Closing the Deal
Closers in sales are valuable. Closers in baseball are not so valuable.
Jonathan Papelbon, the closer for the Boston Red Sox pitching staff is pulling the “I’ve got to do what’s best for my family so I’m asking for a humongous raise” routine. Admittedly, he is one of the best young arms in baseball regardless of pitching role. He is also a unique talent in the world of dance. He joined the Red Sox a couple of years ago and, through unforeseen circumstances, found himself entrenched in the closer’s role. He has since become one of the best closers in the game. Now he has his eyes set on an exorbitant contract similar to Mariano Rivera’s of the New York Yankees, which would make him one of the richest players in the game.
But using Mariano Rivera as a comparable is insane because expensive long-term contracts for closers just don’t make sense. The Yankees and other less rational teams have awarded outlandish contracts to closers for dubious reasons. Their impact on the game is primarily emotional. It is much harder emotionally to lose a lead and be defeated in the ninth inning than to lose a lead, say, in the fifth inning and be defeated. But the outcome is the same in both scenarios, defeat. This emotional aversion to last-minute losses assigns a large premium to “closers” that far outweigh their intrinsic value to the team. A good inning pitched is a good inning pitched is a good inning pitched.
If there is a mistake the Theo Epstein regime has made, it is allowing Papelbon to become indispensable as the closer. Papelbon’s arm is young and trained for the rigors of starting pitching. If he played the role of a starter and contributed a disproportionate share of excellent innings pitched, he would be worth the money he is asking for.
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