On the Subject of John Franco...

In a previous post I argued that John Franco ought to be in the Hall of Fame. I did this using a variety of statistics, both standard ones and somewhat more esoteric ones. Well, I was just reading an article on FanGraphs about the statistic "shutdown," which is awarded (by the online stats-generating community) for any relief pitcher who enters a game and increases his team's chance of winning the game, defined by win expectations, by at least 6%. Meltdowns are the inverse stat, awarded for relievers who reduce their team's chances by at least 6%. The cutoffs are designed such that it's on about the same scale as saves. This is supposed to be the truly Advanced, sabermetric-approved relievers stat, because it doesn't fetishize the ninth inning. Okay, fine. Wanna know who's fourth all-time in shutdowns? That would be John Franco, with 463. He trails exactly three pitchers, Hoffman (518), Rivera (507), and Lee Smith (478), who also bloody well ought to be in the Hall. So can we stop saying that Franco fails the strict scrutiny of sabermetrics? No, he wasn't just about accumulating artificial saves. He was a damn good relief pitcher. Oh, and while it's complained of Franco that he never had a 40-save season, he shut down 43 games in 1988. So let's just quit pretending that he doesn't deserve to be in the Hall, okay? He does, that's the end of it.