This morning, I wrote about Andrew Miller’s postseason dominance, and compared his current usage to how Mariano Rivera was deployed by the Yankees during their World Series runs. I noted Miller’s postseason dominance, but because I didn’t have access to postseason splits, I couldn’t put those in context, showing how well Miller has done in the postseason relative to other relievers. Thankfully, David Appelman sent me the data today, and so now I can add some context to Miller’s playoff dominance.

We currently only have this kind of postseason data going back to 2002, so I can’t compare Miller directly to pitchers before then, but we can look at how well he’s done relative to other playoff relievers in the last 15 years. And, as you’d guess, he ranks pretty highly. Here are all the relievers (or pitchers pitching in relief, anyway) who have held hitters below a .200 wOBA during the last 15 years.

Miller isn’t quite at the top, but he’s in that top-three tier separated from everyone else. And yes, given what Tim Lincecum did out of the bullpen for the Giants in 2012, he probably deserved a mention in my piece this morning. He was doing what Miller is doing now before it was cool. It’s too bad he didn’t want to stay in that role; it would have been fun to see what Lincecum could have been as a relief ace before the stuff went away.

Also, if you’re surprised to see Roberto Osuna at the top of the list, join the club. I knew he was good for Toronto last year, but didn’t realize he’d been quite at this level. Of course, the primary reason we’re talking about Miller’s dominance more than Osuna’s is the way they’re doing it; Osuna has a career 25% strikeout rate in the postseason, and has mostly gotten to this list by holding hitters to an .091 BABIP during his playoff appearances. Miller has a 49% postseason strikeout rate, and is at 61% this year; he’s not relying on weak contact or quality defense for his outs, and it’s easier to remember a guy just making his opponents look foolish.

But also, yeah, look at Rivera in that table. 62 innings of a .173 wOBA allowed, and that’s just since 2002, so we’re not even including his earlier dominant years. What Miller has done for 16 innings has been remarkable; Rivera did something similar over a much larger sample. And that’s why he’s the best reliever of all time.