July 4, 2011: Mariners 2, Athletics 1 (42-43)

Big things are happening in Seattle. As we speak, the teeming masses of Mariners fandom are all atwitter over the All-Star selection of closer Brandon League, who collected his American League leading 23rd save today. Although such a feat is impressive, (by definition, only one person can have the league lead at any given time*), it is not as meaningful as one might like to think. Now, I don’t mean to argue that League isn’t a legitimately good player. He’s a valuable player, and the Mariners should be happy to have him. I’m just saying that Brandon League is not in any way “so good he ought to be illegal”.

The problem is that saves aren’t a very individually-descriptive statistic. They’re heavily driven by team context, managerial decisions, and our old friend Dumb Luck. When you get right down to it, League’s league lead is due as much to the awfulness of the Mariners offense as it is to his own talents. It's like this: A save requires that the winning team be up by three or less runs when the closer enters the game**. On the year, the Mariners have averaged 3.39 runs scored and 3.45 runs allowed per game. Seriously, is it really that surprising that most of the Mariners' wins have come by three runs or less? Of course League is going to get plenty of opportunities to pad his league lead, purely by virtue of showing up to work. Should we really be praising a guy for managing to make it to work when he’s making millions of dollars to play a children’s game and usually clocking in after nine p.m.?

Yes. Yes, we should. Brandon League works very hard and is very good at his job. He’s literally one of the best in the world. Praise him all you want. All I’m saying is, don’t go overboard just because he happens to lead the league in the world’s most arbitrary statistic***. It’s perfectly ok to like League. Just be careful before you let yourself love him.

Oh yeah, the Mariners also won a game today. It was actually a rerun of the game from April 21, though, so I’m not going to dignify it with a response.

*unless there’s a tie

**unless it’s one of a bunch of other arbitrary scenarios that don’t require that

***this is hyperbole. Wins, batting average, and ERA are all at least as arbitrary as saves. And don’t even get me started about holds...