They are charged with a simple task -- get three outs in the ninth inning. If they do it successfully on a regular basis, they become highly-sought after, well-compensated superstars. If they don't, they fall back into the purgatory of the anonymous middle reliever.
They are the closers, and they get a heck of a lot of attention.
Managers with struggling bullpens offer daily reports on closer situations, general managers lust after the relatively few lights-out game-enders, SportsCenter makes a big deal of Eric Gagne's consecutive saves streak, and fantasy baseball fanatics search their league's waiver wire every day to scrounge up a few more saves.
Much ado about nothing? Sometimes it seems that way.
Yes, closers have a tough job. And yes, the pressure of holding a one-run lead in the ninth can be overwhelming, so much so that many a talented hurler has cracked under its weight.
But ultimately, that pressure is the only thing that separates closers from run-of-the-mill relievers.
So why do they generate so much buzz?
It's not because they work a lot. Let's say that a good team wins about 60 percent of its games. That's roughly four wins a week so that's four opportunities for a closer to get a save, assuming every game is close. And since he normally pitches only one inning, that's four innings a week. It makes for a pretty high hullabaloo-to-work ratio.
The buzz, then, must come from that ninth-inning pressure. It's the only thing that can make a relatively ordinary job seem extraordinarily important.
But just how important is that closer? An integral part of a successful team, or just a guy who can get an easy job done?
My crack research team -- that's me and my cat, who offers occasional feedback, but usually just sleeps -- set out to find the answer.
We began, not surprisingly, at the beginning. Sportswriter Jerome Holtzman came up with the idea of the save in 1959 while covering the Cubs. Hoping to create a stat that would accurately measure the effectiveness of relief pitchers, Holtzman devised a set of criteria for a relief appearance to be deemed a save -- a reliever had to enter the game with the tying or winning run on base or at the plate and finish the game with the lead.
But saves didn't find their way out of the sports pages and into the record books until 1969 when Major League Baseball finally made saves an official statistic. Through a series of alterations, the criteria evolved into what stands today: a reliever gets a save if he enters the game with a lead of no more than three runs and pitches at least one inning, if he enters the game with at least the tying run on base, at the plate or in the on-deck circle and finishes it off, or if he works three innings with the lead.
But even then, when the rule became official, starters who finished games were still the norm, so saves and the men who earned them didn't become an obsession until indigestion got involved.
Let me explain.
In 1976, Rolaids, an antacid manufacturer, came up with its famous slogan -- "Rolaids spells relief" -- and, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, launched the Rolaids Relief Man Awards to honor the most effective closer in each league.
Rawley Eastwick of the Reds and Bill Campbell of the Twins won the first two awards with 26 and 20 saves, respectively. Since then, save numbers have skyrocketed.
Only one closer since 1995 has won the award with fewer than 40 saves -- Billy Wagner with 39 in 1999. Nine times, the winner recorded at least 45 saves.
Not bad for a stat category that didn't even exist until 1969.
So back to the original question -- is a closer's job that important?
As strange as it sounds, a tiny little antacid pill has a lot to do with it. Not only did the award give relievers something to shoot for, it also increased people's awareness of saves. Look at it this way -- if you give an award for something, whatever you honor has to be considered important.
And I'm guessing things just snowballed from there.
Guys who could regularly seal games in the ninth became hot commodities. Managers who didn't have closers envied those who did. Fans wanted a character to latch onto, and since pitching one inning of high-pressure baseball every day can make you a little crazy, they usually found their guy. And eventually, every team in baseball had to have a closer.
But just because a job is important doesn't mean it's vital. So the research team delved a little deeper and asked another question: is a dominant closer a necessary piece of a successful team's puzzle?
Tough question, but we can try.
Let's start with a negative response. By all accounts, there are people in baseball who sense that closers are a tad bit overrated. The baseball purists, certainly, would rather see a starter finish a game than rely on an overpaid, overhyped one-inning wonder to close the deal. But the purists generally don't run teams.
Billy Beane does. The Oakland A's general manager, made famous by the bestselling book "Moneyball," seems to side with those purists.
Starting in 2000, his A's went through three closers in four seasons. Jason Isringhausen, Billy Koch, and Keith Foulke all put up big save numbers in Oakland. But the big save numbers weren't enough for Beane to justify the big money numbers that the market dictated -- Isringhausen is making $7.75 million in St. Louis, Koch is pulling in $6.4 million in Florida (after losing the closer's job with the White Sox), and Foulke is making $3.5 million in Boston.
According to the book, Beane felt that a majority of save chances were as simple as possible -- coming into the game to start the ninth with a three-run lead and getting three guys out. Sure, Beane thought closers were an important piece of the puzzle, but an unwillingness to dish out large sums of money shows that his idea of how important falls somewhere short of crucial.
Obviously, Beane understood the importance of having one guy do the job, though, something Theo Epstein apparently didn't grasp.
The young GM of the Boston Red Sox decided before the 2003 season that, since he couldn't acquire a proven closer, he wanted the Sox to use a bullpen by committee.
If you're a Red Sox fan, you might be cringing right now because the now-infamous committee failed miserably. Chad Fox, Mike Timlin, and Alan Embree -- all previously successful relievers -- just couldn't make the jump to the big-time, and eventually Epstein made deals to get Byung-Hyun Kim and Scott Williamson, two proven closers. The consensus was that a closer served as a kind of anchor for the whole bullpen, and without him at the back end, carefully-molded and clearly-understood roles were muddied.
Epstein learned his lesson -- you need one guy.
But what if that guy is unproven? Is it worth the risk to try to make any old reliever into a closer?
Of course, somewhere along the line, almost every closer was just a reliever or a starter. Often they were ineffective in those roles. Gagne, for instance, was terrible as a member of the Dodgers' rotation.
But clearly, some players take to the role of closer like a duck to water while others don't. Joe Nathan, a middle reliever with the Giants until this year, is now a successful closer in Minnesota.
But our old friend Billy Beane saw the other side this year. After he parted with Foulke, a man who got 44 saves last season for Oakland, Beane turned Arthur Rhodes, a setup man for his entire career, into a closer.
The experiment didn't go so well. Rhodes did notch nine saves, but also blew five and posted a 5.28 ERA.
Rhodes' struggles prompted Beane to make a trade for Houston's Octavio Dotel -- himself, a recently-converted setup man -- and may have had something to do with the A's decision to take University of Texas closer Huston Street in the June draft. Even if it didn't, it's clear that Beane knows the importance of an effective closer.
So do the 2004 Cleveland Indians. Since Cleveland lost closer Bob Wickman to an injury before the season, the position has been a revolving door, and as of Sunday, Indians relievers had blown 17 saves. Many have tried to fill the position, most have failed, and in the process, the lack of a quality closer has undermined an otherwise successful team. Suffice it to say, if the Indians had Gagne, they would be in first place.
And speaking of Gagne, his consecutive saves streak stands at 82 (That ended Monday, after this was written. Sorry, Eric, I think we jinxed you!). That's an impressive number, one that probably makes opposing teams quiver when they see the be-goggled Canadian trotting in from the bullpen. So we can throw something else into the mix -- a lights-out closer can have quite the psychological effect on the opposition.
So what do we know?
Not much, really. The bottom line is this: starters no longer routinely finish games so you need a solid bullpen for the late innings. Whether the best pitcher in that bullpen is the closer or the setup man who gets the tough outs with guys on base doesn't matter. The closer garners the most attention because the ninth inning is somehow different, making his job the most high-pressure.
It's important to have a solid closer because not everyone can handle that pressure. The ones that can don't single-handedly win games for you, but they do just what they're supposed to do -- they save those games that your offense and your starting pitcher won.
The research team isn't quite ready to say a great closer is an absolutely necessary part of a championship team. And I'm still not sure why these one inning-and-done pitchers get so much attention.
But I do know this: when my team has the lead in the ninth inning, I want a good pitcher on the mound. Whether he's a bona fide closer or just an anonymous reliever, I don't care. I just want a guy who can get three outs.
And if I can't have that guy, well then, pass the Rolaids.