Minimizing the Closer

When Kaz Matsui flew out to leftfielder Ryan Braun in the ninth inning of Tuesday night's game, it not only finalized the Brewers seventh consecutive victory, it also sealed Trevor Hoffman's tenth consecutive save as a Milwaukee Brewer. In each of those saves, Hoffman pitched exactly one inning and faced either 3 or 4 batters. In fact, in Hoffman's 11 appearances this year (counting his first appearance as a Brewers, when he entered the game with a five-run lead), he has faced only 35 batters while getting 33 outs. That's only two batters above the minimum. If you're the Brewers, you can't really ask for anything more from your closer than a lockdown, three-up-three-down performance night every night.

But how significant is Hoffman's streak? If you're a ballclub hoping for the most efficient stretch of baseball from your closer, what can you expect?

To answer the question, I pulled up the Play Index over at Baseball Reference (if you're already sponsoring over $35 is BR pages - as mentioned before - then the Play Index annual subscription is only $15) and ran a search: in the Retrosheet era, what is the longest streak of a pitcher earning a save while pitching exactly one inning and facing 4 or less batters? You can find the results here.

The top 5 streaks are:

...................StreakStart..Streak.End.Games...SV...IP.....H....R...ER...BB...SO...HR...ERA.
+-----------------+-----------+-----------+-----+-----------------------------------------------+
.Jeff.Brantley......1996-05-22..1996-08-05....17...17...17......6....1....1....3...27...1...0.53.
.Matt.Mantei........2003-08-02..2004-04-07....16...16...16......6....3....3....1...20...3...1.69.
.Danny.Graves.......2001-09-03..2002-05-06....15...15...15......4....0....0....3....8...0...0.00.
.Tom.Gordon.........2006-07-19..2007-05-01....14...14...14......6....1....1....2...17...0...0.64.
.Billy.Koch.........1999-06-24..1999-08-08....14...14...14......6....0....0....2...14...0...0.00

It's interesting to note that this is the fifth time that Trevor Hoffman has had a streak of 10 or more games like this, with his best streak reaching 12 consecutive games at the end of the 2006 season. Three separate relievers strung together a streak of 10 consecutive games like this last season, with Troy Percival, Joakim Soria, and Jose Valverde each achieving the feat. Despite that, it's been over two years since anyone was able to better the streak (when Tom Gordon made it 14 straight games between 2006 and 2007).

Now, no one is ever going to confuse a streak like this with Gagne's 84 consecutive save conversions, or even with Lidge's perfect 2008. Still, there's something to be said for a consistent, calming, no-bull closer like the current Trevor Hoffman. It may lack the "excitement" of a Rod Beck or a Armando Benitez, but not many people are going to complain about that. Let's hope Hoffman can keep producing like this and move up those charts so we can see something truly historic.