from Amazon
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Goodbye Saves, Hello… Douses?
I don’t have a good word for it yet. “Fires extinguished” would be what I’m looking for. As Jeff notes, the idea of saves can be improved upon. So, what can we track?
How about any game in which a reliever enters (regardless of score, ahead/behind) and he comes out with a WPA of at least +.05, we call that a “douse” (or whatever better word you can think of). And if he leaves the game -.05 or worse, that’s an arson (or whatever better word you can think of). Last year, Mariano Rivera had 38 douses and 5 arsons. Just a matter of playing around with the threshholds to see what kind of results we’d like to get.
There’s a certain comfort in counting things in binary form like this.
Two points:
1. ignore if it’s sellable
2. we need a good name