Blown Saves around the NL

Last night's debacle got me wondering: how are we doing protecting late-inning leads?  On the one hand, I know we've won a lot of close games, though I think we've blown a lot of games as well.  Here's what I found.

The Bad

Stats.com breaks down the top 23 in blown saves.  (Why 23?  Perhaps they're Jim Carrey fans.)  In a perfect world, each team would have one on such a list, and some would have two.  We have three: Torres and Gagne each have 7, and Riske has 5. (Ironically, so do the Cardinals.)  No one else in the NL Central has more than one.  We're third in Blown Saves as a team, behind only the Cardinals (30) and Nationals (26).

The Good

Despite the Blown Saves a-Plenty, save percentage is probably the best way to evaluate how we're doing --- and we're not doing so badly!  The Brewers are 6th in the NL in save percentage, saving 63% of our opportunities (tied with the Rats).  Suspiciously, the Phillies, Dodgers, and Cubs are all ahead of us, and the Mets and D-Backs are 1 and 2 percentage points behind.  (Be sure to thank your favorite deity that the Cardinals and Marlins suck at save percentage, 57% each, or the wildcard race could look a lot different.)  Keep in mind that we have 10 more save opportunities than the Cubs, which makes me think the Cubs are blowing out teams more often.

The Odd

It's something of a running joke 'round these parts that we seem to like to put our suckiest pitcher at the time in the 8th inning to watch him fail.  The stats bear that out: Brian Shouse leads our team in holds, with 15.  The Mets have 5 pitchers with at least that many.  (Of course, you can't read THAT much into this, as our starters have been pitching pretty deep into games, and a lot of holds could simply mean a lot of shorter starts.  Then again, it also means that your bullpen is doing the job, something that you don't see a lot in Milwaukee.)  Bring back Turnbow, Master of the Eighth Inning!

In looking at the numbers, we can see this much easily enough:

* Starting pitching is still king: 7 of the top 8 NL teams in Quality Starts are playoff contenders (Brewers are second, with 79).

* We've capitalized on those quality starts: we have made it to the end of the game with the lead an awful lot of the time. The Brewers are again second in the NL in save opportunities, behind only the closer-challenged Cardinals.

* When it comes time to close it out, we do...OK: the median and mean for save percentage in the NL is 62-63%, and we're at 63%.  When you're toward the top in the league for save opportunities and league average in closing them out, that's not a bad recipe to get you to the playoffs.  The again: although having the lead late sounds good in the playoffs, too, mediocre closing makes for some disconcerting 9th innings against the best of the NL.  As we herky-jerky our way toward the playoffs, going easy on CC's arm might be a good idea, as we might want to rely on it heavily in the post-season.