Eric Gagne
He said real tough one. It ain’t gonna be anyone that played in the last 15 years.
Dan Quisenberry?
Did they have to start after 1930 or just played sometime after 1930?
Started after 1930. There were a couple guys on the leaderboard that started in the dead ball era and made it a few years after so I chose 1930 as a random cutoff.
Nope
Good guess since I don’t know who that is and I also didn’t know who this was but no.
the only players I can think of that might be on a list of lower ERAs than DeGrom (besides the ones already mentioned) are earlier than 1930. Babe Ruth, Noodles Hahn (best fucking baseball name, don’t @ me), Coveleski, Smoky Joe Wood, etc.
I’d have to google the list
I googled the answer as i barely know any retired pitchers to begin with. His wiki page was a fun read.
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Ok, I cheated. I was gonna say Babe Ruth, and I’d have been right of my other question was a yes.
I doubt anybody gets this
I looked at the list, so I’m not going to say, and picked out who the name is from that. This should not be an obscure name to anyone who cares about baseball history, which I care about more than recent baseball. I would have easily gotten it 20 years ago.
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Yeah I obviously know who he is, but would never have pulled his name
same. I finally googled the list and it jumped right out, but I couldn’t have just guessed it.
Kevin Brown?
I’ll use this to ask a noob question. What makes Mariano Rivera a closer (other than the obvious answer that he closed games)?
Like if i understand correctly, starting pitchers need to have a variety of pitches as they go through the order multiple times and Rivera basically had one pitch. But why?
When you faced Rivera you knew he’s throwing a cut fastball and yet no one could hit it. So why not do it for 5 innings?
I googled it. LOL like anyone is gonna guess it. I had to look at list 2x before realizing it was him. He’s famous but he’s just not famous famous if you know what i mean.
Rivera didn’t really develop that pitch until he was already established as a closer.
It’s one of those things that is hard to guess, but once you hear it you’ll think it’s blatantly obvious and why the hell didn’t I think of that. Well, it is if you know much about baseball, anyway.
Guy has/had a shit ton of records, firsts, and notable things.
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It’s believed that starting pitchers need to be able to throw multiple types of pitches to keep batters off-balance. Otherwise, by the second and third time through the lineup, the batter gets the timing down and can tee off on a pitcher who just throws fastballs. So, a lot of pitchers with a great fastball and not much else, maybe a secondary pitch that is just decent, get cast as closers.
Some pitchers are also put into a relief role because they lack the stamina to throw a lot of innings.
Once you get used as a closer and are successful at it, there is a reluctance to move you out of that role.
Based on the clues I’m going to go with Steve Carlton?
Some of the guesses are on the right track, some of the guesses are not.
I think the question was more broad.
Closers tend to (though not always) be power pitchers. They have at least one Very good pitch that is very hard to hit. However, in baseball, pitch efficiency and effectiveness fades each trip through the order. If you have mainly only a single good pitch and you throw gas, you’re a lot more effective as a closer, as there is no second time through the lineup. You’re at most facing 5 or 6 batters a game.
So the simple answer is that the power and dominance of a single pitch will fade incredibly with repeated performance throughout each individual game, and the season as a whole.