The Story of the Greatest Relief Pitching Season the MLB Has Ever Seen
Relief pitching is one of the toughest jobs to do in baseball. Yes, hitting a baseball is probably the hardest thing to do in sports, and it can be difficult to pitch six to eight good innings as a starter, but relief pitchers are usually put into a difficult position when they enter the game. Relief pitchers come in for, as the name may suggest, relief. They come into games in situations when runners are on base, when the score is tied or, in some cases, to hold a lead until the next inning. While all relief pitchers have a difficult yet important role, closing relief pitchers might just have it hardest of all. A closing pitcher is often the best relief pitcher in the team’s bullpen, usually coming in the game in the eighth or ninth inning with the core responsibility role of preventing a run. In 2016, the closing pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, Zack Britton, had the greatest season of any relief pitcher of all time, and one of the greatest overall pitching seasons ever. I want to dive into just how Britton did it and compare his season to another one of the great relief pitching seasons of all time.
Britton didn’t begin his career as a closing pitcher. Britton was originally drafted to the Baltimore Orioles as a starting pitcher in the third round of the 2006 Amateur Draft. He spent the first four years of his professional career in the minor leagues and by the beginning of the 2010 season, Britton was ranked as the number one prospect in the Orioles organization. In 2011, Britton made his move to the majors. Britton had a rocky start in the majors; in his first season as a starter, he pitched to an 11–11 record, he also had a 4.61 ERA, and he was not striking out as many people as he had in college and in the minors (only 5.7 per nine innings). Britton’s next two seasons didn’t go his way either; his ERA got worse, he was giving up more hits than ever, and he was sent back to the minors a couple of times. Before the 2014 season the Orioles manager, Buck Showalter, decided to move Britton into the bullpen, as he was not effective enough as a starter. This move isn’t uncommon for a lot of starting pitchers. Pitchers almost exclusively start their careers as starting pitchers and they either continue on that path or they get sent to the bullpen, where they can hopefully be more effective. The decision to move Britton to the pen proved to be a smart one as he was dominating hitters all year and just a few weeks into the season, Britton was named the teams closer, and he would stay in that role for years to come. Britton pitched to a 1.65 ERA, was striking more batters out (7.3 per nine innings) and he picked up 37 saves in the 41 attempts he was given. The Orioles went to the playoffs that year where they would sweep the Detroit Tigers, with Britton pulling saves in games two and three. 2015 was about the same for Britton, he was still the teams closer and he was putting up very similar numbers to his 2014 season, but Britton’s strikeout totals rose to 10.9 per nine innings. Before we dive into Britton’s legendary 2016 season, I first want to take a look at another amazing relief pitching season — Eric Gagne’s 2003 season with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Eric Gagne’s 2003 season was one of the best the game had ever seen, but his season the year prior was what put Gagne on the map as a potentially elite closer. In his 2002 season, Gagne would begin a record 84 save streak that would continue into his 2004 season. Gagne was lights out, pitching to just a 1.97 ERA, 193 ERA+, 114 strikeouts, and only allowed 55 hits in 77 games out of the pen. The season earned Gagne a spot on the National Leagues all-star team, and he ended up finishing fourth in the Cy Young vote, an award that is rarely given to relief pitchers. 2002 was also Gagne’s first season as a relief pitching, as Gagne, similar to Britton started his career as a starting pitcher. Gagne continued his dominance into 2003, and until Britton’s 2016 performance, he had the greatest relief pitching season ever. In 77 games out of the bullpen, Gagne pitched to a 1.22 ERA, a 337 ERA+, 114 strikeouts, and just 37 hits given up. His performance earned him another a spot on the all-star team and instead of a fourth-place finish in the Cy Young vote, he won it, beating out a great season from Chicago Cubs pitcher, Mark Prior. Gagne got 28 of the 32 first-place votes, a near-unanimous decision. Gagne became just the ninth relief pitcher since the inception of the award in 1956 to take home the hardware. Gagne’s 2003 season showed the world that a relief pitcher could be as valuable as a starting pitcher or even more valuable in the eyes of the voters for the Cy Young.
Let’s get back to Britton though. Britton’s 2015 proved that he could be very serviceable out of the bullpen for the Orioles, and in 2016 Britton turned into a machine on the mound. Britton had now had two full years as a closing pitcher under his belt, and the Orioles were now a playoff-calibre team with stars like Chris Davis, Adam Jones, and the pesky Manny Machado. Britton put up Barry Bonds type statistics in 2016, in the way that some of them are unbreakable. Britton would lead the American League with 47 saves; he gave up fewer hits than ever before and was barely letting other teams score on him. ERA+ is a statistic that makes it possible for us to look at pitchers from a long time ago like CY Young, and Sandy Koufax, and compare them to pitchers from today like Zack Britton. ERA+ adjusts a pitchers ERA according to the ballpark they pitch in. An average ERA+ is always 100 and any number exceeding 100 is above average. Britton put forward a 0.54 ERA, and an 803 ERA+, meaning that Britton had a better season than the average pitcher in the league by 703%. This was a league that included Justin Verlander, Zack Greinke, and many more. Not only was Britton not giving up many runs, he only gave up one home run all year, and it was to Mookie Betts, who was having his breakout season with the Boston Red Sox. Britton also posted a 0.836 WHIP (Walks plus hits per innings pitched) with the league average being around 1.300. Britton had also faced 254 batters and only gave up hits to 38 of them, with no player recording multiple hits off Britton all season. Britton had taken the league by storm and he was feared by every hitter in the league. The Orioles also had a great season as a team. They would finish second in their division and would take on the Blue Jays in the winner-take-all wild-card game. That wild card game would change the whole game of baseball in ways people didn’t realize at the time. A whole story could be written on that 2016 wild card game — writer for The Athletic, Keith Law, devoted an entire chapter of his book, “Smart Baseball” to that game. The game was tied going into the bottom of the ninth inning and there was no opportunity for a save, so Buck Showalter decided not to send his best pitcher, Britton, out of the bullpen. The game was then tied in the 10th inning, and the 11th, but Britton still wasn’t coming out of the bullpen. In that 11th inning, after six pitchers had come out of the Orioles bullpen (none of them being Britton), Ubaldo Jimenez gave up two singles to put runners on first and third, then giving up a three-run walk-off home run to Edwin Encarnacion. At this point, the Orioles season was over. Keith Law touches on the problem here in his book — coaches care too much about the Save statistic and think that their closer should only come in if their team is winning and they can finish the game. This 2016 wild card game proved that best pitchers should be used, no matter what the situation is, especially in playoff games when every run makes a difference. Britton threw the greatest relief pitching season of all time and he never even got a chance to show off his talents in the playoffs because his manager cared too much about a statistic and failed to use his best pitcher. Unlike Gagne, Britton wouldn’t get to go home with the Cy Young award, but he would finish fourth in the voting, the highest for any relief pitcher since 2006 when Trevor Hoffman, closing pitcher for the San Diego Padres, finished second in the voting.
Britton would have decent seasons in 2017 and 2018, posting above league average numbers in ERA, ERA+, but he started to throw fewer strikeouts and give up more walks At the 2018 trade deadline the Orioles traded Britton to the New York Yankees for three prospects. Britton has definitely fallen back down to Earth since his stellar 2015 and 2016 performances, but that was expected. It’s almost impossible for a player to continue their dominance for their whole career. Britton will likely retire in the next couple of years and barring any other amazing relief pitching performances, he will retire having pitched the greatest relief pitching season of all time, and sadly we never got to see him work his magic in the 2016 playoffs.
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