[hytem]

Well, you could say what's the use of having the best rotation in baseball when you take your starters out after six innings and replace them with a crappy bullpen?

That's the paradigm in baseball these days--out after six, replaced by mid-relief in the 7th, setup in the 8th and closer in the 9th.You get a guy cruising with a lead after six, gets replaced after 100 pitches by a stiff who gets bombed--game lost.

In the old days, the starter pitched as long as he was effective. Complete games were possible. Things were fixed only when broken.

Nowadays, somebody called a closer gets something called a save if he finishes a game with a 3-run lead. 3 runs? Any stiff can protect a 3-run lead for one inning. So why waste your best bullpen guy?

In the old paradigm, a closer was your bullpen stopper who came in to protect a one-run lead--sometimes even in the 7th or 8th inning. And sometimes for 2 or 3 innings. The first great one was Joe Page in the late 1940s, and that's how the Yankees used him--to protect leads in one run games. Which is how a closer should be used nowadays--if he's a real stopper like Papelbon. Imagine wasting a guy like that to protect a 3-run lead. Just for a fantasy stat called a "save."