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1. Famous Original Joe C Posted: September 15, 2011 at 01:26 PM (#3925615)Anyway, guess you gotta write an column about something!
Joe Pepitone was unsurpassed at putting popcorn under his foreskin.
Yeah, but this is so wrong it hurts.
If you were assembling an all-time team, would Rivera even be in the first 20 Yankees chosen?
Even from his own era, I think Jeter, William, Posada and Pettitte were more valuable players.
Actually, yes; you usually do that by position, and after you had eight position starters and a rotation, he'd be the next guy you'd choose.
And his number is already retired ...
Don't forget Gene Michael and the hidden ball trick. So that makes three.
AJ Burnett at uncorking pitches to the backstop....
And his number is already retired ...
Sorry, I didn't mean an all Yankee team. I meant, if we were drafting some kind of "super-league" (multiple teams) of all-time players, where would he go.
So, Mantle and DiMaggio could be picked as CF's for different teams.
Of course not, but that's not what the author is saying. You can figure that much out just by looking at the excerpt above. If he were claiming that Rivera has been more valuable than Dimaggio or Mantle or Gehrig, then your response would be relevant. But the only proper response to the column as it's written is "Well, duh, but what of it?"
He was only 19 when he was signed by the Orioles and:
(wiki)
I assume it was base on age, and his face does kind of look like a baby.
Well that's not a very interesting discussion.
I also have a problem with crediting dominance at a position where 95% of the best pitchers don't compete b/c they're playing a more important position.
Ruth dominated all offensive players. Rivera dominated all the pitchers who weren't good enough to start.
I would think Gehrig being the best 1B ever, or Berra being a consensus top-2 C of all time (tied with Bench) is much more impressive.
True, but it is quite possible that the current era has the most all-time Yankees playing together at one time. Jeter is a consensus choice, and A-Rod & Cano are probably just a question of how much service time to qualify. If Closer is a position, you have 4 with Rivera, which tops the Mantle, Berra, Ford trio (or the one-season overlap of Ford & DiMaggio, along with Berra).
Agreed.
What's crazy is thinking back to Eckersley's insane 1988-1992 closer peak - and then realizing Rivera has done the same thing, only for more than three times as many seasons.
If we ever meet up and I don't give you a boot to the seat of your pants for writing that, then YOU'LL be the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
Cano (28.6 WAR,4.8/162G) has a looooong way to go to catch Randolph (NYY only, 49.8 WAR, 4.8/162) or Lazzeri (NYY only, 46.6 WAR, 4.8/162).
Funny how the per 162 G WAR are identical.
Then Bob Dernier Cri will have surpassed Gehrig in the one thing he was unsurpassed at.
If we ever meet up and I don't give you a boot to the seat of your pants for writing that, then YOU'LL be the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
Sorry, I was busy helping Mr. Loria count all that revenue sharing money he gets from the Yankees. Did you say something?
This has always been the amazing thing about Mariano. A lot of closers have put it together for 4-5 seasons. Papelbon with the Sox, K Rod with the Angels. Doing it for 14 seasons is the amazing part. That and the post season heroics.
But he does have a pasta sauce named after him.
Well that's not a very interesting discussion.
Didn't say it was, but it's not as if pointing out that Mickey Mantle was more valuable than Mariano Rivera is exactly breaking new grounds in insight, either. Does every discussion about players have to wind up with nothing but a bunch of dueling WAR or EqA numbers that you could train a ####### monkey to cut and paste?
Well, my argument isn't about WAR, since I'm saying a lot of players with less WAR would be chosen first b/c of the nature of the closer position.
Andy Pettitte has less (fewer?) WAR than Rivera, and I thing he's a better ballplayer. Not putting Rivera in the top-20 Yankees is explicitly rejecting a WAR ranking.
Boy, if Loria can only afford a stooge like you to do his most important work he must be in worse shape than I thought.
To put it in perspective, think about all the closers who came up after Mo, established dominance, and are gone from the scene while Mo keeps going. Like Eric Gagne. I still think he's got a shot to outlast Papelbon.
Thanks for making it about me.
Grand Salamis.
I dreamed BITD that Manny would take that away as a Red Sox...but ...alas...
Andy, he is claiming that Rivera is second only to Ruth in greatness as defined by dominance in his role. See here:
He's saying that Rivera is the second greatest Yankee because he has been the second most dominant "in his role."
The problem is that this is basically Tallest Midget territory. Relievers are for the most part failed starters (Rivera being no exception, though obviously he didn't get enough of a chance to start), and pitchers for the most part pitch better in relief.
Move Pedro or Clemens or Johnson into the "closer" role, and suddenly Rivera has legitimate competition. John Smoltz certainly didn't have any trouble closing. A 163 ERA+ in four seasons, with 1.7 BB/9 and 9.5 K/9. Led the league with 55 saves one year.
What's hilarious about this is that the author pronounces Rivera clean. He has no idea.
If an official investigation lead by an active member of Red Sox management and confirmed Friend of Bud couldn't turn up anything, there ain't much there. Papi and Manny were guzzling Dominican Milkshakes by the gallon while Bud's boys were launching a worldwide manhunt for Chuck Knoblauch.
I think there's probably a pretty good argument that you would not need a pitcher as good as those guys to give Rivera some competition as greatest closer.
For the billionth time, this is like blaming Mitchell for not solving the Boston Strangler case.
I wouldn't expect one of Bud's cronies to solve the Mystery of the Missing Cookies at Fat Kid Camp.
Cano is only 28, so he has a good chance (assuming he stays beyond the upcoming 2 option years of his contract) although it may be a bit closer than I first thought.
To be fair, that sounds like a terribly difficult mystery to solve.
Finding guys to be as good as Rivera is easy, finding guys to be as good as Rivera for as long as Rivera is incredibly difficult. For whatever reason closers have a tough time remaining elite for extended periods of time. I don't think we can confidently say that Pedro or Clemens or anyone else could have duplicated what Rivera has done because of the health factor.
I think the fact that very few of them are elite talents to begin with is the primary reason behind this.
Then Ruth.
Then Rivera.
Then Monahan.
Fixed.
See..I didn't even know that. GS's are a kind of silly matter of opportunity stat, BUT it was good enough to get its own baseball card way back when. Am I just that out of the loop, or does the media not want to play up a "cheating D-Bag" breaking a legend's record?
The crumbs, Watson. Follow the crumbs.
So objectively, we don't really know if MARIANO RIVERA W/ CUTTER would have failed as a starter, because he was never given a chance to start due to the Yanks preferring to have him close.
I imagine the reason is that there's no real chase to track. Arod may go a whole season without hitting a GS, so it's not as if you can cover it like you would other record pursuits.
Whatever. They re-named The Côte d'Azur in his honor; that kinda tops the pasta thing..
And Rivera is a "failed starter" in the sense that he had great minor league stats and then 10 bad starts in the bigs. There's an alternate universe where Halladay is a closer because he was a "failed starter" and people are saying he can't be taken seriously as a great pitcher because he couldn't have been a great starter.
For fun I searched on B-Ref for relievers who have had seasons of 60 or more appearances with an ERA+ of 200 or greater. (Rivera's career average is 67 games pitched and his career ERA+ is 205.)
There have been 177 such seasons by 133 different pitchers. That ratio in itself tells you a lot; the vast majority of pitchers who do it, do it just once. And it's not a rare feat; as you might imagine, 163 of those seasons were in the last 30 years.
Several pitchers have done it twice. Keith Foulke, Robb Nen, and John Wetteland did it three times. Billy Wagner had four such seasons, Joe Nathan five.
Rivera did it ten times.
I guess TFA has this much of a point: what Babe Ruth was to home-run hitting, or Rickey Henderson to base-stealing, or Nolan Ryan to strikeouts, or Craig Biggio to getting hit by the pitch, Mariano Rivera has been to closing.
with cookies at a fat camp, I don't think there are any crumbs uneaten
But we do know that relieving is easier than starting and that many relievers are failed starters and that Rivera was arguably pampered more than any other pitcher in history.
Yes. And?
Actually, we don't know this. You made this argument in another thread a few months back, I blew the argument out of the water and you purposefully chose not to answer my counterarguments.
Anybody interested can read that thread here.
EDIT: Greg Maddux's first full(ish) season was 155 innings with a 76 ERA+. Over the first two seasons of Randy Johnson's career (at a relatively advanced age) he threw 186 innings with an 88 ERA+. Rivera's bad ten starts in 1995 say absolutely nothing about what his ceiling as a starter was, and it's absurd to suggest otherwise.
39, 93, 192
43, 81, 192
44, 89, 230
45, 93, 185
46, 78, 160
In case you're worried he was slacking off, from ages 40-42 he threw 411 innings with a 158 ERA+.
Then Ruth.
Then Rivera.
Then Monahan.
Fixed.
How about that!
Not so deep down, I wish the Yankees would have started Rivera in 2004 ALCS Game 7. Tell him to pitch as long as he can. Then just roll any other decent guy (Mussina, El Duque) out for an inning or two. Certainly a better option than Kevin Brown or Javy V.
6 rings to 1 WAR. Wow.
However, if you count only his Yankee time, Luis Sojo managed to snag four rings while posting -0.8 WAR.
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