The Brewster

By Nate Silver. I wholeheartedly agree with this stat. While one could argue that great plays sometimes keep an inning scoreless, over the long run that effect on the stat would be minimal. I also think there's a lot more skill in pitching to keep an inning scoreless in pressure situations than the traditional (?) closer job of "go throw your 90+ mph fastball and slider for 15 pitches to strike out 3 guys."

For those who can't access: "Building on the work of Baseball Prospectus’s Russell Carleton, I’ve designed a statistic and named it the goose egg to honor (or troll) "Goose" Gossage. The basic idea — aside from some additional provisions designed to handle inherited runners, which we’ll detail later — is that a pitcher gets a goose egg for a clutch, scoreless relief inning. Specifically, he gets credit for throwing a scoreless inning when it’s the seventh inning or later and the game is tied or his team leads by no more than two runs. A pitcher can get more than one goose egg in a game, so pitching three clutch scoreless innings counts three times as much as one inning does."

Of course, I'm not sure you can immediately adapt something like this for an OOTP league as the ability of a guy to pitch that one flawless 9th inning is probably baked into the numbers. I don't know that there are many Goose Gossages in OOTP that can routinely toss a scoreless 3 innings. That would be a really great MR whereas top relievers can probably go 2 innings max and only on rare occasions.

The Save Ruined Relief Pitching. The Goose Egg Can Fix It.

Saves leaderboard:
Mariano Rivera
Trevor Hoffman
Lee Smith
Francisco Rodriguez
John Franco

Goose Eggs leaderboard:
Goose Gossage
Rollie Fingers
Hoyt Wilhelm
Mariano Rivera
Lee Smith

This sounds similar to a Hold. But a more specific hold. A hold is basically just a save in a non-save situation, right? I know the RP gets credit for a blown save if they don't hold the lead or tie in the 7th inning. Pretty interesting stuff though.

It's stronger than a hold.

bcslouck wrote:This sounds similar to a Hold. But a more specific hold. A hold is basically just a save in a non-save situation, right? I know the RP gets credit for a blown save if they don't hold the lead or tie in the 7th inning. Pretty interesting stuff though.

A hold is when a pitcher either inherits the circumstances for a save, or the circumstances for a save are created while he is pitcher of record, and the circumstances are still there when he is replaced (counting the baserunners that belong to him, of course). I think this separates out the guys who regularly inherit a 2+ run lead and escape with 1-run leads intact. Technically, they've done their job as a MR or setup guy, but give me the guy who regularly keeps the other team off the board in the 7th, 8th, 9th. It's a unique mindset. Like I said, a closer is going out there to fire K's or at least get ground balls (you're playing with fire if your closer has a high FB rate). A starter, or even a long reliever and most MRs, can get away with a "limit the damage" approach. If you think about it, a "goose egg" guy would essentially pitch a shutout (8-9 innings) over 3 outings.

I understand it's stronger/tougher than a hold and that it's different than a hold. Just pointing out some similarities.

It's an interesting article and idea. I think part of the issue with the Save is that the criteria is too easy. I'm not sure how I feel about this though.

I really like this as I read more about it. It may have flaws, but it's so damn superior to saves that if baseball people had any sense they'd immediately implement it as an official statistic and dump saves. Managers are actively sabotaging their own games (not using their best pitchers in the highest leverage situations) in order for their closers to accrue a weak statistic (saves), so they can they pay them more money. It makes no freaking sense.

Yes. Among the things I like is that a reliever can get more than one goose egg a game.

The are zero "perfect" stats, but the goose egg is far superior to the save for assessing value in the same fashion that OBP is far superior to batting average.

I find this pretty amusing.