Middle-Relief Bigotry Exposed

Your culprit: Greg Couch of the Chicago Sun-Times. In a generally dumb article about why Kerry Wood shouldn’t be the Cubs’ closer, Couch writes:

Wood can never be trusted again. Not as a starter, not as a closer. In middle relief, fine.

On behalf of those who fight for the rights of middle-relief pitchers every day: go fuck yourself, Greg Couch. Why would you want someone who “can never be trusted” to ever pitch for your team? Would the innings he’d pitch in middle relief not count towards the final score of the game? Just for you, I hope the 2008 Cubs have outstanding starting pitchers, a dominant closer, and an untrustworthy Kerry Wood who yields 408 runs in 54 innings pitched of middle relief.

R-O-L-A-I-D-S Spells Prejudice Against Middle-Relievers

Rolaids purports to be the “home of everything you need to know about the best relievers in baseball.” Hey, Rolaids: relief-pitching fans across the country now agree that the Loogy Lounge is the home of everything they need to know about the best relievers in baseball. And your Relief Man of the Year Award undermines everything we strive for as a blog dedicated to relief pitchers.

Why does a silly award like this make my stomach turn? (Get it? Stomach turn… Rolaids. Thank you. Thank you. I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.) I did some research, and it appears the award is actually considered to be prestigious and is sometimes used as a barometer to measure relief pitchers. The Relief Man Award is given to the relief pitcher in each league who accumulates the most points based upon the following system:

• Three points for each save
• One additional point for each “tough” save (i.e. reliever comes in with the tying run on base and saves the game)
• Two points for each win
• Two points deducted for each loss or “blown save”

At least its objective. Unfortunately, it’s also really stupid. First, it absolutely is impossible for a non-closer to win the Rolaids Relief Man Award. The list of past award recipients confirms this point. Maybe my issue here merely is based upon semantics, but I think it’s disingenuous to call this a Relief Man Award. It’s an award exclusively for closers. Second, putting the middle-relief prejudice aside, this is a really bad way to measure closer effectiveness. Case in point: Joe Borowski was ranked ahead of Jonathan Papelbon in 2007.

OK, I’m done ranting about trivial nonsense. Going forward, I’m just going to use Pepto for my indigestion. Maybe they can come up with a better way to recognize relief pitchers.