Experience is a mere whiff or rumble, produced by enormously complex and ill-deciphered causes of experience; and in the other direction, experience is a mere peephole through which glimpses come down to us of eternal things.
—George "Don't Call Me Johan" Santayana

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes. —Oscar "Azocar" Wilde

I got a nice mention in Todd Zolecki's column in the Inquirer today. Todd noticed that the Phils had three relievers (Jose Mesa, Tom Gordon, and Antonio Alfonseca) who have over 100 career saves—oddly, none of whom is the closer—, and he asked if that was an uncommon occurrence.

I looked it up and it had happened 16 times prior to this season, the most being four 100-plus relievers on the 2002 Phils:

That got me wondering about the most career saves for a bullpen and whether it matters how much closing experience a bullpen has. You might notice that the Phils' bullpen even with three members with 100+ career saves has been among the worst in baseball all season. They currently have the 22nd best ERA (4.22) among the major-league bullpens.

I ran the numbers for team winning percentage, career saves, lead retention rate (based on leads after six innings), and relief wins (which is based on the runs saved based on pitching roles). I found that career saves matters very little.

First, here are the bullpens with the most career saves:

Here are the least (since 1901):

You'll notice most are from the early twentieth century. Here are the most since the instution of the official save stat in 1969:

Now, here are the teams that did the best at retaining a lead after six innings:

Now, here are the bullpens with the most Relief Wins:

How well do this stats correlate to each other and to team winning percentages? The short answer is not to well.

The best was lead retention to winning percentage (a 0.601 correlation coefficient), which makes sense because the both deal with winning. Career saves has just about nothing to do with lead retention (0.084), so having an experienced bullpen does not lead to an effective one. Career saves does not correlate to winning percentage (0.132) or Relief Wins (0.247) all that much better.

Then again, having a good bullpen does not necessary lead to winning ballgames. Relief Wins correlate to winning percentage and lead retention a bit better than career saves but it's hardly a strong relationship (0.467 and 0.423).

So what does it mean? A strong bullpen is important, but a strong rotation is even more important. Speaking of which, why is Brett Myers, the non-100 save closer for the Phils, still the closer? Wouldn't the Phils be better off with the former starter back in the rotation instead of Adam Eaton or Kyle Lohse?

Then again nothing about this team makes all that much sense to me including their current winning ways with half the team including the best second baseman in baseball, Chase Utley, on the DL. And now it looks like the players are campaigning for Charlie "I Need Friggin'" Manuel to retain his job according to a report in the Metro. Then again with the execrable Dave Montgomery running the team and the somnolent, semi-retired GM Pat Gillick making infuriating transaction after infuriating transaction, what does it matter who pilots the team on the field?