He's Happy, And He Knows It

Neftali Feliz prepares to hit a target that will send Buck Showalter falling into a shark tank on Thursday, February 17th.

If you're a closer and you know it, tell your fans.
If you're a closer and you know it, tell your fans.
If you're a closer and you know it,
then your words will surely show it.
If you're a closer and you know it, tell your fans.

Spring training's 10 games old, and for Rangers fans emerging from hibernation, any news is big news. Ian Kinsler is off to a torrid start? Big news. Elvis Andrus is struggling at the plate? Big news. Matt Harrison pitched well against a split-squad Brewers lineup? Big news.

Neftali Feliz tells the media (and Nolan Ryan) he prefers closing to starting? Stick it in three-inch type.

But how big a deal is this, really? Looking simply at 2011, and taking a purely performance-on-the-field perspective: that depends. Depends on how you'd project Feliz as a starter and as a reliever; depends on how you'd project his replacements in each role.

For all of its shortcomings, most saber-types would look first to the much-used Wins Above Replacement (WAR) statistic. While it's certainly advisable to look at WAR alongside other stats, alone, it provides a handy reference as to how a given player has performed relative to a hypothetical replacement player, who could be picked up with minimal effort and cost.

Some people have argued that WAR undervalues closers, because they tend to come into the game in very high-leverage situations. In fact, WAR takes this into account; as Sky Kalkman explained at Beyond the Boxscore (and as Tom Tango observes at Inside The Book) most formulations of pitching WAR use "chaining" to account for the differences between starter and reliever roles and leverage.

As both analysts point out, it's important to keep in mind that when a closer goes down, he's usually not replaced by a replacement-level reliever. Typically, each reliever below him in the bullpen hierarchy moves up a notch, so that the eighth-inning set-up man (who's almost inevitably superior to a replacement-level reliever) inherits the closer's role. The relative loss of performance is thus smaller than when an ace starter bites the dust. Dave Cameron may have summed it up best in a piece at FanGraphs: "That a half dozen major league clubs are overvaluing proven relievers does not mean that WAR doesn't work for them. It's just an arbitrage opportunity for the rest of baseball."

As Cameron notes, the best closers generally top out at about 2.5 WAR; Mariano Rivera actually broke 3 WAR a few times. Last season, Feliz posted 1.7 WAR. (That was tops among Rangers relievers; Darren Oliver was next with 1.5 WAR). C.J. Wilson posted a 2.0 WAR in 2009, his best season as a reliever; last year, by contrast, he racked up 4.4 WAR as a starter.

Very few folks are predicting that Feliz could step into the rotation and duplicate Wilson's 2010 performance. In innings pitched alone, the pair would almost certainly diverge significantly. Wilson logged 204 IP over 33 starts last season (and another 24 innings in the post-season). No one is expecting Feliz to shoulder that sort of load in 2011.

Instead, let's take, say, Justin Masterson as a comp. He's not a perfect analog for Feliz, but he'll do. In 2010 Masterson logged approximately 170 innings as a starter. According to FanGraphs' classification, he threw 78 percent fastballs (the highest percentage in the majors); 18.5 percent of his pitches were sliders, and the remaining 3.5 percent were change-ups. His K/BB ratio was an uninspiring 1.78, and his ERA an unimpressive 4.78 -- but his 4.09 FIP, 4.05 xFIP, and 3.97 tERA were more encouraging. All told, Masterson's 2010 performance as a starter was good for 2.2 WAR – half a win better than Feliz's total.

Is that a big deal? Not especially -- at least, not when confining ourselves to that particular comparison, and to 2011. Setting that specific scenario aside, though, the news about Feliz is disheartening on a couple levels.

Before going any further, it's a good idea to guard against knee-jerking. Feliz didn't say he didn't want to start. He didn't say he'd refuse to start. In fact, he said just the opposite: that while he's more comfortable and thus prefers remaining in the role of closer, if the Rangers asked him to start, he'd get comfortable in that role, too. Moreover, just because Feliz prefers closing now doesn't mean he won't move into the starting rotation in the future -- or that he won't grow to love starting more than relieving as his career progresses.

That said, there's still justifiable disappointment that Feliz isn't more motivated to start in 2011. On Sunday afternoon, during the Rangers exhibition game against the Brewers, Eric Nadel and John Blake hosted Rangers GM Jon Daniels in the broadcasting booth. When asked about Feliz's potential to join the rotation, Daniels commented that last year, C.J. Wilson made the Rangers' decision easy: he not only performed well during the spring, but he exhibited absolute dedication to earning a starting role.

This, Daniels placed in explicit contrast to the 2011 Feliz. He made it clear that Feliz had not shown commitment equal to Wilson's – and that, in the absence of such, the Rangers were very reluctant to repeat the Wilson experiment. It's unclear how much this assessment might change in 2012, as new ranks of young, talented pitchers (speed ye well, Martin Perez) prove their mettle. 

There've been some who've questioned whether Wilson's motivation was sincere; their argument appears to be that Wilson only threw himself into starting after struggling as a reliever, and being supplanted as closer by Feliz and Frank Francisco. In rebuttal, it should suffice to reference Wilson's successful 2009, as well as a quote from a recent profile in Sports Illustrated. "'I begged for the [starting] job,' says Wilson, who broke into the big leagues as a starter in 2005 but was moved to the pen during an erratic rookie campaign. 'For years I'd been saying I was capable of being really good.'

And this, in turn, brings us squarely to intangibles. Now, quantitative types are often derided (and, less frequently, praised) for downplaying intangibles in their analyses. It's worth reiterating, then, that the best saberists out there do not argue that chemistry, confidence, leadership, and the like are worthless. They simply want to see a critical approach to the concepts. Wilson's a great example of this, and not just because he moved successfully from the bullpen to the rotation. After all, before 2010, Wilson was many Rangers fans' bullpen bête noire.

In February 2008, for example, he entertained readers of Lone Star Ball with the observation (quoted in the SI piece), "Come on man you have to admit the median or average guy in a baseball clubhouse does drive an SUV, drinks beer, golfs, likes college sports, chews or dips tobacco and is relatively a douche bag." Unsurprisingly, this led to friction with teammates, not to mention disapproval from the Texas faithful (though whether the fans' unhappiness stemmed from Wilson's stereotyping or strong language is open to debate). Later that year, Wilson further antagonized the fan base (and his manager) with a flippant departure from the mound;

And yet by 2011, Wilson had become the pitcher who, according to Rangers assistant GM Thad Levine, "shifted from a guy who felt he had to do everything by himself to one who embraced the team concept and learned the value of strength in numbers." So, yes: intangibles matter – and they're especially important when they're performance-oriented.

And that brings us back to Feliz. His camaraderie with his fellow relievers is great. So is his connection to perhaps the greatest moment in Rangers' history. After just two big-league seasons, he's established himself as a fan favorite. Still – even though he's just 23; even though he's not ruling anything out: don't you want one of your most talented young pitchers to display the sort of dedication that Wilson did? Don't you hope that he'll seize the opportunity to start by the horns, and make that spot in the rotation his by sheer dint of will?

And, at the same time – while it's possibly (even very likely) unfair – doesn't this make it just a bit harder to avoid questioning the club's philosophy when it comes to developing young starters? Just a year before Wilson blew up on LSB, the Rangers demoted pitcher Edinson Volquez to single-A Bakersfield; then-pitching coach Mark Connor later admitted, "He got to the big leagues probably before he should have out of necessity here with the pitching the way it was in '05, '06. He obviously had the physical ability but it wasn't being put into use." A few months prior to that, Texas traded John Danks to the White Sox, who helped the left-hander develop the cutter that's paved the way to 12.5 WAR over the last three seasons.

It's not as if the club's not capable of developing top-of-the-rotation starting pitching. After all, the Rangers drafted C.J. Wilson in 2001; he's home-grown. It's difficult not to wonder, however, especially given the lingering questions about Derek Holland's readiness to start, and his limited seasoning in the minors.

It's entirely plausible that the Rangers have simply had a run of bad luck. Coaxing a true number-one starter out of any farm system is a daunting task. With the top of the rotation still plagued by question marks, though, and with the defense of the AL pennant on the line in 2011, it would've been encouraging to see Feliz wholeheartedly embrace the challenge of starting. In lieu of that, we're faced with the four least-favorite words of a sports fan's lexicon – words that usually mark the recaps of the post-post-season, rather than the big news of the spring:

"Wait 'til next year."