Eckersley, Gagné, and now Hader: Closers for Cy Young

Photo Credit: Phrake Photography

Posted By: Steven Claxton

Decades ago, starting pitchers racked up innings like celebrities and frequent flyer miles. Completes games weren't the abnormality of which they are in today's game.

In the late 1800s, during baseball's birth years, it was common for starting pitchers to accrue 75+ complete games, or CGs. Even as recently as the 1970s and 1980s, starters were throwing as many as 30 CGs in a given season.

For example, Tom Seaver's hey-day consisted of roughly half of his starts resulting in complete games. In 1968-1969, Bob Gibson threw 28 complete games each season. 10 years later and Phil Niekro was still throwing 20-25 CGs a year, too.

Injuries have become more prevalent in recent years, however, and relievers have become critical components of a team's success. As well, the competition of today's game has reached new heights in which starting pitchers simply can't take the wheel for a full 9 innings like they once could.

A New Era

Known by many as the greatest reliever (and closer) of all-time, Mariano Rivera (and his cutter) showed modern baseball just how dominant a reliever could be - and how those 3-5 outs from a fresh arm could be effectively used. Even prior to the Rivera era, there was beginning to be a change in the game. Dennis Eckersley, for example.

Now a Hall of Famer, Eckersley spent the first half of his career as a solid starting pitcher before later becoming the closer for the Oakland Athletics in the 1980s and 1990s (in which he turned in several dominant seasons - becoming the first true closer to ever win the Cy Young Award in 1992.)

While Mariano Rivera is often considered the greatest reliever ever, that is a feat that would only occur in one other such instance as Canadian-born ace closer, Éric Gagné, stunned the baseball world with an unthinkable 55 consecutive saves as the closer for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2003.

Enter Josh Hader.

Josh Hader became a household name during his 2018 sophomore season - commonizing "striking out the side", a term for when a reliever strikes out three batters for all three of an inning's outs. In fact, the Brewer's stud utility reliever actually bested Gagné's strikeout-per-nine-innings measure while throwing 81+ innings with a 2.43 ERA (which was oppositely roughly double of Gagné's 1.20 mark.)

Given that the truly elite starting pitchers sit around 5-7 wins above replacement (WAR), Hader's 2.7 WAR (extrapolated to roughly 6.5 over a 200 inning season) in 2018 indicates that, in only his second season, he seems to have already transcended towards being an elite reliever.

One year later and nothing has changed. After matching and then besting Gagné's K/9IP, Hader has tacked on another 4K/9IP in the early goings - totaling a staggering 19.87 strikeouts per 9 innings while pacing for 8.0+ WAR. As well, Josh Hader has halved his xFIP of one year ago - from 2.05 to 1.05. He's filthy.

Most likely, Hader will regress closer to last year's strikeout rates, but if there were a reliever who could maintain this kind of production it would be him. He likely also will not accrue an extrapolated WAR rate of 8.0+, but then again, we just don't know. This is what makes him so special as we're pretty consistently amazed by his work.

Josh Hader has a chance to join rare company as only the 3rd closer (9th reliever) to ever win a Cy Young Award. Unfortunately, the Brewers seem predisposed to use him in any inning as opposed to solely the 9th, but there's a great path here still for him to do so.

Opportunity

If we look at the current top pitchers of the game, the majority of the truly elite are in the American League while Hader is obviously in the National League. For argument's sake, let's say Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom are the only elite NL pitchers - followed close behind by still-mostly-great guys such as Syndergaard, Strasburg, Kershaw, and Nola (to name a few).

Scherzer is nearly 35 years old and it remains to be seen how he will fare beyond 2019. We've already seen a few valleys from deGrom (and Nola no less) this season after he was far better than expected in 2018. Syndergaard and Strasburg are each somewhat of an injury risk and it's doubtful Kershaw can return 100%, respectfully, to his prior elite form.

This speculatively leaves us with the idea that one of Luis Castillo, Walker Buehler, or even Chris Paddack are the remaining contenders for Cy Young Awards - barring a Jose Fernandez-like ascension towards superstardom from someone new (which could of course happen, but has not occurred yet). Simply put, if Scherzer and deGrom are out of the picture, I believe Hader has the potential to win the award vs. the remaining competition in the coming year or so.

If we're to get even more statistical, Hader has increased his rate of induced soft contact from last year by 9% and has also halved his SIERA from one year ago to a rate of sub - 1.00. While not a perfect statistical measure, a SIERA of 0.83 is only a good thing. He is furthermore throwing more first-pitch strikes and has increased in several other metrics.

It's still completely early in the season. I know. Which is also the issue. 2019 still seems like Scherzer's year for the award given that he leads the majors in WAR, FIP, and xFIP, but 2020 or 2021 seem in play at this point. It would improve his case if the Brewers elect to not sign Craig Kimbrel as those 40+ potential saves would really make Hader's Cy Young resume pop even further. There's also no guarantee Hader remains a full-time closer otherwise, but between the aging Jeffress and injured Knebel, the opportunity...again, is there.

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