FanPost

The Almost Perfect Season of Zach Britton (and How It was Ruined)

The Orioles season ended in heart break. I, for one, am still outraged over this fact, but I also feel it is time to move on and to look at the season in perspective. And when doing that, one fact stands out above all others: Zach Britton was historically good. In fact, I will argue, he came closer to perfection than any other player in MLB history.

The fact that Britton was historically good is illustrated by his miniscule ERA, the lowest ever recorded by a qualified reliever in the MLB. It is also indicated in his perfect save record. He is only one of eight pitchers who have recorded 20 or more saves without a single blown save. Now the save statistic is serious flawed and a bad way of recording how good a pitcher is, but there is at least one aspect that it captures flawlessly. Whenever a pitcher records a save, he made sure his team secured the win, and that is really all anyone can ask of a pitcher.

That does not mean that anyone who was perfect in save opportunity always helped their team to win. Take Brad Lidge in 2008, for example. He was a perfect 41 for 41 in save opportunities. Yet there were also four games where he entered the game with the Phillies either tied or behind, and gave up crucial runs that made it harder for his team to win that game. Although he was perfect in save opportunities, he was not perfect the entire season. To take into account all situations in which pitchers enter the game, we need to turn too other statistics.

Fangraphs has a few statistics that help track whether or not a pitcher helps his team win games. The most prominent of these is Win Probability Added (WPA). What this statistic does, is take the Win Expectancy—which is based on the score, the inning, the number of outs, and the runners on the bases—before an at bat and after an at bat and attribute the difference to the hitter and the pitcher. It does not take into account fielding or the quality of the opposition, but it does give a rough indication of whether a player increased or decreased the chances of winning a game.

The most you can hope for from a pitcher is that he increases the chance of his team winning. A season where a pitcher never decreases his team’s chances of winning can justifiably be called a perfect season. Britton came within a single game of being perfect.

If you look at traditional statistics, you may think that the one loss attributed to Britton is the game where he scored a negative WPA. You would be wrong. In that game, on April 30 against the Chicago White Sox, Britton entered the game in the top of the ninth with the score tied. He recorded two strikeouts. This scared Adam Eaton enough that he tried to bunt for a single. He succeeded in part because Britton injured himself on the play. Britton was replaced by Vance Worley, who subsequently allowed Eaton to score.

No, the game where Britton scored a negative WPA was on June 21 against the San Diego Padres. He entered the game with the Orioles a single run behind in the top of the ninth. The first hitter struck out looking. The second, Derek Norris, hit a sharp grounder to third base. Manning third base, however, was not Manny Machado, but Ryan Flaherty. The ball went in his glove and out again before Flaherty could close it; Norris reached on an error. The following hitter, Christian Bethancourt, hit the ball exactly to where the Jonathan Schoop would normally be, if he had not been playing double play depth. To add insult to injury, Alexei Ramirez followed up with another single. This one was hit between J.J. Hardy and Flaherty. Exactly the kind of ball Machado would have had. In fact, Flaherty looked like he might have had it if he had not been distracted by the lead runner. One unearned run scored. The Padres, deciding they probably used up all of their luck by now, then asked Travis Jankowski to perform a safety squeeze, which he executed perfectly. Two unearned runs. Britton was pulled from the game and replaced with Odrisamer Despaigne, who promptly allowed a third unearned run.

That was it. That was all that stood between Britton and the perfect season: an error, two seeing eye singles, and a safety squeeze; Flaherty playing third base instead of Machado. Britton was not perfect, but he came a whole lot close than any pitcher before him.

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