As fanatics, we’re all prone to misevaluations based on our own idiosyncrasies, personal player preferences, and in some cases, our emotions.
A mistake many fans make (as well as some teams’ front offices) is overestimating the importance of individual relief pitchers. This isn’t to say that relief pitching as a whole, on a team level isn’t crucial, because it is. The reality, however, is that individual relief pitchers — even very good ones — are more replaceable than most of us realize.
Our emotions cause us to overlook a few facts, probably because when relief pitchers screw up it usually means the end of the game in a less than desirous manner.