Hope for the universe

And now something that brightened my day.  It’s my wife’s birthday today (Happy Birthday sweetheart!), so I didn’t exactly need my day brightened, but this made it extra-super-duper-bright…
Someone over at ESPN decided to do an article on the most over-rated position in sports.  Their pick: the closer.  There’s even a second article on how K-Rod being considered for the MVP is about as preposterous as K-Fed being considered.  (Can we make ironic K-Fed jokes yet?  Chuck Norris said I could.)
Wait a minute… ESPN is picking up on the fact that maybe… just maybe… slavishly holding your best reliever out of the game until the situation is exactly the beginning of the ninth inning with a lead of less than four because that’s what the rule book says qualifies as a pressure situaton isn’t the best use of a really good pitcher.  Leaving aside the “What took them so long” paragraph that I could write, does anyone else realize what this means?  A mainstream outlet might just be reading the stuff that Sabermetrics has been putting out for the last few years?
Go click on those articles with the following thoughts in mind: I was doing a little research on this very subject for my book (yeah, I’m jumping on that bandwagon).  I looked at all pitchers who spent most of their time in relief and looked at their salaries in 2006.  Pitchers who (in 2006) recorded more than 75% of their teams saves made an average of $2.2 million more than the rest of the relievers (min 30 appearances).  Not a shock there, but a little more data poking revealed some more interesting pieces of flair.
I looked at reliever salaries from 2006 and tried to find what stats were best correlated with salary.  Because contracts are signed (and thus, salary levels determined) before the season begins, I looked at the correlation of past performance on salary.  The highest correlations came across the board for stats two years earlier.  (Seems about right.)  And the stat that was the closest correlate of salary?  ERA?  Strikeout rate?  Walk rate?  (Nah, all between about .20 and .30).  Save totals, on the other hand checked in around .70, and I looked at a few years back on that (2002-2005).  The same pattern showed itself each time.  Saves two years prior were the best correlate of salary.  What does it say about how far we still have to go when millions of dollars are still given out based on a garbage statistic?  Remember that a lot of times, the save doesn’t reward relievers for “saving” the game.  Just for being last in line.
But cheers to ESPN.  Maybe there is hope for the universe.