It's time for a new approach to the role of closer
Billy Beane has been preaching this for as long as I can remember and has benefited from teams willing to overpay for "closers" for years.
Keith Foulke, Billy Koch, Jason Isringhausen, Huston Street, Andrew Bailey, Grant Balfour....
"I'll tell you why," Oakland general manager Billy Beane says. "It's the same reason more football coaches don't go for it on fourth-and-1. Because when it doesn't work, 30 of you guys come storming in wondering why the manager didn't go to the closer. It's turned into a situation where a lot of emotion is tied to that decision, just as a lot of emotion is tied to the fourth-down decision. Even if you know the odds, it's more comfortable being wrong when you go to the closer or the punter.
"The position has become very media-driven. It became a national story when Boston announced it would go with a bullpen by committee."
"Whitey Herzog had a lot of success with a closer by committee," Beane says. "Although now that I think back on it, I'm not sure they called it 'closer by committee' back then. I think then it was just called 'using your bullpen wisely.' Then closers became 'specialists.'"
