagner in WPA, just understand that 5.4 points represents a 18.6% difference. An extra 18.6% in WPA is a relief pitcher’s equivalent difference of a hitter’s difference between 450 and 534 home runs.
Now, to circle back to our painful story of Hoffman’s blown save in the 13th inning to the Rockies at the end of the 2007 season, his WPA that day was -0.895. The Padres had an 89.5% chance of winning that game when he entered and, because they lost, he gets docked nearly a full point in WPA. From a WPA standpoint, it was the fourth worst blown save of his entire career.
Now, of course, in the post-season, WPA tells a different story. Hoffman’s career mark in 12 post-season appearances is a lowly -0.752. That figure balloons to -1.94 if you add the 161st and 163rd games of the 2007 regular season, which had the same level of do-or-die significance of a playoff game.
Trevor Hoffman’s failures in big games are significant. They are real and they are painful, to him and to all Padres fans. If he was a borderline candidate, I might say that those failures would be enough to tilt the scales against him. But Trevor Hoffman is not a borderline candidate. Between his raw save total and his success in high-leverage save situations, Hoffman’s overall record merits a Hall of Fame plaque in Cooperstown and I for one will be delighted when he gets in.
Thanks for reading.
Chris Bodig