Where Have All [My] Hero’s Gone
The baseball reliever is a great aspect of the game. When a team is up or down by a narrow margin they come in to breathe new life into a matchup. They occupy a similar place in baseball culture as Joseph Campbell’s Hero from his “The Power of Myth.” Relievers are the equivalent of Luke Skywalker showing up over and over again to bail out the rebels.
Last season my pitching staff had their most saves so far. 7. 7 out of 60 games. That’s 11%, roughly. We’ve not been around long, but our average per season is 4.8 (aka 5). That’s 8%. Compare those numbers with the Reds this year (the really real Reds). They have 49 saves (most in MLB this season, 2.5 games away from being a wildcard) which is 33%. You could compare it to the fewest saves this year in MLB, 20 by KC (last in AL Central). That’s about 14%, almost double my avg saves per season.
This season we have a bit more than usual. 9. We could probably finish the season with a save being a factor in about 17% of our games. My relievers have as many losses: 9. This is a little bit due to my traveling early in the season, and not keeping close tabs on my reliever conditions. Even keeping an eye on them lately, they aren’t doing great. We are definitely not sitting as pretty in our division as we did last season. More saves, worse performance?
Significant? I don’t know. I did pop into the social feed section of the site and saw the Qingzhou Clowns lamenting a similar woe. What do their stats look like? They’ve registered an impressive 13 saves so far. 22% of a full season, with probably more to come. A little better than the MLB current worst: KC. Their (the Clowns) best number of saves in a season was about 20 (36-24 that season (122), knocked out round 5 of the wildcard playoffs). Comparable to the 33% the Reds currently have. The really real Reds.
I saw in the conversation the Clowns were having in the social feed that most teams don’t even bother with relievers. True? Seems to be from my experience. I started a similar track this morning.
The relievers in Franchise Baseball are not heroes. Not in my experience. More like goats. Honestly, I usually get excited when I see an opponent put in a reliever, hoping they’ve opened the door for a 5 or 6 run inning for my players. Speaking of runs, let’s run with my earlier analogy some more: the Grains have decided they are going to try to make it work without heroes. We’ll see how it goes. It will definitely be easier than keeping up with energy %s and changing my reliever conditions a couple times a day. We are taking an ax to the Batsignal.
