New Stats: Shutdowns and Meltdowns

One of my favorite baseball websites is Fangraphs.com. Recently, they unveiled two new metrics (hat-tip to RAB) for relief pitchers, shutdowns and meltdowns. Here's a brief description of the two:

This week there’s been a lot of discussion on The Book Blog about creating a save style metric based on WPA. The end result of the discussion was to create two stats: Shutdowns and Meltdowns.

A Shutdown is when a reliever accumulates greater than or equal to 0.06 WPA in any individual game.

A Meltdown is when a reliever’s WPA is less than or equal to -0.06 in any individual game.

In case you don't know, WPA, or win probability added, "is the difference in win expectancy (WE) between the start of the play and the end of the play. That difference is then credited/debited to the batter and the pitcher. Over the course of the season, each players’ WPA for individual plays is added up to get his season total WPA." You can get some more info on WPA at this link.

So far, these are your shutdown leaders:

Tyler Clippard (Nats) - 10
Fernando Rodney (Angels) - 10
Daniel Bard (Red Sox) - 10
Francisco Cordero (Reds) - 10
Luke Gregerson (Padres) - 9

And your meltdown "leaders":

Franklin Morales (Rockies) - 5
Juan Gutierrez (Dbacks) - 5
Jim Johnson (Orioles) - 5
Frank Francisco (Rangers) - 5
17 are tied with 4

And now for our Yankees...

Shutdowns:
Alfredo Aceves - 5
Mariano Rivera - 4
Joba Chamberlain - 4
David Robertson - 2
Sergio Mitre - 1
Chan Ho Park - 1

The 17 SD is tied for just 21st in baseball.

Meltdowns:
Damaso Marte - 3
David Robertson - 2
Alfredo Aceves - 1
Joba Chamberlain - 1
Chan Ho Park - 1

The 8 MD is tied with the Tigers and Astros for the least in baseball.

These numbers seem pretty reasonable to me. The guys who've gotten the job done--Mo, Joba and Aceves--rank high in SD, while the guys who've struggled--Marte and Robertson--rank high (or low) in MD. Makes sense.

Last year, the Yankees ranked third in the majors with 141 SD, behind only the Mariners (159) and Dodgers (155), and were tied with the Reds for sixth least MD last year with 62.

Here are the Yankees player stats from last year:

PLAYER	SD
Mariano Rivera	37
Phil Coke	24
Phil Hughes	23
Alfredo Aceves	17
Brian Bruney	15
Jonathan Albaladejo	7
David Robertson	4
Damaso Marte	4
Jose Veras	3
Brett Tomko	3
Chad Gaudin	1
Edwar Ramirez	1
Ian Kennedy	1
Chien-Ming Wang	1

PLAYER	MD
Phil Coke	13
Alfredo Aceves	7
Mariano Rivera	5
Brian Bruney	5
David Robertson	5
Phil Hughes	4
Jose Veras	4
Damaso Marte	4
Edwar Ramirez	3
Jonathan Albaladejo	3
Brett Tomko	3
Chad Gaudin	2
Mark Melancon	2
Anthony Claggett	1
Sergio Mitre	1

So what do you think about these new stats?