Save (baseball)
A 1933 Goudey baseball card of Firpo Marberry of the Detroit Tigers states he "Specializes in saving ball games when other pitchers are getting their bumps.
[6] He felt that the existing statistics at the time, earned run average (ERA) and win–loss record (W-L), did not sufficiently measure a reliever's effectiveness.
[7] On April 7, 1969, Bill Singer was credited with the first official save when he pitched three shutout innings in relief of Don Drysdale in the Los Angeles Dodgers' 3–2 Opening Day victory over the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field.
The official scorer credited the win to Van Poppel and not Benoit, a decision that was also supported by Texas manager Jerry Narron.
Littleton entered the game with a 14–3 lead, and the final 27-run differential broke the previous record for a save by eight runs.
[22] In baseball statistics, the term save is used to indicate the successful maintenance of a lead by a relief pitcher, usually the closer, until the end of the game.
If a relief pitcher satisfies all of the criteria for a save except he does not finish the game, he will often be credited with a hold (abbreviated H), which is a statistic that is not officially recognized by Major League Baseball.
[30] The blown save was adopted as part of the points system used by the Rolaids Relief Man Award starting in 1988.
As Francisco Rodríguez pursued the single-season saves record in 2008, Baseball Prospectus member Joe Sheehan, Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci, and The New York Sun writer Tim Marchman wrote that Rodríguez's save total was enhanced by the number of opportunities his team presented, allowing him to amass one particular statistic.
[32][33][34] Sheehan offered that saves did not account for a pitcher's proficiency at preventing runs nor did it reflect leads that were not preserved.
[36] Caple and others contend that using one's best reliever in situations such as a three-run lead in the ninth—when a team will almost certainly win even with a lesser pitcher—is foolish, and that using a closer in the traditional fireman role exemplified by pitchers such as Goose Gossage is far wiser.
(A "fireman" situation is men on base in a tied or close game, hence a reliever ending such a threat is "putting out the fire".
[41] Fran Zimniuch in Fireman: The Evolution of the Closer in Baseball wrote, "But you have to be a great relief pitcher to blow that many saves.
The pitchers need to get out of the initial situation and pitch additional innings with more chances to lose the lead.
A study by the Baseball Hall of Fame[note 4] found modern closers were put into fewer tough save situations compared to past relievers.
[27] Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight has suggested the "goose egg", a new statistic that he considers to be a better evaluation of relief performance than the save.
[46] This table is based on career totals at the end of each baseball season, including retroactive application of the saves definition prior to 1969, when it was first recognized as an official statistic by MLB.
Stats updated through 2019 season[citation needed] The below table lists MLB pitchers who have accrued 80 or more blown saves during their careers.
