Seasons with More Saves than Strikeouts

In 2012, Jim Johnson became the pitcher with the most saves in a major-league season in which he had more saves than strikeouts. Most pitchers — even closers — will have more strikeouts than saves. Before about 1990, closers were not limited to one-inning saves, and pitched substantially more innings than today's closers. So they would earn more strikeouts than saves. And today, even though closers are more and more limited to one-inning outings at the longest, most are power pitchers who strike out more than one batter per inning, and so usually have more strikeouts than saves.

Only fifteen pitchers — actually thirteen pitchers, because Todd Jones did it three times — have had a season of fifteen or more saves with more saves than strikeouts. As we shall see, of these fifteen, none are truly comparable to Jim Johnson's 2012, either because they were substantially older than Johnson, their ratio of saves to strikeouts was more even than Johnson's, because they were substantially less effective than Johnson, or for more than one of the above reasons. Below is a list of all such seasons; the columns should be self-explantory:

Player	Team	Year	Age	Saves	Ks	SV/K Ratio	ERA+
Jim Johnson	Baltimore	2012	29	51	41	1.24	170
Brian Fuentes	Anaheim	2009	33	48	46	1.04	112
Todd Jones	Detroit	2008	40	18	14	1.28	90
Todd Jones	Detroit	2007	39	38	33	1.15	108
Todd Jones	Detroit	2006	38	37	28	1.32	115
Bob Wickman	Cleveland	2005	36	45	41	1.09	171
Dustin Hermanson	Chicago AL	2005	32	34	33	1.03	221
Braden Looper	New York NL	2005	30	28	27	1.03	105
Danny Graves	Cincinnati	2004	30	41	40	1.02	108
Jose Mesa	Pittsburgh	2004	38	43	37	1.16	132
Danny Kolb	Milwaukee	2004	29	39	21	1.86	147
Mike Williams	Pittsburgh	2002	33	46	43	1.06	145
Dave Smith	Chicago NL	1991	36	17	16	1.06	65
Dan Quisenberry	Kansas City	1984	31	45	41	1.09	152
Russ Christopher	Cleveland	1948	30	17	14	1.21	141

I'm going to dismiss the three most-long-ago of these seasons. In 1991, Dave Smith was signed to be the Cubs' closer. He was moving from a pitcher's park to a hitter's park and was ineffective; and then hurt his arm. Dan Quisenberry was a unique pitcher, a sidearming sinkerballer who developed a knuckleball and, at his peak, was one of the two most dominating relief pitchers in history. Russ Christopher suffered from a heart condition caused by a childhood illness which forced him out of baseball after 1948. Their stories apply to Jim Johnson even less than the others'. Finally, Brian Fuentes is not especially relevant to Jim Johnson because Fuentes throws left-handed, and so could (and did) have long-term success as a left-handed relief specialist after he lost his closer role.

From a saves-to-strikeouts ratio standpoint, the pitchers who are reasonably close to Johnson are Todd Jones (all three seasons) and Jose Mesa in 2004.

• Todd Jones, obviously, was able to retain his job as the Tigers' closer through 2007 and most of 2008, although he was a consistently less effective pitcher. He lost his closer's role midway through 2008 and retired after the season.
• Jose Mesa remained the Pirates closer for 2005, although he didn't pitch well. In 2006, he did pitch well as a setup man for the Rockies. But in 2007, he pitched ineffectively for the Phillies and Tigers, and that ended his major-league career.

From an age standpoint, the pitchers who are reasonably close to Johnson are Braden Looper in 2005, Danny Graves in 2004, and Danny Kolb in 2004.

• After his 2005 season, Braden Looper joined the Cardinals as a free agent. He had a solid year as a setup man in 2006; then converted to a starting pitcher and pitched fairly well for the Cardinals in 2007-2008. He signed with the Brewers as a free agent for 2009; he had a 14-7 record despite pitching poorly. He never pitched again.
• After his 2004 season, Danny Graves pitched himself out of the closer's job in 2005, getting released in late May after posting a 7.36 ERA in 18 innings. The Mets signed him as an extra bullpen arm, and he was only slightly less ineffective, with a 5.75 ERA in 20 innings. In 2006, he pitched 14 innings with the Indians in 2006, with a 5.79 ERA and never pitched in the majors again. His major league record after 2004 — 52 2/3 innings pitched with a 6.32 ERA.
• After his 2004 season, the Brewers traded Danny Kolb to the Braves, where he failed to hold the closer's job while posting a 5.93 ERA. He then returned to the Brewers, where he pitched fairly well in 2006 as a right-handed short reliever. He joined the Pirates for 2007; he pitched three innings before his major-league career came to an end.

From an effectiveness standpoint (as measured by ERA+), the only pitcher truly close to Johnson is Bob Wickman in 2005. Dustin Hermanson in 2005, Kolb in 2004, and Mike Williams in 2002 are somewhat close so I'll look at them as well.

• In 2006, Bob Wickman started the year as the Indians' closer and didn't pitch nearly as well as he did in 2005, although he was still effective. In July, he was traded to the Braves where he pitched extremely well as the Braves closer, 18 saves in 28 games with a 1.04 ERA. Much like 2005, he started 2007 as the Braves' closer and didn't pitch nearly as well as he did for the Braves in 2006, although he was still effective. He was released on September 1 and signed with the Diamondbacks, for whom he pitched 6 2/3 innings. He was declared a free agent and did not sign with another team; he never pitched in the majors again.
• In 2006, Bobby Jenks replaced Dustin Hermanson as the White Sox closer. Hermanson pitched six innings with the White Sox. He had hurt his back in September 2005; the six innings in 2006 were the last he pitched in the major leagues.
• We've looked at what happened to Danny Kolb above.
• Mike Williams served as the Pirates closer in 2003, even though he pitched ineffectively (6.27 ERA). He was traded to the Phillies at the trade deadline, for whom he served as a setup man. He continued to pitch ineffectively and never pitched in the majors after 2003.

Conclusions

Having more saves than strikeouts, as Jim Johnson did in 2012, is an unusual occurrence. In general, none of the other pitchers who accomplished that were able to remain as effective. What's especially striking is that none of these pitchers remained in the major leagues for more than four years after these seasons, and none remained in the majors as a relief pitcher for more than three years. For Johnson's and the Orioles' sake, we should hope that Johnson's future is different. Still, it would probably be a good idea for the Orioles to have a Plan B for their closer.

Update on Kim Seong-min, Orioles attempted signee

If you are a fan of this site, then you probably know quite a bit about Kim Seong-min and the incident that the Orioles caused last season.  Briefly put, Kim Seong-min was the big splash in the international scene that many fans craved and people outside the organization were calling for. 

However, it was a signing that confused many people like Keith Law who was told by his sources that the prospect in question did not match the Orioles description that they were feeding the local media.  Next, it was determined that in the Orioles haste at signing him, they violated agreements that were in place with Major League Baseball which resulted in the Orioles being banned from amateur events in the country, Kim Seong-min being banned from all amateur play, and the 500k deal to be nullified with negotiations suspended for several weeks.  Additional looks seemed to prove the field correct and after the Orioles could restart negotiations, they brought him in and found him not to be the pitcher that was described to them from their scout.  This left Kim Seong-min out to dry.

Recently, I used Google translate to read this article.  However, much can be lost in translation, so I asked a friend of the Depot, Yoo Jee-ho, to provide a proper summary.

Kim is accepting a full baseball scholarship at Fukuoka University of Economics in Japan.  The reporter met Kim on January 6, four days before he was to leave to join the school's training camp.

 

Kim is still under the indefinite suspension by the Korea Baseball Association (KBA) for his contract situation with the Orioles. At first, he wanted to get his mandatory military service out of the way and join the South Korean military team, called Sangmu, (which, by the way, plays in the Futures League, a Korean equivalent of the minor league), but he was rejected because of that suspension.

 

Kim also said he thought about quitting baseball entirely but his father encouraged him to stay patient and wait for an opportunity to come. Now, Kim said he's extra motivated to prove to people what a great player he is. He also said he'd like to return to Korea and play ball here in the future. His dream is to represent Korea internationally.

To my knowledge, the Orioles' scouts are still banned from viewing KBA sanctioned events (they are permitted to scout KBO events or non-sanctioned events, including training).  Also to my knowledge, the Orioles have yet to sign any free agents from Korea this past off season, but I cannot verify that.

The Orioles Double Jump Back into Being an International Participant

The Orioles fan base tends to forget how things used to be in the 1990s.  When Peter Angelos took over the team, he was a strong players' rights advocate.  He supported them during the strike more so than any other owner and he did not flinch at offering top dollar for players.  In fact, the luxury tax implemented from 1997 to 1999 was paid into the most by your very own Baltimore Orioles.  As of the end of 2010, that amount paid in had the Orioles as the third most to pay in to the system.  What that luxury tax ignores though is that the Orioles were also big players in the international scene in the 1990s, which was the result of a major push from Syd Thrift.

They were not going after the big ticket multimillion dollar guys like Alfonso Soriano, Wily Mo Pena, Miguel Cabrera, or Byung-Hyun Kim.  In the primary market (the Domincan), the team went after second tier prospects like Sendy Rleal and paying just over 100k a piece for them.  They were also going aggressively after first tier players in emerging markets where the price was a tad bit lower.  They signed John Stephens for 500k and Andy Utting for 160k in the 1990s, both from Australia.  Neither wound up doing much with only Stephens getting a smattering of MLB time (12 games as a 22 year old).  

John Stephens dominated the minors and did so even after his velocity took a major dip after suffering nerve damage (from 90 mph to 84 mph).  The loss in velocity made him rely more on a bevy of changeups he threw.  However, his reliance on change ups to accompany a mid 80s fastball was a big enough question mark for scouts to not take him seriously and place him rather low in a relatively talentless Orioles minor league system.  His introduction to the Majors as a 22 year old was bittersweet as he kept his strikeout rate high, but did so even though he was highly succeptible to the homerun (giving up 13 in 65 innings).  It was also discovered that he had a broken foot that was missed by the Orioles' medical team.  He performance took a turn for the worse, never returning to the Majors, and being out of baseball at age 26.

The reason why I bring up and go into detail with John Stephens is that he is likely one of the reasons why the Orioles removed themselves from investing greatly in international players.  The Orioles' efforts in spending well on international talent found them with few useful international players in the 2000s.  The only international player who wound up having impact in the Majors (or on Aruban judges) was Sidney Ponson, who had one very good year and several promising yet poor seasons.  Of the couple millions or so spent on international development (a trickle before Angelos, a rush during the Syd Thrift influenced Oriole years), it pretty much came to a halt when Jim Beattie and Mike Flanagan took over.

I don't think anyone really expected the Orioles' efforts to retreat to the Dominican when Beattie took over as he was the General Manager for the Montreal Expos, a team that had been flush in foreign talent.  Although, it is difficult to think of the Expos producing any significant foreign talent during Beattie's time there.  Instead, the team was focused finding undervalued fringe Major Leaguers.  In essence, it was one prong of the former Expo GM, Dan Duquette, double pronged attack: undervalued MLBers and engagement in emerging foreign markets.  Anyway, whatever the forces were that were prevailing (the GMs or the owner) the money dried up and the Orioles' really only dabbled with low cost or once given up on prospects in the Dominican.  By the time Andy MacPhail showed up in 2007, the Orioles essentially had no international program.

Andy MacPhail and the Rise of the International Program
That is to say, when MacPhail arrived there was certainly a run down, ignored program being run by Carlos Bernhardt in the Dominican Republic.  He had a hold on the island for the Orioles for about a decade before MacPhail's group arrived.  Rumors, and you know how rumors are often unfounded, suggested that the new regime wanted a complete makeover on the island, but that was impeded.  The idea was that as fruitless as the Orioles' Dominican program was that a complete razing was in order.  However, it should also be said that if you give a program less than 100k to sign 30 players a year that you simply are not going to find good players and you are certainly not going to be able to sign them if you actually do find them.

So Bernhardt stayed on with the Orioles funneling more money into the Dominican, improving the facilities there to being somewhat respectable and to giving them more money to sign players.  Additionally, the Orioles began putting in real resources to scout outside of the island and were rewarded by finding such promising talent as Jonathan Schoop (Curacao) and Eduardo Rodriguez (Venezuela).  That is likely what MacPhail was referring to when he said:

“I was just very happy for the fans in this area to see baseball so important to them again and to see the stadium filled,” MacPhail said. “I’m happy for a bunch of people there, including Buck [Showalter], who Peter [Angelos] and I brought in.

“I’m happy for Peter because nobody was more supportive of what we tried to do during those lean years than Peter. We stuck to a strategy and it paid off. We invested in the Dominican, and it’s paid off big dividends.”

By the Dominican, I assume he means the program/academy he directed funding towards.  Also, the current crop of international talent he brought in was not helping out at the Major League level, so he may be talking about franchise health in general or he may be referring to the acquisition of Jim Thome which was in part paid for by the high ceiling / low probability catching prospect from Venezuela, Gabriel Lino.  I would not say Thome's acquisition meant much for the Orioles, but, eh, that is really a tangent to this discussion.

A good way to show the Orioles' expanded international efforts is the following graph which depicts the country of origin of players on the Orioles DSL team as a percentage:



What is evident is that it took MacPhail about a year after his mid-2007 hiring to begin the process off acquiring talent outside of the Dominican with a particular push in Venezuela where the team had vacated its scouting program in the early 2000s.  The team also began picking up players in Curacao and Colombia.

However, it is good to temper this opinion as we have reported on what MacPhail's front office said and what they did.  As shown in the latter link, this is what the Orioles spent on international talent in 2010.


So, although they have expanded their influence in collecting talent from other countries, they did still lag behind in terms of monetary investment in acquiring talent.  That said, a team does not need to be a big spender in order to be successful in acquiring international talent.  The Colorado Rockies have accumulated a good bit of talent, such as Wilin Rosario and Jhoulys Chacin, with a very modest level of monetary resources.  The key is to be present as much as invest in these markets.  The Orioles during MacPhail's era got the team back into these markets, but did not come flush with cash.  As shown in one of the links above, this front office was quite reticent to invest in first tier international free agents.

Onward, Dan Duquette!
Duquette came into an international player development program that was becoming more open, but still acquired three quarters of their talent from the Dominican Republic with many of those talents being 19 and 20 year old players who were already passed over by other clubs.  The new front office hired established international scouts and immediately went out and placed a greater focus on signing international talent from a wide range of locales, including signing a player from Brazil.  There was also the misguided attempt to acquire Korean high school left handed pitcher Kim Seong-min.  However, the team signed none of the top tier talents identified by Baseball America's Ben Badler.

That said, it has only been a single season and it may be difficult to determine how much of the current regime will affect how talent manifests in the Orioles' minor league system and whether or not that talent is good (outside of simply representing a wide range of countries).  Often players signed during the past season do not appear in any games, so some of the new signings may simply not be represented on the roster (this can be particularly true of any Pacific rim signings).  In time, we will become more aware how well the expansion will be.

Complicating that expansion are the new CBA rules that restrict the amount a team can be spent on signing bonuses for international amateurs.  Jonathan Mayo had a decent writeup of it.  Basically, teams have a cap of 2.5 MM this year and in the future that cap will be related to team performance the prior year.  It will be interesting thing to keep track of in seeing how teams respond to capped pools.  It should not affect the Orioles' current apparent strategy, but it does prevent teams from spending big and buying their way into the market like the Twins did with Miguel Sano (who the Orioles could have had and is currently a top tier prospect in baseball).