Jonathan Papelbon had his first blown save of the season last night. I personally wasn’t too worried about it because I knew it was bound to happen some time. No one could honestly say that they expected Papelbon to finish the season with a 0.00 ERA and every game does count but I’d rather see a blown save in May than in September. I was chatting with Evan this morning and I asked him a question about the different definitions of a save.
I asked if we were winning 10-5 and Papelbon came in with the bases loaded and did his thing, would he get the save. Evan confirmed that it would be a save but then said Papelbon would probably blow it. The optimist in me tried to convince him that one blown save wasn’t a big deal. To even further convince him, I decided to do a little research. I’m a numbers and stats guy so I tried to think of a stat that would show how good Papelbon really is.
I ended up developing a stat of my own and I call it Blown Save Rate. It’s not a real “stat” as anyone could easily calculate it but it’s interesting to look at. Blown Save Rate shows what percent of the time a pitcher blows a save when he is presented with the opportunity. Essentially, it is the opposite of save percentage.
It is calculated by dividing Saves by Save Opportunities and then subtracting that result from 1. So for example, Papelbon has 8 saves in 9 opportunities this season. His Blown Save Rate is 1 ÇƒÏ (8/9) = 11.11%. So I thought to myself, “If Papelbon will only blow a save 11% of the time, that’s pretty darn good.” I decided to see how Papelbon compares to other pitchers so I could show Evan how good he is. The results weren’t quite what I expected. Everyone thinks Papelbon is a great closer and he is but if you go by my stat, he’s pretty overrated, as he blew a save last year 14.63% of the time he had the chance to get one.
Here are the blown save rates of some other pitchers:
The reason the Career numbers are since 1999 is because before that there really wasn’t a defined “Save Opportunity” stat at least in the sense that we know it today. A save was probably given to any pitcher who was the last pitcher in the game and maintained a lead.
So if you look at these numbers, Papelbon isn’t as phenomenal as most people think. I still can’t think of anyone besides Papelbon that I’d rather have pitching in a save situation, but perhaps I should reconsider?
By Mike Brunell