Comments on: Top 10 Closers of All Time

By: peter

peter — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:26:00 +0000

He most definitely was dominant in the 3 years he closed, but only 3 seasons of closing isn’t enough in my book to be added to the list of the 10 best closers ever.

That being said, what he did in 3 years was amazing!

By: Slavenpatrick

Slavenpatrick — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:29:19 +0000

Come on Pete… Smoltz was the most dominant closer during his stint in the bullpen! I’m not counting the roider from the Dodgers as an eligible player!

By: peter

peter — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 02:30:54 +0000

Sorry Danny, I just didn’t recognize you as Danny Thornton. I only know you as danniboi33. That’s the problem with social networking sometimes.

By: Danny Thornton

Danny Thornton — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:28:32 +0000

Peter, you don’t know me? With all the stumbles that we share? It’s me, danniboi33.

I am hurt now.

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:17:16 +0000

By the way, thanks Danny! I don’t know you, but thanks for saying what you said.

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:16:08 +0000

First,I knew this would stir up comments, but I didn’t expect this hornets nest. But hey, that’s what makes Baseball great! People have a passion for this sort of thing and I think that’s great! I would have hated to post this without a single comment. That would have been worse than anything anyone can write in my opinion.

Now, for those of you that didn’t like this list, please re-read this line which starts the second paragraph:

A a point of clarification, the number to the left of each player is their ranking on the all time saves list…

I did NOT put this in any order of one player is better than the next. That is why there isn’t a 1-10. What I did was just list my top selections out of the top 100 career save leaders & highlighted what I thought were some key stats or added what I thought were some neat/fun facts about the player. I purposely kept them in the order they appeared in on the top 100 career saves list so that it was more fair. Not wanting to pick one over the other.

Next, I didn’t account for post season stats because I thought Mo or Fingers or anyone else who was blessed enough to have consistently been on great teams would have an unfair advantage over guys who weren’t so lucky. Hey, it’s not their fault!

Scott, to answer your question about why innings pitched matters is because before the one inning save became so popular in the late 80’s, closers worked 2-3 and sometimes 4 or more innings to record their saves. When a RP goes that long they an not be expected to do that every day; therefore, I put more weight onto their save numbers. It was just my opinion.

Overall, I think this is mostly a great debate we have going on! Feel free to disagree with me, I expected it. Let’s just be respectful about it.

Thank you for responding to this with so much emotion. Play Ball!

By: Danny Thornton

Danny Thornton — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:25:56 +0000

Peter, it looks like you stirred a hornets nest with this list. Frankly, you can not please them all. However, for the ones that think the list “sucks”, I would like to see you post a list of the top ten closers of all time and get all ten right. When you do, you should also consider making your point on why they are on the list and why they are in the order they are. This would be better than trashing someone else’s post.

Just my opinion.

By: Broll

Broll — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:09:09 +0000

So is it that Rivera’s classiness puts him over Lee Smith’s mere “great character?” Because these things really have a lot to do with closing baseball games. And no, I don’t think there was “enough said” about Rollie Fingers’ mustache. Can we expound upon how his mustache helped him with his K/9 ratio? or prevented inherited baserunners to score? I’d really be interested in how this all comes together.

By: Broll

Broll — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:04:10 +0000

I want to re-iterate how stupid this list is. If Rivera was less classy but had a mediocre brother in the bigs, would he have been ranked higher than Hoff?

By: Nae

Nae — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:33:54 +0000

What about Joe Nathan? 235 saves and counting…