Quote:
Originally Posted by Crapshoot
Amusingly enough, Zumaya's LI is fairly close to Jones' - but probably for the wrong reasons. Someday, somewhere, a manager will have the balls to use his best reliever in the highest leverage situations, paying fuck all attention to saves. I'm guessing it won't happen for a while, though Terry Francona has shown an admirable tendency towards doing so.
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Yeah, what's too bad is that Leyland probably has as much leverage as any manager out there to buck this trend, both given his history of bullpen usage (didn't always have a defined "closer" in Pittsburgh) and his success as a manager.
I'd say Oakland would be a likely spot to see this trend bucked, except that Beane has profited from taking OK pitchers, putting them in a closer role where they can rack up saves and drive up their value and then dealing them before the cost gets too high for Oakland to keep and to profit off of that value inflation. Leave it to Beane to figure out a way to make the "closer culture" work to his advantage.