The overrated concept of closers in baseball
If the movie Major League taught us anything, it’s that hair is vitally important to the success of a closer in baseball.
Charlie Sheen’s Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn rode a wild fastball and equally wild hair to the pennant. If a fictional character played by America’s biggest train wreck doesn’t convince you of the importance of closer hair, what more evidence do you need? Tiger blood? Obviously it worked for Jonathan Papelbon in 2006 but he’s been in a gradual decline ever since.
Of course, more modern methods of statistical analysis have entered the game. The 2003 book Moneyball by Michael Lewis outlined Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s theory on how closers are overvalued due to accumulating easy saves through modern usage patterns.
“You could take a slightly above average pitcher and drop him into the closer’s role, let him accumulate some gaudy number of saves, and then sell him off,” Lewis wrote. “You could, in essence, buy a stock, pump it up with false publicity, and sell it off for much more than you’d paid for it.”
In this post-Moneyball era, we know closers have a high turnover rate. Of the nine All-Star closers this year, five of them were first-time selections, and just three of them were in the top 15 in saves last season. As outlined in the Baseball Prospectus book Baseball Between the Numbers, there’s a 72 percent chance the average team will not score in a given inning, meaning just about any pitcher has a better than average chance of protecting a one-to three-run lead in an inning of work. So really, having a cool mop or beard is about as good an indicator as any of reliever success.
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With that in mind, here are the four follicularly fortuitous flamethrowers The Good Point deems the true all-stars of closer hair:
The Texas Rangers considered putting Neftali Feliz in their starting rotation but thought better of it, realizing his tight curls were better suited for the bullpen. Feliz’s flow isn’t just power. While it bursts out of the back of his ball cap much the way his fastball bursts out of his hand in the 100-mile-per-hour range, it also has the finesse to hold its own in a fashion photo shoot.
While Feliz may have impressive curls, no one has as obnoxious a beard as San Francisco Giants closer Brian Wilson. Wilson and his beard sit at the top of the saves list for the second straight year, clearly proving the hair-to-success theorem. Some of the other leaders, such asHeath Bell, Leo Nunez and Joakim Soria boast various variations of goatees and chinstraps, but they just haven’t reached Wilson’s level of beardness. Their offerings are mere stubble compared to Wilson’s year-long, lumberjack-containing, black growth.
Wilson easily has the best beard in baseball, but when it comes to mustaches, Milwaukee Brewers closer John Axford reigns supreme. Axford is boasting more of a shaggy look this season, but he solidified his position with his history of sporting a handlebar mustache, drawing the attention of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The show called him a “new rising star on the mustache scene” and compared his “super waxed handlebar mustache” to one of the all-time greats: “Not since Hall of Fame pitcher Rollie Fingers has a mustache like this made such an impact on the game and in the mustache world.”
It’s obvious why Francisco Rodriguez, despite holding the single-season saves record, has been setting up for the Canadian closer since being acquired from the New York Mets. Axford’s ‘stache has already been immortalized in bobblehead form, but more accolades could be in his future. Fingers is one of just five closers in the Hall, and all but Hoyt Wilhelm boasted mustaches, beards and/or outstanding shagginess. Coincidence?
Veering away from mustaches, Cleveland Indians closer Chris Perez is the runner-up to Wilson in the straight beard category. But he adds a mop of flowing locks to the look, solidifying his dominance and earning enough overall points to qualify for the list. It’s obviously working for him on the mound as well, as he and his hair were selected to their first All-Star Game this year in Arizona.
Of course, hair isn’t the be-all, end-all. Mariano Rivera has been dominant in the clean-cut Yankee regime, and several other closers have boring ‘dos but eye-popping numbers. This is a point Kyle Farnsworth tried to bring up with Paul Wilson when Wilson told him he didn’t have the hair to be an elite closer.
There has to be some explanation for this, likely to do with another pitching-related number in that handy Baseball Between the Numbers book, edited by Jonah Keri. Just 28 percent of what happens to any batted ball depends on the pitcher. The biggest factor? Luck, at 44 percent.
With these guys pitching around 60 innings a year, apparently there’s something called “small sample” size that could be just as likely to make a closer appear elite.
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Grab your copy of Baseball Between the Numbers at Amazon.
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