Wednesday, October 10, 2012

How Do You Replace Greatness?

     It is often said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Well, Rafael Soriano has spent 5 months flattering Mariano Rivera so much, his face is beginning to turn red with embarrassment.

    The Yankees are about to begin their 3rd game in unchartered territory. They haven’t played a post season in 31 years when Mariano Rivera wasn’t seated in the bullpen. When you become comfortable, it puts you at ease and becomes almost second nature; that’s what Mariano Rivera has been for the better part of nearly two decades worth of October baseball, comforting to the minds of Yankee fans knowing their pitchers only needed to record at most 21 outs, before the game was essentially over.

     That sense of comfort was ripped away in a heartbeat on the warning track in Kansas City on May 3rd when Rivera tore his ACL, ending his season. Before the collective tears of millions of Yankee fans could even dry, his replacement David Robertson was also placed on the disabled list. These events forced the Yankees to turn to their 7th inning reliever, Rafael Soriano to handle the closing duties.

     The transition wasn’t easy at first, change often never is. Fast forward five months and Yankee fans have embraced Rafael Soriano and his unusual routine of immediately pulling his shirt out from his uniform pants when finishing a game. That tendency has become sort of a pseudo rallying cry for Yankee fans after Soriano records a save; “time to un-tuck, the Yankees win” or #untuck for those of you from the world of twitter.

     So, did Rafael Soriano really replace Mariano Rivera over the last 5 months of the regular season? The initial gut reaction for many would be “no, no, no, NO!” Wrong, dead wrong. You, me, the drunk in section 237, all wrong. Rafael Soriano did replace Mariano Rivera and did a better job than anybody would have ever imagined.

     In only 5 months as the closer, Soriano rattled off an extraordinary season for a guy who had absolutely no expectations coming into this season and missed most of last year with injury:

2 – 1 record, 2.26 ERA, 69 games, 67.2 innings, 42 saves, 55 hits, 24 walks, 69ks, 1.167 WHIP

     That’s about as close to a Mariano Rivera type season you can get, without actually being Mariano Rivera. Don’t believe me?

 5-4 record, 2.21 ERA, 67 games, 78 innings, 39 saves, 60 hits, 18 walks, 72ks, 0.998 WHIP

     That is Mariano Rivera’s average season during his career. The numbers are eerily similar. While the Yankees (and fans) certainly felt the initial sting of losing Mariano Rivera 4 weeks into the season, the final results dismiss those feelings.

     While Rafael Soriano certainly did his very best Mariano Rivera imitation during the 2012 regular season, it will be a surreal experience if the Yankees are leading in the 9th inning and the stadium speakers don’t begin echoing the sounds of “Enter Sandman” in October.

     Unfortunately, this is when the Yankees will miss Rivera the most. While his regular season performance can be replaced (and was), you cannot replace what the man brings to the postseason. His aura, his reverence in baseball, the pictures from Center Field of Rivera jogging out to the mound, have all been cemented by what he’s done in October. He is the greatest relief pitcher in baseball history for a reason.

     If you need any added incentive to understand, I’ll give you 141 of them. 141 being the number of innings Rivera has thrown in his career in the playoffs. Nobody needs to discuss the numbers Rivera has accumulated in October during his career. Frankly, you can’t discuss it. You just stare at the numbers and bask in the greatness that has spent 18 years gracing our presence:

7 – 1 record, 0.70 ERA, 96 games, 141 innings, 42 saves

     Soriano’s track record in the playoffs is a much smaller sample. It stretches only 6 games in two postseasons. He’s never recorded a save, he’s never notched a win, though he does sport a lovely 4.70 ERA in 7.2 innings of work.

     If the Yankees have any hopes of hoisting the World Series trophy up for a 28th time, they will need Soriano to one up himself from the regular season and try to replicate the greatest of all time, once more, on the grandest stage of them all. It is certainly a tall task and one that will not come easy.

Then again, replacing greatness never is.

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