Ever since I read Moneyball, which turned me into a baseball stat super genius, as it did for everyone else, I have wondered about the value of a relief pitcher. For the most part, they come and go pretty quickly. Today’s top set up guy is tomorrow’s DFA.
Mason Miller, the A’s closer, has been fantastic. A lot of people think he’ll move at the trade deadline, as the A’s certainly don’t need him to finish last again. How much would you give up for him? If we’re just talking “We need a top closer to win the World Series this year”, fine. But how many years is he going to be a top closer?
My theory was three years is the max except for really top-end guys. The corollary to my theory is that this doesn’t apply to Mariano Rivera, who was the best reliever ever by a large margin. To test my theory, I finally got a subscription to FanGraphs, dumped all data for relievers from 2000-2024, ranked them by WAR each year, and then counted how many times a guy was in the top 25.
| Player | Years in the top 25 in WAR |
| Mariano Rivera | 12 |
| Kenley Jansen | 9 |
| Joe Nathan | 8 |
| David Robertson | 8 |
| Craig Kimbrel | 8 |
| Aroldis Chapman | 8 |
| Trevor Hoffman | 7 |
| Rafael Betancourt | 7 |
| Jonathan Papelbon | 7 |
| Francisco Rodríguez | 7 |
| Billy Wagner | 7 |
| Joakim Soria | 6 |
| Octavio Dotel | 5 |
| Liam Hendriks | 5 |
| J.J. Putz | 5 |
| Greg Holland | 5 |
| Francisco Cordero | 5 |
| Edwin Díaz | 5 |
| Ryan Pressly | 4 |
| Roberto Osuna | 4 |
| Raisel Iglesias | 4 |
| Matt Thornton | 4 |
| Mark Melancon | 4 |
| Ken Giles | 4 |
| Keith Foulke | 4 |
| Josh Hader | 4 |
| Jonathan Broxton | 4 |
| Joaquín Benoit | 4 |
| Huston Street | 4 |
| Heath Bell | 4 |
| Emmanuel Clase | 4 |
| Devin Williams | 4 |
| Dellin Betances | 4 |
| Byung-Hyun Kim | 4 |
| Brad Lidge | 4 |
| Brad Hand | 4 |
| Bobby Jenks | 4 |
| B.J. Ryan | 4 |
| Andrew Miller | 4 |
There you go. 39 players since 2000 have been top 25 relievers more than 3 years. I might redo the analysis a bit – WAR may not be the best way to rank a reliever.
I was definitely right about Mariano Rivera.
Of the 318 players who ranked in the top 25 in WAR in the 2000’s, 192 did it once. 60 did it twice and 27 three times. The rest is the list above.