Oakland, Calif. — Popular opinion holds that closers are a separate species of pitcher.
They might not own the best arms on a big-league staff. They might not have the best arm in a particular bullpen.
But the combination of their knack for throwing quality pitches, and their brandishing of a supposed psyche to match, has made them in most minds a separate baseball phylum.
Critics such as Keith Law, the ESPN.com senior baseball analyst, have submitted (he does in his recent book “Smart Baseball”) that closer perceptions are largely bunk. That pitchers can and should be looked at more interchangeably.