19 minutes ago, soxrwhite said:

He reminds me of Matt Thornton. 100 mph, but straight.

Thornton lefty 3/4 delivery and 96-98 his usual velo band

2 hours ago, soxrwhite said:

He reminds me of Matt Thornton. 100 mph, but straight.

Was Matt that quick? I recall 95.

1 hour ago, Stinky Stanky said:

Was Matt that quick? I recall 95.

He averaged 95 to 96 during his Sox stint

13 hours ago, Autumn Dreamin said:

This is not the best source to use, since it splits stats by player team and backend BP arms are among the most commonly traded assets at the deadline. Just at first glance, it leaves out Mason Miller's post-trade Padres tenure, where he went 2/5 on save opps.

Sorry quoted wrong post

There's a lot of terrible use of data in this thread.

Anyone citing general save % is being dishonest, or naive at best. Blown saves account for pitchers who will never get the save:

Example; I come in during the 7th inning and lose the lead, that's a BS. Even though I'm not the one who is closing the game. The intention of this argument was discuss the expected save % of an actual closer (not a set-up guy who is almost always in line to blow the save, but almost never in line to record one).

How can we actually account for expected save % of a closer?

Remove all times that the reliever entered in a hold situation because those bring down numbers, and only account for pitchers who are expected closers (50% or of their appearances come in the 9th/save opps).

Last year, the average BS % for that group was 30%. If we look at the past 5 years, it goes down slightly to 28%. Meaning the average closer should be converting on around 72% of their opportunities. 66% is 1+ Standard Deviation below, so I'd certainly argue that's bad.

Obviously you need to account for things beyond save %, as that is ripe for small-sample variance. Your Mason Miller example being a great one.

I'd also argue we should do more work to get a true expected save % - such as build some weights that account for run-leads of the group to determine who had to be more perfect (Maybe Miller came in during 5 1 run games while someone else had 5 3 run games).

Either way, Dominguez has been terrible. His FIP is over 7, AND he's not converting saves. Comparing his conversion to other relievers who don't have the save opps is absurd.

Edited 16 hours ago16 hr by Look at Ray Ray Run

4 hours ago, soxrwhite said:

He reminds me of Matt Thornton. 100 mph, but straight.

Matt was quick but not quite that quick. 95-97 but he was an early adopter of the "rise" movement, he famously had a high spin rate fastball at a time it was just getting started.