A new baseball stat? (comparing relievers/closers)

[Bikeage77]

My friend thinks he may have came up with a new stat to compare a closers performance. I know a lot of you guys love the numbers aspect of the game, as do I, so I'm curious as to what you guys think.

 

SERA: Saves / ERA

 

I'll use the current top 5 save leaders in each league and rank them based on the stat itself. I spose this might or might not work well as far as set up guys too for hold situations. I dunno, fun with numbers I guess. Still wouldn't mind hearing others thoughts, if you think this could be a meaningful stat, of just stick to ERA and WHIP when it comes to a relievers role.

 

 1. JJ Putz: 27/0.81 = 33.333 2. Takashi Saito: 24/1.63 = 14.724 3. Billy Wagner: 20/1.52 = 13.158 4. Trevor Hoffman: 25/1.91 = 13.089 5. Francisco Rodriguez: 24/2.16 = 11.111 6. Francisco Cordero: 29/2.63 = 10.646 7. Jose Valverde: 27/2.75 = 9.818 8. Bobby Jenks: 25/3.52 = 7.102 9. Joe Borowski: 26/5.30 = 4.906 10. Todd Jones: 23/5.06 = 4.545 

[rluzinski]

What is the metric trying to measure exactly? If it's straight "closer performance", why do you even need ERA? It should just be the percentage of saves that were converted, with some min. IP stipulation. To use straight saves ignores blown saves and is heavily distorted by opportunity.

 

Here's an example for a season:

 

Player A: 40 of 50 saves converted, 4.0 ERA, 10.0 SERA

Player B: 23 of 24 saves converted, 2.5 ERA, 9.2 SERA

 

Was player A's performance really better?