More On Rivera

A few more Mariano Rivera facts as he continues to rack up saves and chase Trevor Hoffman for #1 all time.

• According to Baseball-Reference, 110 of Rivera's first 500 saves were more than one inning. So for those ignorant people who feel like he never pitches more than an inning, you're wrong; more than a fifth of his saves are of the 4+ out variety. Trevor Hoffman, on the other hand, only has 55 saves of more than one inning. The last one came in 2004 and he has only 3 such saves since 2001. And it's not like Rivera has slowed down in his old age. Since 2005, Rivera leads all players with 37. The next closest is Jonathan Papelbon with 24 and J.J. Putz with 22. No other player even has 20 in that span.
• River Ave Blues revisits that almost-trade that would have sent Mo to the Tigers in 1995. Supposedly, as the story goes, Gene Michael was about to trade him and then all of a sudden found out that his fastball had jumped from the low 90s to the mid-upper 90s and he decided to keep him. Good thing for the Yankees. Imagine where they would have been without Rivera. And George Steinbrenner tried his darnest to trade him. When he couldn't trade Mo to the Tigers for David Wells in 1995, he tried to trade Rivera AND Jorge Posada to the Reds in 1996 for David Wells. Good thing that never happened
• The two players the Tigers and Reds got instead for Wells? C.J. Nitkowski and Curtis Goodwin. Ouch. Wells would end up joining the Yankees after the 1996 season as a free agent.
• FanHouse noted that the MLB All-Star rosters are expanded this year to include another pitcher. If Mariano Rivera is not in St. Louis, there is something seriously amiss.
• Back to B-R: Mariano Rivera has had 224 perfect saves (no baserunners) over his career. That's a little under half of all of his saves. Of those 224 perfect saves, 38 (17%) were of more than one inning. 
• Lastly, via Play Index, Rivera has had 11 saves of one inning where he struck out the side, 4 saves of 2/3 of an inning where he's struck out both batters, and 7 saves of 1/3 of an inning where he got the K, but that save against Atlanta last week was the first time that he's ever struck out the side with more than one inning pitched.

Even in his old age, the Great Mariano Rivera continues to do things he's never done before.