he's just really sad at what everyone thinks he did in 1996.

There’s a lot of things to get annoyed with about mainstream baseball analysis, but one of the more irritating obsessions of the media is the importance placed on relief pitching, particularly the eighth inning set-up man. We’ve seen this phenomenon manifest itself in the whole Joba debate way too many times. It’s difficult to say where the whole TEH EIGHTH!!!!! brouhaha began, but as a totally self-absorbed Yankee fan, I can’t help but think of a topic near and dear to my heart: the 1996 Yankees, and Mariano Rivera’s role with that team.

The 1996 Yankees were not exactly the Bronx Bombers. They had a team OPS+ of 100. Ruben Sierra and his 83 OPS+ at DH got regular playing time, as did Joe Girardi and his 82 OPS+. Their total batter WAR, by Rally WAR, equaled 14.7, good for just ninth in the league and completely dwarfed by such powerhouses as Seattle (36.9) (commence hysterical laughter at the thought of Seattle as an offensive powerhouse here), Cleveland (26.9), and their ALDS opponent Texas (23.7). Only two individual players, Bernie Williams with a 3.4 and Paul O’Neill with a 3.3, were worth more than 3 WAR. For comparison’s sake, the 2009 Yankees had six such players, and all of them had a total WAR higher than 3.4.

The 1996 Yankees’ strength was in their pitching. Their team ERA+ of 108 was strong and, rather astonishingly, their combined pitcher WAR led all of baseball with a 25.7. But here’s where it gets interesting: their starting pitching wasn’t something you could point to and go “wow” like you could with, say, Atlanta’s pitching from that year. Andy Pettitte led the staff in reality, if not name, pitching 221 innings with a 3.87 ERA, 4.08 FIP (meh, though it still led the team), and 129 ERA+, putting up 5.7 WAR. Again, just to compare, in 2009, Felix Hernandez put up 5.8 WAR, and Justin Verlander and Jon Lester put up 5.6. Yeah, Andy had a pretty good 1996 and, judging from some articles I’ve read from that year, him not winning the Cy Young that year was a major upset (hilarious in retrospect article from after Game 1 of the 1996 World Series).

Andy was also the only pitcher to give the Yankees more than 200 innings, with 221. I suspect I’m preaching to the choir here, but getting innings out of your starting pitching is incredibly important. More innings from your starting pitching means fewer innings from your relievers, who are generally inferior pitchers.

The team’s other primary starters had various issues, mostly based around giving innings. David Cone had an excellent year, posting a 2.88 ERA and a 3.24 FIP, but he was out with an aneurysm and only made 11 starts, pitching 72 total innings. Ramiro Mendoza made as many starts as Cone did. Cone’s 72 innings were so strong they were able to provide the team with 2.6 WAR, but that still left a lot of innings to fill. Rogers had a respectable 3.6 WAR, but a 4.68 ERA (107 ERA+) and 4.83 FIP, and his K/BB ratio was scary at 1.11. He only pitched 179 innings, as well.

Jimmy Key pitched 169.1 innings with a 2.9 WAR, 4.68 ERA, and 4.48 FIP. Dwight Gooden had a 2.9 WAR with a 5.01 ERA (100 ERA+) and 4.85 FIP. Twelve different pitchers made starts for the 1996 Yankees. The 2009 Yankees had several issues with their rotation, but they had “only” nine different pitchers make starts for them.

So there were some starting pitching issues. Why, then, did the 1996 Yankees have such strong pitching overall?

When talking about the 1996 Yankees, members of that team and baseball analysts tend to say that if the Yankees had the lead after the seventh inning, the game was all but won, with the combination of Rivera in the eighth and Wetteland in the ninth. Mariano Rivera’s role is characterized as a mere setup man for John Wetteland, the closer that year.

The thing is, that characterization completely undervalues what Mo did for that team. In 2009, the Yankees’ “eighth inning” guy, Phil Hughes, pitched 86 innings, and that’s including seven starts he made. In 1996, Mariano Rivera pitched an astounding-for-a-reliever 107.2 innings; even Scott Proctor never pitched that many innings with the Yankees. That is way more than just an eighth inning guy. In 61 appearances, Mariano pitched one inning or less only 20 times.

In a year when the Yankees generally didn’t have the starting pitching giving them the length they needed, Mariano provided not only innings, but, to say the least, quality innings. Over, again, 107.2 innings, he had a 2.08 ERA and a totally ridiculous 1.88 FIP. His WHIP was under 1, he struck out 10.9 batters per nine innings, and his K/BB was 3.82. He gave up one home run all year. According to Rally WAR, Mariano was worth 5.4 WAR that year, second on the team to only Andy Pettitte, and behind him by only 0.3 WAR – and Pettitte pitched over 100 innings more than Rivera did! A lot of Yankee fans don’t have very fond memories of Tom Gordon from 2004, but the fact remains that he had a pretty amazing regular season as, mostly, Mariano’s setup man. He was worth “only” 4 WAR, and he was about as good as a setup man could be that year.

So please, sports media, even though there’s likely no way you’ll ever read this, stop characterizing Mariano Rivera as the “eighth inning guy” on the 1996 Yankees. He was a lot more than that. When you characterize him as such, you simultaneously make a rather insignificant role on a team sound way too important, and diminish what Mariano actually did for that team. And that makes the whole world sad, or at least me.