Go Big Mo!

This is the third post this year about a current or former Yankee baseballer and of a congratulatory nature. The first was for Derek Jeter, the iconic shortstop who got his 3000th career hit. The second was for Hideki Matsui, now with the Oakland A's, who got his 500th career home-run (spanning here and Japan).

This post is for Big Mo, Mariano Rivera. With the Yankees victory yesterday over the Minnesota Twins, a makeup game from four weeks ago, Mo finished it off and earned a save, his 42nd on the year, good for second place in the American league.

It was also his 602nd save for his career, putting him in first place all-time, breaking the tie he was in with the retired Trevor Hoffman. While Trevor Hoffman was an excellent pitcher and closer, he played for longer than Rivera and the majority of his career was played in the National League West, universally seen as the lightest hitting and most pitcher friendly division in baseball.

Mo, on the other hand, plays in the American League East, the roughest, toughest, hardest hitting-est division in the game. When the Blue Jays lead the league in homers and are the fourth best team in the division, you know it's off the hook. This season, the three best American league teams have been (and still are) the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays, although the Tigers (AL Central) are making a case for themselves.

In any case, Mo plays in the hardest division in baseball, has consistently put up remarkable numbers, and does it all with only two pitches: fastball, cutter. (A cutter is a "cut-fastball", a fastball that creeps in on the hands of the batter and turns into a buzz-saw that can't be hit, shattering bats.) His pinpoint accuracy with the cutter is the stuff of legend.

I remember watching him pitch in 1996, when he looked like he weighed 165 pounds and pitched in middle relief. He'd come into the game in the fifth or sixth inning, break bats around strikeouts for two innngs, and John Wetteland would enter in the 9th and get the save. In 1997, they let Wetteland go and made Rivera the closer, and he subsequently became the greatest closer of all time, with no questions asked. It's quite remarkable.

He's forty-freaking-one years old. He's got 42 saves this year. 2nd place on the season, and 41 years old.

I haven't even mentioned his post-season exploits. Much talk has been generated about the importance of a lock-down reliever or closer in the playoffs. Looking at the percentages over the past fifteen years you get the sense of that visceral importance, but, that whole body of evidence--all that data that generate those percentages--could be skewed single-handedly by Mariano Rivera's continued excellence and the Yankees frequent trips to the playoffs. Mo has pitched in 139 2/3 inings, almost 140 innings in the playoffs--the divisional rounds, the championship rounds, and World Series games. His earned run average (ERA) in those nearly 140 innings: 0.74.

If you don't know baseball, that number doesn't mean much. If you do know baseball, an ERA that low for a month is pretty good, let alone fifteen seasons of playoff trips accumulating 140 innings. As an explanation for non-baseball people, a pitcher's ERA is the measure of, on average, how many runs would a pitcher give up in a 9 inning game--a pitcher's average run-allowance per 9 innings. For Mariano Rivera, over the course of almost sixteen complete games, that's less than a single run a game.

The last home-run he gave up in any playoff game was in 2000, against the Mets during the World Series, a series in which they won. Before that, his only other post-season homer allowed was against the Indians in 1997.

Mariano Rivera isn't the greatest baseball player of all time, but, can you name a better role player? Has there been anyone better, in any sport, at doing their one job, over an over, for a long period of time, against the hardest competition, at ridiculously high levels? I can only think of maybe two: Pele and Jordan.

I've had the pleasure of watching some of Mo's saves in person.



Remember this, from November of 2009 (like the Matsui post):