Shutdowns and Meltdowns: The New Stat to Analyze Relievers

Every season in Major League Baseball the contenders are looking for help at the July trade deadline. One of the most sought after pieces every year are relief pitchers. Relief pitchers are possibly the most difficult position to breakdown statistically in all of sports.

Do you judge a relief pitcher by ERA? WHIP? Strikeout to walk ratio? Saves? Holds? One of the newest measurements of a relief pitcher's ability is called shutdowns and meltdowns.

The genius of shutdowns and meltdowns is that it is actually very simple. When a reliever enters the game and does his job it counts as a shutdown, and when a reliever fails to do his job it is considered a meltdown. There is some statistical data involved. There is a stat called Win Probability Added that judges whether a player added to his team's chances of winning. If a player's WPA is 0.06 or higher than that equals a shutdown and a WPA of -0.06 or lower results in a meltdown.

Fangraphs is keeping track of shutdowns and meltdowns in the Win Probability section of their stats. The wonderful thing about shutdowns and meltdowns is that there are pitchers you expect to be at the top but some of the other leaders may be relievers that many fans are not aware of. The league leader in shutdowns is eight and is held by five players. Two of those players are no surprise. Heath Bell has eight shutdowns with no meltdowns and Huston Street has eight shutdowns with one meltdown. What might be more surprising is that Mike Adams matches Huston Street's 8 to 1 mark and Tyler Clippard and Jordan Walden match Heath Bell's 8 to 0 mark.

The St. Louis Cardinals' former closer Ryan Franklin has the distinction of leading the majors in meltdowns with five. Nick Masset of the Reds also has four metldowns and no shutdowns.

Here are some leaders from previous years to give you an idea of what totals usually result in leading the league:

2010 Leaders
Shutdowns: Rafael Soriano (41 SD to 4 MD)
Meltdowns: Tyler Clippard (27 SD to 18 MD)

2009 Leaders
Shutdowns: David Aardsma (46 SD to 6 MD)
Meltdowns: Danys Baez (16 SD to 17 MD)

2008 Leaders
Shutdowns: Francisco Rodriguez (53 SD to 8 MD)
Meltdowns - Aaron Heilman (18 SD to 21 MD)

2007 Leaders
Shutdowns: Rafael Betancourt (41 SD to 7 MD)
Meltdowns: Chad Bradford (26 SD to 18 MD)

2006 Leaders
Shutdowns: Billy Wagner (40 SD to 7 MD)
Meltdowns: Todd Williams (18 SD to 20 MD)

Sources:
Stats found at Fangraphs.com