There’s something inevitable, a sense of an impossible to avoid tragedy looming, about a closer going a whole season without blowing a save like Cleveland’s Brad Hand did in 2020.
Going through a season untouched is always the goal but when it happens, it feels like another shoe just needs to drop at some point. Only eleven closers have recorded 15 or more saves without blowing a single one in the history of Major League Baseball. All save one had to endure an entire 162-game season, so Eric Gagne’s 55 in 2003, Jose Valverde in 2011, or Zach Britton’s 47 in 2016 are certainly more of a feat than Hand’s 16 slammed doors.