So the only player in MLB history to get voted unanimously for the HOF played a position only slightly better then an average closer .
Again I can’t prove that an elite player like Kimbrel is worth more then 2.5 wins a season over average but the closer position is so much more then someone who gets outs regularly in the 9th inning .
There is nothing more demoralizing to a baseball team that has an unreliable closer .
Its always in the back of every players mind that no matter what we could still lose this game in the 9th.
None of these scenarios can be calculated with a formula .
Im very pro analytics.
But closer has to be the most difficult position in baseball to value with numbers
Mariano Rivera last signed a FA deal for one season in 2012.
That is ages ago in MLB salary paradigms and it was also on heels of his previous 15 yrs with the richest team in baseball.
The eighth and ninth inning are indeed the most commonly high leverage for pitchers.
But in past five to seven years teams w smarter analytics and payroll mgmt have decided to take a different tack and build a bullpen made up of multiple men who can confidently get high leverage Outs.
And it's obviously the mindset of MLB's leading mgmt minds. None of the aforementioned leading teams other than the Yankees are deploying 8figure annual salaries for a single arm pitching just 75 or less innings per year.
Tough to be Kimbrel (or Keuchel or a few other pitchers) at this moment in baseball history. If they want to continue playing they will be forced to work with at most 2-3 year deals and AAV about half what may have been paid as recently as three and certainly five yrs ago