On Tuesday, when the bad (but not catastrophic) news broke about Joe Nathan, I got into an interesting Twitter discussion (if you can call exchanges of 140 characters of English-esque gibberish a "discussion") about closers with the excellent Paul Bourdett. I had been saying that I generally think that finding a closer is a lot simpler than most people -- stat geeks and traditionalists alike -- make it out to be, and that really, the best pitcher makes the best closer, regardless of how that guy goes about getting outs.  Paul responded, to paraphrase, that intangibles play a part, too, which is why lots of guys with outstanding (stuff, numbers, etc.) have failed in the closer role.

My response: have lots of those guys failed? The assumption Paul is making (and the assumption just about everybody makes) is that there are good pitchers out there who are not good closers, because they can't handle the pressure, don't have the right personality, etc. But I couldn't think of anybody who that's actually happened to. So I asked Paul, and he came up with a list: Ryan Dempster, Ryan Madson, C.J. Wilson, Aaron Heilman, Grant Balfour, Brandon Lyon, Manny Corpas, and Jim Johnson.

I was impressed that he came up with some names (nobody'd been able to answer that question before). And he might be on to something with C.J. Wilson, who has been legitimately good in a setup role and something between mediocre and horrible as a closer; but Wilson hasn't had all that much of a chance in either role, and in 2009 was shipped back and forth ceaselessly among both, so it's way too early to tell whether he can't handle it or has just been unlucky.

Unfortunately, I don't think any of his other examples fit the bill at all (click "read more" below to continue):

•  Dempster has a career 4.50 ERA as a starter and 4.11 as a reliever, mostly consisting of a 4.12 ERA in his three full years as the Cubs' closer. He's had something of a renaissance the last two years, but before then was a much worse starter than he was a closer.
  
• Madson, Heilman, Balfour and Johnson have a grand total of 44 saves between them, in a combined 24 seasons. None of them has spent any significant time as anybody's closer. There's certainly not nearly enough data to suggest that any of them would be any worse (or better) as a closer than they are in other situations. In 2009, Grant Balfour entered into a save situation in the ninth inning three times and got three saves, allowing zero baserunners in those appearances.
  
• Lyon is actually pretty damned consistent (and consistently a pretty decent middle reliever who shouldn't be anything more than that). If you click that link and scroll down a bit, you'll see his FIP (refresher here) has been right around 4.00 in three of the last four years. The year he spent as a full-time closer, 2008, is actually the best of those three years, at 3.87. His actual ERA was the highest of that period, driven mostly by a ridiculous .355 batting average against on balls in play (compared to .290, .287 and .229 in the other three seasons). He got hit a touch harder than in other years, but mostly, whether because of bad defense or bad luck, his problem was just that everything hit was finding a hole. He was essentially the same pitcher as a closer as he's ever been (which is to say, not really closer-quality).
  
• And Corpas? He looked like a budding star in 2007. After taking over as full-time closer in July, he put up a 1.50 ERA in 36 innings. But he was awful almost from day 1 in 2008 and lost the closer role after throwing just 12 innings. He was just okay after that, and was a nightmare in 2009 without ever sniffing the closer role. He's been great as a closer, terrible as a closer (in just 12 innings), mediocre as a setup guy and terrible as a setup guy. Whatever his problem is, it seems pretty clear that handling the closer role isn't it.
  

So of all those names, there are seven definite "no"s and one "too early to tell." We certainly haven't seen anything that should convince anybody that any one of these pitchers just can't handle the closer role.

My hypothesis remains the same: a good pitcher is a good pitcher. In fact, because it's easier to pitch one inning than six to nine innings, any above-average starter is very likely an excellent reliever, and thus an excellent closer. Major League Baseball players (and especially pitchers) all deal with pretty intense pressure, every day. Tens or hundreds of thousands are watching their every move closely. If a guy can't handle the pressure of the ninth inning in a close game, it's very likely that that guy can't handle the pressure of the Major Leagues, period.

But I want to see if I can find any examples to disprove that hypothesis. Are there any good pitchers -- not just guys with good stuff or whatever, but pitchers who have established, either as starters or middle relievers, that they know how to get guys out -- who have failed in the closer role?

It's not an easy thing to test. Saves and blown saves are useless; middle relievers get charged with "blown saves" all the time in situations in which we know they'd never have sniffed the ninth inning even if they had managed to hold the lead. And we want guys who (unlike Balfour, Heilman, Johnson and Madson) have really been given a significant chance to close, and have decidedly failed.*

*Note what we're not looking for: guys who were good-to-great closers, experienced some kind of traumatic postseason failure, and then fell apart. Your Mitch Williamses and Brad Lidges and B-H Kims. I'm sure that happens, but it's no good to us; the question here is how well we can predict which guys will make good closers before the fact, and it makes no sense to include as part of that process an assumption that the guy is going to be one of those small handful of pitchers in baseball history who have experienced one of those unsurmountably crushing moments on the mound.

So there's no perfect way, and I'm sure this is far from the most perfect, but here's what I did: I went over to Baseball-Reference and searched for guys who, in the last 15 years (1995-2009), have gathered between 20 and 150 saves. I then sorted by most games pitched in that period (the idea being that guys near the top of the list would be guys who got significant looks as closers but have spent most of their time in other roles). You can see the results for yourself here.

A lot of the guys toward the top are guys who pitched forever and picked up 20-30 saves at the rate of 1-3 a year, but the guys we're looking for are there too. There's David Weathers, who had 14 career saves entering his age-35 season, and then spent the next three years as a half-to-full-time closer. Those three years were among the best of his career, with a 3.69 ERA and 122 ERA+ compared to his career numbers of 4.25 and 102. There's Mike Timlin, who also generally performed better in seasons in which he spent significant time as closer, including a 2.95 ERA, 19 save season in 1998 and a 2.24 and 13 season in 2005 (career 3.63 ERA).

LaTroy Hawkins is held up as the textbook example of the good pitcher who can't close, but I'm not at all convinced. Dude has had a strange career. He started out as a talented but terrible starter, and was converted to a reliever and then closer in the 2000 season. Once he took over as closer in July, he had a 2.28 ERA. Then he had a bad 2001, lost the closer role to Eddie Guardado, and dominated as a setup guy in 2002 and 2003. Moving over to the Cubs, he was very good again as a closer in 2004. He was so-so in both roles in 2005, and had pretty much been a mediocre middle guy ever since, until breaking through again in 2009 with a 2.13 ERA (which FIP suggests was largely a mirage). He was essentially the team's closer from late April through mid-June, and performed admirably. I don't think there's anything like proof that Hawkins is a bad closer. I think he's a decent pitcher who has had flashes of brilliance, most of which has tended to come when he wasn't serving as closer. For his career, he's held opponents to a .718 OPS in "Late & Close" situations, considerably better than his career .771. Hawkins has his issues, but I don't believe makeup or pressure-handling is among them.

And it continues. Bobby Howry had one full year as closer, and was right at his career averages. Braden Looper closed as well as he set up, and much better than he starts (as, in both cases, I contend we should always expect). Tim Worrell was a fine closer, but (like Weathers) was pretty old already before he got a chance. Antonio Alfonseca was equally mediocre in all roles. Curt Leskanic was really only good when he was closing. Derek Lowe took some heat in Boston toward the end of his time as a closer, but was excellent in the role. Octavio Dotel had the bad fortune to take a step backward the same year he became a closer, but ever since then he's been essentially the same pitcher as a setup guy that he was as a closer (and he wasn't bad as a closer -- he'll get another chance this year with the Pirates, if healthy). The Jays made Miguel Batista closer once for some reason, and he gave them exactly what they should have expected.

Long story slightly less long: I've looked through a whole lot of this list (most I clicked on, some I'm just familiar with), and I honestly don't think there's a single one, with the possible (unlikely) exception of Wilson, who has pitched significantly better in other roles than he has at closer. If a pitcher has been a good pitcher in other roles, he's been a good closer. At least for the last fifteen years, I don't believe there's been a single instance of a good pitcher failing in the closer role. Paul's assertion (shared, seemingly, by almost everybody) that there are a lot of those pitchers seems to me to be entirely mistaken.

So, I'll say it again: there's no magic to being a "proven closer" or having a closer's "makeup." If he's a pitcher in the major leagues, he can handle pressure. If he's a good pitcher in the major leagues, he'll almost certainly make a good closer. If you've got a guy who appears to be a failure as a closer, the likely explanation is that he just wasn't very good to begin with (or maybe he's just been unlucky).

Prove me wrong!

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