WS Coverage: Mariano Rivera
Congratulations to the 2009 World Series Champion New York Yankees. They were clearly the best team in the league during the regular season and dispatched the Twins, Angles and Phillies with minimal drama to take the World Series. In the process, many of Joe Girardi’s decisions have been questioned here and elsewhere, but one that has gotten near universal support (outside of Minnesota, Los Angeles and Philadelphia) was his heavy use of Mariano Rivera to get six outs an appearance and in non-save situations. Rivera’s performance justified that decision, as he gave up just one run on 10 hits over 16 innings.
It is easy to concoct a narrative of Rivera as Superman against whom there is no chance a run will be scored. MGL neatly dealt with this narrative.
For that matter, I don’t buy into the Rivera post-season mystique either. He is a great reliever, regular or post-season. That is why he has had such phenomenal success in the post-season – because he is a great pitcher! However, there is no such thing as “magic” for any player. There is nothing a player can do about the “Lady Luck” regardless of how good they are. Mariano does not throw every pitch exactly where he wants to and he does not strike every batter out. Sooner or later he is going to implode as any pitcher can on any given day, even when he has his best “stuff” (he seems to have the same stuff every outing). One bad pitch, one bad call by an umpire, one batted ball that does not get caught or falls into the right spot, one batter that happens up square up a pitch, etc.
I like this viewpoint. Rivera is a great pitcher, so we should not be surprised when he has an amazing run of 16 innings. But that does not mean that he can will himself to pitch 16 one-run innings whenever he chooses. So in this post, when I look back at his amazing performance, I don’t want it to sound like I think this was inevitable and there was no way he could have given up any runs. Rather, I am just looking back and seeing how it happened.
Using the same method I used in the Lee post, I am going to look at those innings for a pitch location point of view. Pitches are color coded, those swung at full color and taken faded, strikes encircled, outs with triangles and hits exed. Full color pitches with no markings were fouled off.
As I have said before, the amazing thing about Rivera is how he can location his cutter on either edge and have few end up in the heart. Against LHBs he went all cutter and mostly pitched inside. The graph is a little busy, but you can see the few times he did go outside or hit the fat of the plate he got a good number of called strikes (faded for taken and encircled for strikes), so it looks like batters were looking inside. On those inside pitches he got tons of fouls and outs, but fewer swinging strikes than I would expect.
Again you see the bimodal distribution of pitches either along the inside edge or outside edge. Against RHBs he mixes in his fastball. Batters swung at it more often than his cutter and made contact at a good rate, but they were fouls or outs. With the cutter he got lots of whiffs up-and-in, called strikes down-and-in, and got more swings and contact, again mostly outs or foul balls, away.
Anyway that you look at it, another sixteen incredible innings in the career of the best relief pitcher ever.
Dave Allen's other baseball work can be found at Baseball Analysts.
i think the yankees might have something with this guy
Light light blue and darker light blue? C’mon, those are terrible colours to choose to make distinctions between them. I like the analyses here, but the fangraphs writers seemingly get bored with standard colour schemes which are easier to make out. And it’s Rivera, he only throws two pitches (and barely that) – you don’t need many colours and symbols to cover all the possibilities.
Aweb,
In the past I was asked by readers to use the same pitch type colors that are used in the FanGraphs pitchf/x section. Cutters are light blue in that section so that is why I used that for Rivera.
The faded out for taken pitches is something that I came up with, which I like. It is hard for the lighter pitches, like cutters, but I think there is still enough contrast to tell the difference.
Fair enough, I guess Rivera’s cutter is hard to track even in virtual space…
Dave, Any comment on the plummeting K:BB in the postseason? regular: 6.0, post: 2.8
I would guess it would have something to do with taking more pitches, but unfortunately it doesn’t appear we regular users can see plate discipline stats divided into the postseason.
Alex,
A big part of it is just noise. If he gives up one fewer walk his K/BB jumps to 3.5. In 16 innings anything can happen.
Anyway it looks to me like it was the opposite as you suggest. In the regular season batters swung at his pitches in the zone 59% of the time, but in the playoffs they swung at the in zone pitches 63% of the time. This should lead to fewer Ks (these numbers are different than the zswing numbers in the plate disciplince section because those are from the BIS data and I just calculated those from the pitchf/x data which has a different zone). His Oswing rate was not overly different, 36% during the regular season and 35% during the playoffs. In addition he actually had a worse whiff rate in the playoffs (14%) than in the regular season (17%). That will also lead to fewer strikeouts.
It looks like the post season success was built on a low BABIP, low LD%, high IFF% and high strand rate.
“For that matter, I don’t buy into the Rivera post-season mystique either.”
Ok, sure, but 13 runs in 133.1 postseason innings, 7.2 K/9, 1.4 BB/9, 0.1 HR/9, I mean….
I know we must be forever vigilant and all, but i just stand mute before this guy.
Or cares why! He’s a pleasure to watch and when he retires the Yankees will never be the same!
The charts remind me of John Feinstein’s Book “Living On The Black” in which Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina both talk about “white on white” pitches as major problems in their line of work.
I have to agree with letsgocyclones, there is something about Mo Rivera in the post season that is beyond the scope of “there is no clutch.” Dealing with statistics as we are, every statements should have some level of confidence associated with it. I think its safe to say we have found the player who just stands out, and its Mo.
Why fight the notion of the mystique to the death? There’s a reason we check against the placebo effect in medical trials. If a sugar pill and a dose of belief can improve your fight against illness, can’t a decade of indoctrination about this guy’s invincibility make you a bit more helpless at the plate?
We’ll never get enough data to know the right coefficient for Rivera in the post-season, but the growing set of data we do have is going the wrong way if you’re trying to say his mystique factor is zero!
Full disclosure: Go Yankees!
MAN, at the start of this season, everyone jumped all over Mo. Shouts of “He’s finished!” were coming from sports commentators and talking heads all over the sports nation. Mariano calmly took all the words in stride, and here we are, clinching game of the world series, and the game was over in 7 innings. Will we ever see another player like Mariano Rivera? Smart money is against it, which is why I cherish every inning I get to see him pitch now.
Enjoy it while you can people, 10-20 years from now, we’ll be telling our kids about how we got to see THE GREATEST EVER pitch back in our day just like how our parents and grandparents talk about having seen Muhammad Ali box back in their days.
I must not understand the legend. Why are some of the darker colored circles outlined, and some aren’t? If the darker color indicates a swing, then they are all strikes.
Those indicate pitches that were fouled off. Sometimes strikes, sometimes not. You are right that makes the legend not 100% correct, pitches with the circled outline are either called or swinging strikes.