Even as a longtime resident of the New York area, I get the eye-rolling over the air of superiority that accompanies so many things from and about the Big Apple. Everything here isn’t automatically bigger, better or more challenging, and people can be just as successful and satisfied in the careers of their choosing without ever stepping foot into Manhattan or its boroughs.
Except for baseball closers.
The final three outs of the game — already the toughest to get — are exponentially harder to record for those employed by the Yankees and Mets. And even if you are already among the best at what you do, it doesn’t count and it doesn’t matter until you do it here — over and over and over again.
Right, Devin Williams?
The embattled Yankees reliever was demoted from closer duties after giving up three runs without recording an out in the ninth inning of last Friday’s 4-2 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. The outing raised Williams’ ERA to 11.25 and served as the latest reminder of just how much different it is here than in Milwaukee, where Williams spent the previous five seasons establishing himself as one of the game’s elite firemen.
Among pitchers with at least 50 saves since 2020, Williams ranked second in ERA (1.70), fourth in WHIP (0.98) and fifth in strikeouts (361). And for all that, he got booed in his Yankees debut March 27, when he gave up a run before closing out the Brewers in a 4-2 victory.
Tough crowd in a tough city, where the standard was set from 1973 through 1987 by the Yankees’ Sparky Lyle and Goose Gossage and the Mets’ Jesse Orosco. The trio combined to make nine All-Star teams while racking up a whopping 45.8 WAR during their New York stints — a span in which Lyle and Orosco recorded the final out of a World Series clincher, Lyle won a Cy Young, and Gossage put together the bulk of his Hall of Fame career.
Yet even the best to ever do it is remembered for the ones that got away. Mariano Rivera recorded all but five of his major league-record 652 saves after John Wetteland departed following the Yankees’ 1996 title. But Bombers fans still wonder what might have been for the dynastic Joe Torre era if Rivera — the lone unanimous Hall of Fame inductee — hadn’t blown saves in the potential ALDS clincher in 1997, Game 7 of the 2001 World Series and, especially, the potential ALCS clincher in 2004.
Unfortunately for Williams, his inherently skeptical new audience already associated him with the most infamous blown save of last season. Williams gave up the go-ahead, ninth-inning homer to the Mets’ Pete Alonso on Oct. 3, when the Brewers were eliminated with a 4-2 loss in Game 3 of an NL wild-card series.
Fortunately for Williams, he can look across town to find evidence that an awful start doesn’t have to ruin his tenure as closer.
Edwin Díaz, whom the Mets acquired from the Seattle Mariners in a controversial trade following the 2018 season, posted a 5.59 ERA and blew seven save chances while being booed throughout his first season in New York. He didn’t fully win the job — or win over fans — until 2022, when he recorded a 1.31 ERA and 32 saves while going viral every time he entered to “Timmy Trumpet” at Citi Field.
Then again, until and unless the Mets get to a World Series, there’s no guaranteeing Díaz won’t eventually reside in the same company as Armando Benítez and Jeurys Familia. Benítez and Familia reside immediately ahead of Díaz in second and third place on the franchise’s all-time saves list, but their tenures were forever stained by the ninth-inning leads they blew in the opening game of the Mets’ two most recent World Series appearances — each of which they lost in five games.
Williams was a long way from the ninth inning of a World Series game Monday night, when he made his first appearance since Friday and tossed a perfect eighth in the Yankees’ 4-3 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. It’s the first step in a long process — one only a select few have ever completed in New York, the city that never sleeps nor forgets a blown save.
