In Alex Hall’s Friday post, A’s manager Bob Melvin was quoted twice. To Jane Lee he suggested he might not be wedded to having one closer and to Susan Slusser he indicated he felt the luxury of stretching out his best relievers to get 4-6 outs. Let’s analyze...
It has long been observed that "closer by committee" does not work — it basically never does — but to some extent this is a "correlation is not causation" issue. If you had 3 terrific closers on your roster, I am confident that the trio of Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, and Aroldis Chapman could manage to hold down most every lead even if selected by virtue only of a three-side coin flip.