On the Overratedness of Specialty

I checked the career win share totals for each of the current MLB players I thought might be shoe-ins for the Hall of Fame. Two of the players, Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman, are modern day relief aces.

For hall of fame discussions, the magic number is 300; a player enters serious Cooperstown conversation with 300 career win shares. That is why these totals for career win shares of the two relief pitchers are eye-popping:
Rivera: 177
Hoffman: 155

Compared to the Hall of Fame Monitor for the same pitchers:
Rivera: 173
Hoffman: 132

(To be fair, Baseballreference.com’s Hall of Fame Monitor doesn’t measure Hall of Fame worthiness, but Hall of Fame likelihood. A HoF Monitor of 130 denotes a Cooperstown cinch. Win shares are a measure of a player’s impact to a winning effort; three win shares are the rough equivalent of one win that a player caused.)

What’s evident by the two sets of numbers is that there is a gap between the perceived impact of modern relief aces and the actual impact of modern relief aces. How could that be?

The gap between Rivera and Hoffman’s impact on winning baseball and their perceived impact on winning baseball stems, I think, from the heightened emphasis on specialization over generalization both in baseball and in life. As a culture, we revere the specialist in medicine, restaurants, law, vehicles, parenting, schools, music, financial advising, religion, etc. Adam Smith’s great capitalist vision, assembly lines of people-turned-zombies fixating on the most detailed, mundane task, and being evaluated on how many and not how well.

Clearly, at some point we have to decide that the task in which a specialist specializes is too precise for us to consider it Hall of Fame worthy. Terry Mulholland had a superb pickoff move. Fernando Vina excelled at getting hit by pitches. Mike Matheny was outstanding at blocking pitches in the dirt. All of those are true facts; I think we can all agree that they’re not sufficient for consideration to the Hall.

On the other hand, all Mark McGwire could do was take a walk and hit a home run. Quite frankly, he was pretty awful at everything else. There is no gap between his perceived value and win share contribution. (He might still not make the HOF, but that’s due to completely separate issues.)

So, we now have a spectrum of specialization. On one extreme is the home run, clearly beneficial to gaining wins; players who hit home runs and only hit home runs will be revered and ought to be. On the other extreme is the pickoff move/HBP-ability/blocking a pitch; players who excel here are valued, but by no means anything special historically.

The difference, of course, is that a home run has far more impact on the outcome of a game than a save, and light years more than a blocked pitch or great pickoff move.

Today’s relief ace is asked to enter a game in a save situation or sometimes in extra innings. This plan is almost always a waste of talent on behalf of a team’s best bullpen asset. Three reasons:

1.) Even an average pitcher can protect a 3-run lead 97% of the time.
2.) Imagine keeping your otherwise healthy slugger on the bench in a tied game in late innings, instead of pinch-hitting him; that's horrid strategy. Blowing a late lead in a tie game (when the modern relief ace is not used) while the relief ace is on the bench is just as ridiculous.
3.) Use of a relief ace in a save situation diminishes their ability to pitch effectively when truly needed.

Modern relief aces aren’t used in the manner most conducive to heightening their team’s odds of winning. Ergo, the modern relief ace’s contribution to winning is, in fact, minimal. Hence, lower win shares totals.

Protecting 3-run leads is certainly not un-important, but to use a relief ace for the task is like dropping an atomic bomb on a small rural village with the intent to conquer it: the job certainly got done, but you’d have to consider that effort both wasteful of energy and overkill.

It’s not Trevor Hoffman’s and Mariano Rivera’s fault that they played in an era that demanded their talents not be maximized. They’re both excellent pitchers who did well at the largely meaningless tasks they were assigned. I’m also quite confident that both could have done quite well at guiding their respective teams to greater win totals had they been put in tie games in or after the 8th inning. And, with those greater win totals, greater win shares for the relievers.

The fact is, though, that they weren’t. So how does that affect our hall of fame thinking? Do we remove our emphasis on a contribution to winning? This school of thought decides that we must emphasize their talent, the effect of which was largely stifled, and grant them a pass to Cooperstown based on:
1.) what more competent management would have done, and
2.) an assumption that their talent would have been equally effective in this more important role.

At times in history, we give players a similar benefit of the doubt for circumstances beyond their control. We regard Jackie Robinson as an elite all-time 2Bmen; it’s not his fault that Major League Baseball was segregated. We factor in wartime absence for Ted Williams; it’s not his fault Pearl Harbor happened. Etc., etc., etc.

So is this a case where we give Hoffman and Rivera a similar pass?

Now we have two questions:
1.) Where, on the spectrum of specialization’s impact, lies the save?
2.) Do we give the modern relief ace a pass for their lack of game-to-game impact by virtue of close-minded or ignorant managers?

To answer question one, I feel the save – as an accomplishment - leans more toward the great pickoff move than toward the home run side of the spectrum. I don’t know, but I’d guess that a single home run might be worth as many as four or five saves in terms of aiding a team to a win. The modern save is usually only one inning, pitching might only be 2/3rds of run prevention (fielding being the rest), and a pitcher can often give up as many as two runs and still be save-eligible.

To answer question two, first understand that the history of baseball is filled with largely close-minded managers. In that light, it’s clear that segregation and World War II are not on the same level of shafting a player as managerial ignorance. Paul Konerko lost two years of his career because the Reds couldn’t see he had greater upside than Sean Casey; sorry Paul, you’re not the first, you won’t be the last, that’s the breaks, and I’m not going to discount you two years of your career because Cincinnati had the worst GM on Earth.

In light of those two answers, I’m forced to accept win shares for what they are: a measure of contribution to a win and therefore the supreme measure of the impact a player had on the game. I also can’t grant a pass to the modern relief ace for their poor overall usage throughout the last two decades.

With that in mind, my apologies to Mariano and Trevor, but you won’t be getting my Hall of Fame vote.