Trevor articles

[yagsy]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/padres/20060925-9999-1n25trevor.html

The ace of saves





Padres' Hoffman becomes no. 1 closer of all time
By Bill Center
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 25, 2006


http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060925/images/news_hoffman280.jpg
K.C. ALFRED / Union-Tribune
Trevor Hoffman hugged his wife, Tracy, and son Quinn after making history yesterday. "I don't think you could have scripted it any better," he said.
The first gong of “Hells Bells” yesterday stirred Tracy Hoffman's memory.

As husband Trevor trotted head-down toward history from the bullpen at Petco Park, Tracy thought back to the couple's first days in San Diego in June 1994.

“The fans were outraged he was here,” Tracy Hoffman said. “Who was Trevor Hoffman? Who was this pitcher their team had got in a trade for a Triple Crown (-caliber) hitter Gary Sheffield? There were some very mad people in San Diego.

“We were afraid to say Trevor played for the Padres.” So afraid that the Hoffmans concocted an alternative occupation for him: “We decided to tell people Trevor was a cookie maker.”

Twelve years later, the outrage having evolved into adulation, the cookie maker is a local hero.

At 3:30 p.m. yesterday, Padres shortstop Geoff Blum threw out National League batting leader Freddy Sanchez for the final out of the Padres' 2-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates – making Hoffman Major League Baseball's all-time saves leader with 479.

By working a perfect ninth inning, Hoffman surpassed Lee Smith atop a list of relief pitchers that includes several Hall of Famers.

For the next 11 minutes, most of the sellout crowd of 41,932 – plus the players in both dugouts – stayed on their feet to cheer Hoffman and celebrate a feat that was doubly important because of the circumstances.

Hoffman broke the record in the Padres' final home game of the regular season, closing out a victory that kept San Diego 1½ games ahead of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West race going into a season-ending, seven-game road trip.

“I don't think you could have scripted it any better,” Hoffman said from the field on the ballpark's public address system.

Later, Hoffman said that setting the mark at home in the midst of a pennant race added significance.

“I was truly moved by the people of San Diego,” Hoffman said. “The record deserved to be set in San Diego. I truly believe the ultimate goal is to bring the world championship here.

“This is overwhelming, to be very honest with you. It's a humbling experience. It's hard to put into words what it feels like. ... There were tears shed,” said Hoffman, who has 43 saves this season.

Shortly after leaving the field, Hoffman received a congratulatory call from baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.

“It is a remarkable achievement,” a statement from Selig read. “One that attests to his ability, durability and longevity. Trevor has been a credit to our sport on and off the field. We are very proud of him.”

All but two of Hoffman's saves have come in a Padres uniform. All but 25 have been made at the behest of manager Bruce Bochy.

Not only is Hoffman the leader in career saves, he has the highest success rate – 89.5 percent – among closers with more than 190 saves.

Yet when he arrived in San Diego midway through the 1994 season, Hoffman was considered the wrong end of a “fire sale” trade.

“There was a lot of animosity about the organization,” he said. “I knew it wasn't something I could change in a day. I knew they would respect the way I approached the game.”

And he approaches every game the same way – with a rigorous workout routine that sharpens the mind as well as the body and an obsessive attention to the details of his job.

“One pitch at a time, one out at a time, one game at a time,” Hoffman said yesterday after his 790th appearance as a Padre and 818th in his career.

Tracy Hoffman was overwhelmed.

“Words can't describe how I feel,” she said. “When it was happening, I wanted to remember the moment. You know how passionate he is. He plays the game for the name on the front of his jersey, not the back of it. Today was the greatest possible time.”

No one needed to tell the fans in attendance the significance of the moment.

The first ovation came when setup reliever Cla Meredith got former Padre Xavier Nady to ground out to end the eighth inning.

They cheered again when Hoffman removed his jacket and began stretching at 3:12 p.m. and again a minute later when he began to play long toss with bullpen catcher Mark Merila.

Merila has warmed up Hoffman for almost 90 percent of the closer's saves despite missing parts of the past two years for cancer therapy. He knows before most when Hoffman has his best stuff.

Yesterday, he knew.

“I don't know where he's finding it, but the last couple days ... I knew it was going to be today,” Merila said.

Hoffman exited the Padres bullpen at 3:22 to the first gong of AC/DC's “Hells Bells,” his signature entrance song that was almost drowned out by the cheers of the crowd.

The first hitter he faced was Ryan Doumit, who was the last hitter Hoffman faced Saturday night when he tied Smith's record. Hoffman opened Doumit with a 90-mph fastball and struck him out looking on the fourth pitch with a 73-mph change-up.

The next hitter, Jose Bautista, battled for eight pitches before swinging and missing a 90-mph fastball on a full count.

That brought up Sanchez, who entered the game leading the National League with a .342 batting average.

After swinging and missing on a fastball, Sanchez hit a grounder beyond the reach of diving third baseman Manny Alexander. As shortstop Blum stopped the ball deep in the hole, Hoffman thought he had given up a single.

“I saw the ball off the bat,” Hoffman said. “Manny dove and I thought '(expletive, expletive).' Then Blum came up throwing and I thought, 'Oh my, what happened?' ”

What happened is that Sanchez tripped over the bat leaving the batter's box.

And history belonged to a Padre.

[yagsy]

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JOHN R. MCCUTCHEN / Union-Tribune
At 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Padres shortstop Geoff Blum threw out National League batting leader Freddy Sanchez for the final out of the Padres' 2-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates – making Hoffman Major League Baseball's all-time saves leader with 479.

[yagsy]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/padres/20060925-9999-1s25sullivan.html

King of the hill


Sellout crowd sees Hoffman get milestone save No. 479
UNION-TRIBUNE
September 25, 2006

K.C. ALFRED / Union-Tribune
Padres closer Trevor Hoffman records his major league-record 479th save with a 1-2-3 ninth inning against Pittsburgh, getting two strikeouts before Freddy Sanchez grounded out to shortstop Geoff Blum.

Geoff Blum could have spoiled everything. He could have been the millstone around Trevor Hoffman's milestone. He was a single swing from everlasting ignominy.

Good thing, then, that he succeeded in striking out.

Had Blum hit a home run yesterday, with two on and two out in the eighth inning, he would have padded the Padres' lead to the point where a save situation no longer existed. This could have deprived Hoffman of the chance to break Lee Smith's career saves record before a sellout crowd on the final day of his team's home schedule.

“I'm pretty happy the way it turned out,” Blum said at Petco Park. “I would be the only guy ever to hit a three-run homer at home in a pennant race and get booed off the field.”

For all of Hoffman's protestations about the saves record being a “sideshow” among more urgent matters, the conscientious closer was unmistakably the sole figure in the center ring yesterday.

The Padres defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-1, but the final score was but a footnote beside Hoffman's career achievement. Which tells you something about what this man means to his team and in this town. It tells you something when Padres fans would prefer to forgo insurance runs with the Los Angeles Dodgers still alive and lurking.

Save No. 479 preserved the Padres' 1½-game lead in the National League West. With one week remaining in the regular season, that's pretty significant stuff. But for one inning, at least, and to the attentive spectators during Blum's eighth-inning at-bat, what mattered most was the enduring efficiency of No. 51.

For once, the day's competition was secondary to the day's coronation. For once, even Trevor Hoffman had to recognize that he was not a sideshow, but the main event.


http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060925/images/sp_dealclosed.jpg
K.C. ALFRED / Union-Tribune
Trevor Hoffman and catcher Josh Bard celebrate after the Padres closer recorded his 479th save to pass Lee Smith for the career record.
“It was too perfect,” said Kevin Towers, the Padres' general manager. “I didn't want to jinx it. Sunday day game . . . our last game at home . . . and if something happened, where he did blow a save, I would have felt horrible.”

Towers was explaining why he had reneged on his previous assurances and again sought sanctuary in the clubhouse rather than watch Hoffman close a game live. Towers had vowed that he would make an exception for Hoffman's record-breaking save, but he ultimately could not reconcile the risk of disrupting Hoffman's karma. How many employees, in any profession, ever mean that much to management?

Some great athletes are soloists, gifted performers who are more interested in individual encores than ensemble success. Given the solitary nature of his job, a great closer could be susceptible to gratifying his own ego and grating on his teammates.

Not Trevor Hoffman. Not even close. “Self-praise stinks,” he repeated yesterday, invoking a favorite phrase. Except for his theatrical entrances – AC/DC's “Hells Bells,” “Trevor Time,” etc., Hoffman is the antithesis of the self-absorbed antihero.

He pitches only one inning every second or third day – from the first “bong” of his theme song to the final out, Hoffman appeared for only eight minutes yesterday – yet he is the undisputed leader of his ballclub. More than that, Hoffman has been such a model of modest professionalism that the defeated Pirates paused in their dugout to applaud him before departing the premises.

“I can't honestly say I've ever seen that (except) on TV,” said Blum, a big-league ballplayer since 1999. “I think it's a credit to the individual.”

Statistics tell you a part of Trevor Hoffman's story – the part about his talent, his mental toughness, his work ethic, his resilience – but his personal reputation is the product of other parts. If Tony Gwynn has been the greatest of Padres players, Hoffman has been the one most revered by his teammates and his opponents.
“We all know about his talent, but as a person, they just don't get any better,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “Trevor is like family.”

The tributes were more frequent and flowery than most men can expect from their funerals. But as much as the day was a testament to career achievement, Trevor Hoffman is very much a current event. Yesterday's save was his 43rd of the season – best in the National League. Only once, during the Padres' 1998 World Series campaign, has Hoffman compiled more saves in one year.

“The last two or three years, he hasn't had the velocity he once had and he's as good as he's ever been,” Towers said. “He's got tremendous location, tremendous work ethic, tremendous intestinal fortitude. He beats a lot of people because of who he is. A lot of teams are beaten before he comes out of that (bullpen) gate.”

Pittsburgh first baseman Ryan Doumit, who led off the ninth inning, would strike out on four pitches. Jose Bautista worked the count full before flailing at a 90-mph fastball. Pinch-hitter Freddy Sanchez, the National League's leading hitter, then struck a slow grounder to Blum's right that should have gone for an infield single.

But Sanchez stumbled as he left the batter's box. Once again, Geoff Blum could have spoiled everything, but his throw beat Sanchez by two steps.

“I appreciate it,” Blum said. “He put me on a highlight film for the rest of my life.”

[yagsy]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/padres/20060925-9999-1s25padres.html

Win enables the Padres to maintain division lead

By Jay Posner
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 25, 2006

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JOHN R. MCCUTCHEN / Union-Tribune
And now, back to the matter at hand. Anyone remember the NL playoff race?
And now, back to the matter at hand.

Anyone remember the NL playoff race?

Trevor Hoffman's record 479th save yesterday produced a magical moment at Petco Park, but it still was worth only one victory on a day when the Phillies and Dodgers also won.

“We just watched the Dodgers win (on TV),” catcher Mike Piazza said, “and someone made a comment that it wouldn't be worth it if it was easy.

“We know it's not going to be easy. I mean, the scariest thing is that at the end of next week, someone goes home.”

As of now, that someone would be the Dodgers. With Clay Hensley (11-11) pitching six strong innings and Russell Branyan and Josh Bard slugging home runs, the Padres earned a 2-1 victory yesterday over Pittsburgh to remain 1½ games ahead of Los Angeles in the NL West. The Padres have seven games remaining, one more than L.A., which trails the Phillies by a half-game in the wild-card chase.
“We control what happens,” pitcher Woody Williams said. “If we play well, we get in the playoffs. If we don't, we have no one to blame but ourselves.”

The good news for the Padres is that they are playing better now than at any time since a 14-1 stretch that began on the last day of April. San Diego is 22-10 since Aug. 19, including a 15-7 record in September, tied with Philadelphia for the best in the NL this month.

“It couldn't come at a better time,” left fielder Dave Roberts said.

If they can continue playing well, not only will they make the playoffs for the second straight season – which would be a franchise first – but they could earn home-field advantage for the NL Division Series. The Padres (83-72) have the second-best record in the league and lead likely NL Central champion St. Louis (80-74) by 2½ games in the race to avoid the Mets in the first round of the playoffs. The Padres open a three-game series tonight in St. Louis.

“Obviously we want to go to the playoffs regardless,” Roberts said. “We're still fighting for our lives, but the home-field advantage is in our sights.”

There was a time, of course, when playing at home would not have been an advantage for the Padres, who were 28-35 at Petco Park after a four-game sweep by San Francisco in mid-August. But since that series, the Padres went 15-3 at home, including consecutive 5-1 homestands, to complete their home schedule 43-38.

“We couldn't be that bad all year,” Williams said. “We were a better ballclub than we were showing. It was a matter of being consistent.”

Said Roberts: “It's crunch time and we're finding ways to win games.”

The Padres used a familiar formula yesterday: great starting pitching, even better relief pitching, error-free defense and just enough hitting.

The pitching came first from Hensley, who scattered seven singles over six innings and struck out a career-high nine to win his third straight start. Since the All-Star break Hensley has allowed more than two runs just twice in 13 starts, lowering his season ERA by almost a full run to 3.73.

“I didn't think he had his best stuff,” manager Bruce Bochy said, “but he was effectively wild at times. He's done a great job. He's really matured as a pitcher.”

Hensley said he didn't gain any extra motivation from potentially being the pitcher of record when Hoffman earned his record save. “I was just trying to give up as few runs as possible and hopefully be in a situation where I could hand him the ball,” Hensley said.

The ball first went to Cla Meredith, who did not allow a hit in the seventh or eighth inning as the Padres protected their narrow lead. San Diego was scoreless through the first three innings against Marty McCleary in the journeyman's first big-league start, but Branyan crushed an 0-2 fastball an estimated 453 feet to right-center field in the fourth, equaling the longest homer in Petco's three-year history.

“I was surprised he threw that good a pitch,” Branyan said after his fifth homer in 54 at-bats as a Padre.

Bard's home run came on the second pitch by reliever Juan Perez, who replaced McCleary to start the sixth inning. The Padres did not have a hit all day with a runner in scoring position, but it didn't matter.

“A special day,” Bochy said. “Now we've got to hit the road. We've got a lot of baseball left, but it was great to have a homestand like this.”

[yagsy]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/padres/20060925-9999-1s25saves.html

Where's the fire?


Closers don't extinguish many blazes, but you still have to hand it to them
By Chris Jenkins
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 25, 2006

“Firemen,” they were called back then. The nickname lent a certain sense of bravura to the uniformed fellows in the station, um, bullpen. They didn't just come on in relief. They came to the rescue.

Indeed, they weren't merely preserving victories, but saving them. Saving the starting pitcher's bacon. Saving the day, or night.

Hence the stat.

By nearly all accounts, credit for the “save” as an official statistic goes to former Chicago baseball writer Jerome Holtzman in 1959. Bothered by his belief that some relievers were not getting enough respect for the jobs they did in making leads stand up, Holtzman originated the formula for a whole new category, one that grew into the measure of a relief pitcher.

“I have been told that by creating the pitching save . . . I have helped relief pitchers earn hundreds of millions of dollars,” Holtzman once wrote. “But I don't want anyone feeling sorry for me. I made some money, too. When I presented the idea to J.G. Taylor Spink, the late publisher of The Sporting News, he gave me a $100 bonus. Maybe it was $200. I don't remember the precise reward.”
While he further was bestowed with Hall of Fame status and named the game's official historian, Holtzman has not been wholly applauded for giving us the save. Save us from the save, some would say, contending that too much fuss is made of both the stat and the closer role.

“I feel much more negative toward it,” said David Smith, a former Escondido resident and current University of Delaware professor who's among baseball's leading sabermaticians as founder of Retrosheet.org. “It appears to reward somebody for something that really isn't happening.”

Any grousing or academic debate generally focuses on what the statistic has become in the 47 years since, same as baseball traditionalists and purists decry the evolution of the chess-on-grass game into nothing more than Home Run Derby. Never mind that it made baseball more popular than ever.

The term “firemen” gradually faded away, if only because it sounded so outdated, like referring to the baseball as “horsehide” and the lefty as a “portsider.” Or was it simply because, well, the so-called “firemen” stopped getting called to the hottest blazes?

The most celebrated relief pitchers in the game – and the richest, not coincidentally – became more preservationists than escapists. If there were any messes to be cleaned up, they usually were of their own making.

For the most part, they no longer entered games in the most tenuous of situations. Rather, they were summoned to start the ninth inning with clean bases and leads of one, two or even three runs to protect. Any more than a three-run differential – or less than a one-run difference – meant they might not pitch at all.

“Closers,” they suddenly were being called. As in, closing the deal. As in, salesmanship.

Then again, salesmanship ultimately is based on gaining people's trust, and therein is the true value of the closer. Find one you can put your complete faith in – someone you can count on not to blow it more than, oh, 15 percent of the time – and you've got something very special.

You've got a Rollie Fingers, a Goose Gossage, a Dennis Eckersley, a Bruce Sutter, a Lee Smith, a Dan Quisenberry, a Mariano Rivera. You've got a Trevor Hoffman, whose signature pitch, the illusory change up, is heavily reliant on his own salesmanship.

The theatricality that's now so attendant – the playing of selections from the AC/DC or Metallica songbooks, the fire-breathing snorts and menacing glares from the mound, the Fu Manchus and gnashed teeth, the drop-dead change-up or the mitt-searing fastball – don't mean doodly-squat if the guy can't get those last three outs.

The role of the closer has been altered radically over the past four decades, the constant being that managers always wanted their best reliever on the mound at game's end. The difference was how long it took to get him there.

One hundred thirty-five of the career saves recorded by Rollie Fingers with the Oakland Athletics, Padres and Milwaukee Brewers came in games in which he threw a minimum of two innings, 36 of them in appearances of three innings or more. Indeed, incredibly, Fingers started the eighth inning more than the ninth over his Hall of Fame career.

“That was one rare bird,” says former teammate Phil Garner, now manager of the Houston Astros. “No matter when he pitched, Rollie would've thrown a lot, though. He had a rubber arm.”

Little more than a third of Gossage's 310 career saves came in one-inning stints, including a 1975 season with the Chicago White Sox in which he averaged 2.27 innings per appearance. Bruce Sutter, the lone Cooperstown enshrinee this summer, pitched at least two full innings in more than 43 percent of his 300 saves.

Then came Eckersley. “Eck,” for short. And, yes, he did make short work of things. With some help.

“Tony La Russa should burn in some infernal nether region,” says Retrosheet.org's Smith. “It started with him and Eckersley. Don't get me wrong. Eckersley was really, really good. One year, the whole year, he had only three walks. That's absurd.”

The year was 1989. Recovering nicely from the historic home run Kirk Gibson hit off him in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, Eckersley gave up a mere three bases on balls in 51 appearances the next season, and his ERA nosedived to 1.56 from a previous career best of 2.35 in '88.

Eckersley's numbers were even more ridiculous in 1990, although his walk total did skyrocket to four. Appearing in 63 games, Eckersley finished the year with a 0.61 ERA.

Go back to '88, though, and you'll see where everything changed for Eckersley and closers to come.

Eckersley had finished '87, his first year with the A's, with 115 2/3 innings. That included the last two starts of his career. In '88, he had more appearances (60), but far fewer innings (72 2/3).

Basically, he'd become a one-inning guy. You can probably guess which inning that was, too. Moreover, the less he worked, the more saves he seemed to compile.

“Eck became a one-inning specialist for a couple reasons that aren't always well understood,” says La Russa, now manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. “One, we had a real good club, so we knew that we'd be ahead a large number of games every week, trying to hold leads and getting the win to the clubhouse. That's a lot of work for somebody throwing more than one inning.

“If your club isn't that good, there's the problem of your one closer getting real rusted. We felt that with Eck out there, we had a better chance to win games. Also, there was the added advantage of him not getting overexposed. We tried to get Eck to only face three or four batters an outing.”

Likewise, Lee Smith really started ascending toward the all-time saves record when he had his role cut back to mostly ninth-inning appearances. Indeed, in the five-year period (1991-95) when he saved 206 games, Smith averaged almost exactly one inning for each of his 293 appearances.

For his part, Hoffman has been summoned to pitch at the beginning of the ninth inning in 534 of his 816 appearances, roughly 65 percent. That's more than 10 times the number of games in which Hoffman pitched to start the eighth (51) or even was called upon to just get the third out of the eighth (50).

“I give Trevor a ton of credit,” La Russa said. “Part of the effectiveness of the closer is that the less he's exposed to batters, the more successful the closers are. Trevor's still getting out guys who've faced him 60 times.”

La Russa admits the closer has been a source of debate between himself and pitching coach Dave Duncan throughout their 20 seasons together.

“Dunc would always take the great starter and I'd always take the great closer,” La Russa said. “I believe that when you have the great closer, everything in the bullpen flows from him. It helps relievers to know what their roles are, what situations they'll be called for, and nobody's out there trying to be that one guy at the end.

“Sure, games can get away from you in the seventh and eighth, but those last three outs in the ninth are the toughest. You want the guy who can handle that pressure. That, to me, is most important.”

That, too, is the bottom line on baseball's bottom-line job. So clearly defined is the role, and so demanding are both the mental and physical aspects of the job description, that colleges and some high schools have designated their best relievers as closers and use them exclusively as such.

The save is one of few statistics that comes with an attached stat for failure, albeit unofficial. It's not noted gently, either, but derogatorily. Instead of an unsuccessful save attempt, the reliever “blew” it. The “blown save,” while not listed as a statistical category by Major League Baseball, often is given as a greater statement of a closer's ability than the number of saves.

“There are great pitchers who close, but there are great pitchers who can't close, simply because they can't close,” Garner said. “It's that ninth inning. It's the same with hitters. When I was with Oakland and you needed a big hit in the ninth, you wanted Sal Bando up there. If you wanted the win, you didn't go with Reggie (Jackson) in that situation. You went with Bando.”

David Smith does not dispute the significance of an uber-reliever such as Fingers and Hoffman. To the contrary, he grew up a Padres fan and saw both pitch for San Diego, admiringly and delightedly. If anything, he feels their dominance validates his point, which is partly that far too many teams feel it's mandatory to keep one pitcher in reserve for the ninth inning.

Having studied the data from more than 140,000 major league games, Smith says the concept of a single closer does not enhance a team's possibility of holding a lead in the ninth inning.

“Psychologically, it really is hard to get that last out,” Smith said. “It's nice to listen to 'Hells Bells,' but the numbers just don't bear it out. Having a single closer does not improve your chances of winning a game. People would have you think that the one-inning closer has changed that, but it just isn't true. It's never changed. Protecting leads is the same now as it was in 1845.”

[yagsy]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/teaserimages/060925big_hoffkids.jpg
Union-Tribune
Hell's bells! Trevor Hoffman closes out the Padres' home season by notching his major league record 479th save to preserve a 2-1 victory over the Pirates.

[yagsy]

Geoff Blum could have spoiled everything. He could have been the millstone around Trevor Hoffman's milestone. He was a single swing from everlasting ignominy.

Good thing, then, that he succeeded in striking out.

Had Blum hit a home run yesterday, with two on and two out in the eighth inning, he would have padded the Padres' lead to the point where a save situation no longer existed. This could have deprived Hoffman of the chance to break Lee Smith's career saves record before a sellout crowd on the final day of his team's home schedule.

“I'm pretty happy the way it turned out,” Blum said at Petco Park. “I would be the only guy ever to hit a three-run homer at home in a pennant race and get booed off the field.”

You better believe we would have booed a 3run homer! Sure, we still expect to win the game but that moment...it it was scripted! :laff:

:hail: Bloomie for striking out!

The video tribute that the boys and Trevor are watching in above picture brought so many memories - great teammates over the years. The best was beating the Dodgers in '96 for the division, 3 games, 3 saves, GAME OVER! :clap2: