"These are questions that people weren't asking a couple of years ago," Reds reliever Drew Storen said. "It shows you how much things are changing. But that's something that anybody in a bullpen understood. The save doesn't always come in the ninth, although it does in the stat line. If you're getting big outs in big situations, that's satisfying, because when you're helping a team win, it means a lot."
Some managers appear ready to rewrite the book. The Indians, Dodgers and Cubs all used closers and setup men to get the most important outs during the 2016 postseason -- even if it wasn't during their so-called typical innings of work.