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Rivera and Hoffman a pair of greats
Topic Started: Mar 18 2008, 04:14 PM (99 Views)
TheHugeUnit
Come on CC
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The young-buck closers come along every once in a while and grab the headlines: Boston's Jonathon Papelbon right now, Brad Lidge in 2005 for the Astros, and who can forget that Eric Gagne set a record when he succeeded in recording 81 consecutive saves during his salad days with the Dodgers?
But Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera were saving games then, and they are doing it now. Rivera has been the Yankees' closer since 1997 and Hoffman has been finishing for the Padres since 1994.

"Mariano Rivera has been doing it for the past 10 years," Papelbon told the New York Daily News earlier in Spring Training. "With me coming up behind him, I feel a certain obligation to do the same."

For a decade and a half, the two almost certain Hall of Fame right-handers have combined for 967 regular-season saves in 1,669 appearances. Almost all of those appearances came in relief, except for the 10 starts Rivera made during his 1995 rookie season. Almost all of the saves came for the same teams, except the two that Hoffman recorded for the Marlins before he was traded to San Diego on June 24, 1993.

Hoffman, now 40, holds the all-time record with 524 saves and Rivera, at 38, is third on the list with 443. Add, then, Rivera's 17 wins, 34 saves and 0.77 ERA in 76 postseason games, plus four World Series rings.

Now that's consistency. That's greatness.

"You don't really have time to think about it," Hoffman said. "You really don't have time to reflect on the good and the bad. You're constantly moving forward and preparing for what's ahead of you. There hasn't been a whole lot of deep reflection on what's happened, because I don't think it's been needed."

Rivera has done it by mastering one pitch -- an ugly cut fastball that tails in on left-handed hitters. Through the past decade, that has arguably made him tougher on lefty swingers than their righty counterparts. Equally, as the speed on his fastball has ebbed, Hoffman reinvented himself by making the changeup his money pitch.

Rivera once told USA Today that he discovered his big out pitch by accident in 1997, tossing a ball on the sidelines with then-teammate Ramiro Mendoza.

"Mendoza got upset with me, but the ball just moved," Rivera said. "A few days later in Detroit, we tried it off the mound, and we couldn't straighten out the pitch. So, we said, 'Let's see what happens when we throw it in a game.' "

He's thrown it since then and expects to keep on throwing it.

"It's the same-old, same-old," Rivera said. "If it's not broken, I don't try to fix it."

There's also the important durability factor.

Rivera has missed short periods of time with shoulder and forearm soreness, but he's only been placed on the disabled list five times in his 13 seasons, and it hasn't happened since April 2003, when he strained his right groin.


Hoffman had right shoulder surgery to repair an impingement during Spring Training of 2003 and missed the first five months of that season, but he has saved 172 games since then. That was the only time in his career he was placed on the disabled list.

"Other than Tony Gwynn, Trevor is the guy," Padres owner John Moores said. "He's been with the club ever since I bought it [in 1995]. He is the continuity."

Hoffman hasn't had the postseason success of Rivera -- one win, four saves and a 3.46 ERA in 12 appearances -- perhaps simply because the Padres have only been there four times in his 15 seasons. That number includes a sweep by Rivera's Yankees in the 1998 World Series, during which Hoffman was tagged with a loss for blowing the save in Game 3. Rivera was World Series MVP in 1999.

To be sure, Rivera has had his postseason failures as well, blowing Game 4 of the 1997 American League Division Series to Cleveland, Game 7 of the 2001 World Series to the Diamondbacks and Game 4 to Boston in the 2004 AL Championship Series, which the Red Sox came back to win in historic style from an 0-3 deficit.

But such is the price of longevity, as Hoffman found out at the end of last season, when he blew two of San Diego's final three games, including a one-game National League Wild Card playoff in the 13th inning at Colorado that cost the Padres a berth in the playoffs.

The fact that he had arthroscopic surgery in his right elbow to remove a bone spur and floating particles five days after allowing three runs in the final inning of that Oct. 1 game may have had a significant impact.

"I'm not going to armchair quarterback this thing," Hoffman said. "I just didn't have much stuff that night in Colorado. I'm not going to blame it on my elbow or being up and down in the bullpen three or four times before I got into the game. I just didn't get the job done. I'm not going to go in that direction, and I don't think you should, either."

Despite it all, no one can ever take away Rivera's success.

He and Derek Jeter are the only two players left on the Yankees who have been there for the duration: the four championships, the six AL pennants, the inability to get back to the World Series since 2003 despite making the playoffs every season since then.

Andy Pettitte was around for all the titles and pennants as well, but he departed in 2003 to sign with the Astros, returning in 2007. Jorge Posada was not a member of the 1996 Yankees team that was the first in 18 years to win a World Series. But Joe Girardi, now the manager, was a catcher on that squad.

There's a long and glorious history there. Hoffman has it. Rivera has it.

Rich "Goose" Gossage, the latest of the recent class of relievers to be elected to the Hall of Fame, said earlier this spring that Papelbon was perhaps the best closer in the game right now. But then he equivocated.

"Mariano doesn't have to take a backseat to anybody," said Gossage, who will join Rollie Fingers, Dennis Eckersley and Bruce Sutter when he's inducted in the Hall on July 27. "He's still a great closer."

It's no wonder, then, that as other closers come and go, Hoffman and Rivera remain.


http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/news/articl...t=.jsp&c_id=nyy
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