The Best of New York Baseball Bracket Challenge: Closers

Tonight starts a series we'll do during basketball tournament time: "The Best of New York Baseball Bracket Challenge". We'll be looking at the best of New York Yankees and Mets and try to figure out who is the best of New York. Let's start with the closers in New York (each position will get two candidates per team. Vote to the right who you think is the best of each position in New York as they all go head-to-head. Vote quickly before the next bracket goes up. We'll start off where most games end: with the closers.
 
Yankees
 
Mariano Rivera: He's considered the best among closers. With 526 saves, he's pretty close to the top just in that stat but let's look at the other evidence (stats from Baseball-Reference unless noted): His 2.25 career ERA is top among AL pitchers as is his 1.013 WHIP and 0.5 HR/9. His 202 career ERA+ is highest ever for a major league pitcher. He's led the league in saves three times and his past two seasons--at ages 38 and 39--he put up two of his best seasons as far as his peripherals go. But where he truly excels is in the playoffs where he's 8-1 with a 0.74 ERA and 39 saves in 133.1 innings. His peripherals are unbelievable with a 0.773 WHIP, 5.5 H/9, 1.4 BB/9, 5.10 K/BB, and 0.1 HR/9 (he's only given up two HR and none since 2000). According to FanGraphs, Mariano Rivera is second in major league history with 80.1% LOB and in the playoffs he's even higher with 90.1% LOB. He is at the top of the class among closers and he's still going strong. (picture from the New York Times)

Rich "Goose" Gossage: Dave Righetti has more saves with the Yankees (meaning that Gossage is third among all-time Yankees) but Gossage was the better closer. In fact, he's what everyone likes to call "an old-school closer". He saved games when saves were more than just an inning. While Rivera is 11th All-Time for saves greater than 1 inning, Gossage is second. And while Rivera has an extremely impressive 0.68 ERA in those conditions, Gossage is even better with 0.55. But when you make the criteria greater than 4 outs, Rivera ends up tied for 63rd while Gossage is third behind Rollie Fingers and Bruce Sutter. And if you take it up to two innings or more, Rivera is tied for 277th while Gossage is still 3rd--and he has a 0.68 ERA in those situations. Gossage was what closers used to be before they were what they are today--just pitchers used when the save stat comes into play. (picture from NJ.com)

Just missed: Righetti (224 saves but he's going up against two of the all-time greats) and Sparky Lyle (won a Cy Young but just missed the cut)

Mets

John Franco - 276 saves with the Mets makes him first all-time by a lot. From 1990-1998, Franco pitched at the back end for the Mets with a 2.80 ERA (141 ERA+) and averaging 39 saves per 162 games and led the league in saves twice. Franco was also the lead character on the Mets, being named their captain, and led them through the lean years of the early 90s. Franco was relegated to set-up man later on in his Mets career but did that job well too, posting even higher K/9 as his save total dwindled. Franco may not have been the flashiest of closers but his 424 career saves is 4th all-time. Although he didn't pitch in the playoffs until he was 38, his playoff numbers were very good putting up a 1.88 ERA over 14.1 innings and winning two games. One of those two wins was the only Mets World Series win since they won it all in 1986. With his work on behalf of multiple charities and for firefighters after 9/11, Franco was truly a New Yorker, too. (picture from Sports Illustrated)

Armando Benitez - As John Franco was phased out as Mets closer, Benitez came on, and he came on strong. His numbers in his first 4 seasons in Flushing were amazing with 139 saves (an average of 39 per season despite having only 22 his first year in Queens), a 2.63 ERA, 5.6 H/9, and 12.3 K/9. Many Mets fans will remember Benitez for the times he imploded under pressure, but Benitez was actually a pretty solid performer in Queens posting a 91% success rate on saves from 2000-2002. Despite being an All Star in 2003, Benitez was traded away to--of all teams--the Yankees, who flipped him again before the season was over. Even though Mets fans do not remember Benitez fondly, he was one of the best closers in their history. (picture from Blog Catalog)

Just missed: Billy Wagner (high output but too small a sample size) and Jesse Orosco (maybe could have gone over Benitez, but fell short)

Poll is up on the right so vote and put your comments below about why you picked who you picked!