Closers Rivera, Smith headline Fame billing
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – Major League Baseball no longer has a clear and defined role for them and certainly does its best to devalue them, but this weekend at the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony we again can celebrate them. They are the closers.
It took one swift check mark from all 425 Hall of Fame voters to determine Mariano Rivera should be unanimous.
It took 21 years to decide Lee Smith belongs in the same Hall of Fame company.
For the first time Sunday, we will honor two relievers simultaneously in Cooperstown and, with Trevor Hoffman’s induction of a year ago, will have the three pitchers with the most saves in baseball history all under one roof.
It is the Summer of the Closer, with Rivera and Smith representing onethird of the Hall of Fame class, joined by designated hitters Edgar Martinez and Harold Baines and starters Mike Mussina and Roy Halladay.
“I think it’s just great,” Hoffman told USA TODAY, “because it’s such a different time in our game. It’s always been an important piece of the team, a bullpen itself, and you used to build your bullpen
backwards. Nowadays, I think teams think they can plug in guys in any particular moment and that’s fine. There’s a lot of weird stuff going on.”
You know it’s a bizarre time for closers when Craig Kimbrel, a four-time saves leader and seven-time All-Star who’s the active leader with 336 saves, needed eight months to find a job before signing with the Cubs.
And Kimbrel still signed for barely half of the money – three years, $42 million – given to Aroldis Chapman of the Yankees and Kenley Jansen of the Dodgers.
“The best closer in the game not having a job for 31⁄2 months into the season is a joke,” Hoffman said. “You don’t think he could have helped a team for that time? It’s such a different mind-set now.”
Who knows how Kimbrel, Jansen and Chapman will be viewed when it’s their turn on the Hall of Fame ballot. It took Hoffman three times before he was elected. Smith never did get elected in 15 years by the writers, needing the committee to push him through the doors.
Yet there was Rivera, who became the first player to be voted in unanimously.
“Oh, my God, I remember receiving the call when they told me about it,” Rivera said. “It was some kind of shock. My God, it was amazing. An amazing, great feeling. It feels like when you just won the championship, the World Series. You know, that level of intensity.
“I feel honored, I feel humbled that I was the one that the Lord blessed.”
Rivera won five World Series championships with the Yankees and was at his greatest on the biggest stage, yielding a 0.70 ERA in the postseason.
“I got four rings,” said former Yankee David Cone, “and I joke with John Smoltz and Greg Maddux all of the time, telling them they would have had four or five rings if they had Mo. They agree. He was just a difference-maker.
“Mo was just so precise, with such an elegant delivery and the way he handled himself with such class.”
The man wasn’t perfect. He had that blown save in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series against the Diamondbacks and the two blown saves in the 2004 American League Championship Series against the Red Sox. The Yankees could have had seven titles.
So in the same era when Hoffman had just 51 fewer saves than Rivera, why couldn’t he have breezed through the pearly gates of the Hall of Fame just as swiftly as Rivera?
“He’s our Babe Ruth in our role, evident by the 100%,” Hoffman said. “I’m comfortable knowing he is the greatest reliever we had. I understand being second-fiddle.
“I just think it’s the whole package. He was under the brightest lights, on the biggest stage. And for the most part, he was unflappable. The scrutiny of New York is different than San Diego.
“When you think about it, two-thirds of the country was asleep when I came into games, so really, Mariano brought up my value what he did.”
Really, maybe Rivera’s stardom raised Smith’s profile, too. Smith ended his career with the most saves (478) and games finished (803) and began his career in an era when relievers were often summoned before the ninth inning. He finished with 169 saves of more than one inning, compared to Rivera’s 109 total.
“You heard those things about guys only going one inning,” Smith said. “Well, I don’t know what they were talking about, but back in the day, it was like more than one inning and back-to-back days. Now I think they throw one inning, and if they throw a lot of pitches, they’re off for two or three days. But you know what, I think it makes the guys a little sharper later on in the game.”
Still, no matter when he appeared, just like Rivera, he was on the mound for the final out.
And no matter how many Ivy League graduates teams employ with backpacks stuffed with analytic spreadsheets, you can’t measure the heart and guts it takes to close out games.
“A lot of people can’t do that,” Smith said. “You find so many guys that pitch the seventh and eighth inning and they’ll be nasty. And then when they get an opportunity to close, they fail. I think it’s just something about being that last man standing. It takes a special person.’’
Perhaps when they get together this weekend they can all talk about the changing role of the closer and just what it means for the future.
Smith can’t understand why it took him two decades to be elected when he retired as the all-time saves leader, just like Rivera is baffled why was he first unanimous selection and not a position player.
These are strange times in baseball. Just three years ago there were four closers who signed contracts worth at least $60 million. This year Kimbrel had only one team willing to give him more than $40 million.
“We’re going to have a nice collection of relievers and closers who are reflective of the game these last 30 years,” Hoffman said. “We can look forward to what the futures holds, how much different bullpens are used, and the state of the save.
“I would have thought four years ago guys like Kimbrel and Kenley Jansen and Chapman would steamroll right through to the Hall of Fame when their times comes up. Now, you’re not sure about anything.”
Maybe this year’s Hall of Fame class will remind everyone the importance of the closer.
“You know all the things we heard about relief pitchers, and now it’s where the first guy that gets into the Hall of Fame unanimously is a relief pitcher,” Smith said, “so I’m really looking forward to that. Seeing how that’s coming will help the guys on down the line. This is going to be about the relief pitching corps. I’m loving that.”
It’s time we all did.