Mariano Rivera

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Mariano Rivera

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Mariano Rivera

Mariano Rivera was elected to the Hall of Fame in his 1st year of eligibility, 2019, with 100.0% of the vote.

Five highlights of Mariano Rivera's career:

Mariano Rivera was named to thirteen All-Star teams.

He was named MVP of the 1999 World Series (1-0, 2 saves, 0.00 ERA in 4.2 IP), the 2003 ALCS (1-0, 2 saves, 1.13 ERA in 8 IP), and the 2013 All-Star games (in which he pitched a perfect eighth inning).

Rivera holds the major-league career records for most saves in the regular season (652), divisional series (18), championship series (13), and World Series (11).

Through 2018, there have been 103 seasons in which a pitcher earned at least 30 saves with an ERA below 2.00. Rivera had 11 of these seasons.

Mariano Rivera was the last player in major-league history to wear uniform number 42, which equals the number of postseason saves Rivera had in his career.

The first two tables below present Mariano Rivera's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1995	NYA	25	19	4.0	4.2	0.4	-0.2
1996	NYA	26	61	9.6	3.6	7.0	5.8
1997	NYA	27	66	7.2	4.1	4.0	3.0
1998	NYA	28	54	6.4	1.9	5.0	4.3
1999	NYA	29	66	6.5	2.5	4.7	3.9
2000	NYA	30	66	7.5	4.0	4.4	3.3
2001	NYA	31	71	8.8	4.0	5.7	4.5
2002	NYA	32	45	4.9	3.9	1.8	0.9
2003	NYA	33	64	7.1	2.9	5.0	4.0
2004	NYA	34	74	9.4	3.6	6.7	5.5
2005	NYA	35	71	7.6	3.2	5.2	4.2
2006	NYA	36	63	7.0	3.4	4.4	3.4
2007	NYA	37	67	6.4	3.9	3.4	2.4
2008	NYA	38	64	7.5	2.6	5.7	4.7
2009	NYA	39	66	6.2	3.1	3.8	2.9
2010	NYA	40	61	5.6	3.3	2.9	2.1
2011	NYA	41	64	6.2	2.8	4.1	3.3
2012	NYA	42	9	0.7	0.3	0.5	0.4
2013	NYA	43	64	7.1	3.7	4.2	3.1
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,115	125.9	61.1	79.0	61.4
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			96	12.9	3.5	10.7	9.1
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			1,211	138.8	64.6	89.7	70.5

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1995	NYA	25	19	4.0	4.3	0.4	-0.2
1996	NYA	26	61	9.1	4.1	5.9	4.7
1997	NYA	27	66	6.5	4.8	2.6	1.6
1998	NYA	28	54	5.1	3.2	2.5	1.7
1999	NYA	29	66	6.2	2.9	4.0	3.1
2000	NYA	30	66	7.3	4.3	4.0	2.9
2001	NYA	31	71	8.2	4.6	4.5	3.3
2002	NYA	32	45	4.7	4.1	1.5	0.7
2003	NYA	33	64	6.3	3.7	3.6	2.6
2004	NYA	34	74	8.7	4.3	5.3	4.1
2005	NYA	35	71	7.3	3.6	4.5	3.5
2006	NYA	36	63	6.8	3.6	3.9	2.9
2007	NYA	37	67	6.1	4.2	2.8	1.8
2008	NYA	38	64	6.8	3.3	4.3	3.4
2009	NYA	39	66	5.7	3.7	2.7	1.8
2010	NYA	40	61	5.5	3.4	2.8	2.0
2011	NYA	41	64	5.6	3.4	3.0	2.1
2012	NYA	42	9	0.7	0.3	0.5	0.4
2013	NYA	43	64	6.4	4.4	2.8	1.7
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,115	116.8	70.2	61.4	43.8
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			96	11.4	5.0	7.7	6.2
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			1,211	128.2	75.2	69.2	50.0

Mariano Rivera was the first player ever elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame unanimously by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA). I was a little surprised at Rivera's vote percentage, just because the BBWAA has been holding Hall-of-Fame elections for more than 80 years and nobody had been unanimous before. But the Hall-of-Fame case for Mariano Rivera is certainly a strong one. Mariano Rivera is the greatest relief pitcher of all time. And Rivera's case as the greatest relief pitcher of all time is probably stronger than the case of any other player at any other position.

Here, then, are the top 10 relief pitchers, as measured by Player won-lost records, measured by player wins over positional average earned only as a relief pitcher, both in and out of context. Numbers here are regular season only (which probably understates Rivera's dominance, as his postseason record was a huge part of what made him so great).


Top 10 Relief Pitchers of All-Time
		Ranked by eWOPA					Ranked by pWOPA
	Player	eWins	eLosses	eWOPA		Player	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA
1	Mariano Rivera	112.7	67.2	42.3	1	Mariano Rivera	122.5	57.4	61.6
2	Billy Wagner	75.1	54.8	18.1	2	Trevor Hoffman	100.1	62.2	35.1
3	Trevor Hoffman	91.2	71.1	17.6	3	Lee Smith	108.9	75.8	29.8
4	Rich Gossage	109.4	89.4	17.0	4	Frankie Rodriguez	89.7	57.5	29.4
5	Rollie Fingers	103.6	85.3	15.7	5	Joe Nathan	68.4	37.3	29.0
6	Joe Nathan	61.1	44.7	14.5	6	Rich Gossage	115.3	83.5	28.7
7	Jonathan Papelbon	59.0	43.6	13.6	7	Jonathan Papelbon	66.4	36.2	28.2
8	Tom Henke	62.3	47.0	13.6	8	Billy Wagner	79.3	50.6	26.5
9	Kent Tekulve	81.6	65.9	13.4	9	Craig Kimbrel	56.7	28.5	26.4
10	Doug Jones	77.8	62.7	13.0	10	John Franco	103.1	74.4	25.8

The debate over who is the second-best relief pitcher of all time would be a good one with several contenders (Wagner, Hoffman, and Gossage, at least, would seem to all have a plausible case). But whoever you want to pick as the second-best relief pitcher of all time, that person is probably closer to the tenth-best reliever of all time than he is to Mariano Rivera.

To the extent that there could be an argument against Mariano Rivera as a Hall of Famer - and obviously none of the 425 Hall-of-Fame voters last fall thought there was one - it would have to at least start with the argument that "relief pitcher" is not a "position"; "pitcher" is the position. So, how does Mariano Rivera stack up against all pitchers?

The next table shows the top 25 pitchers since 1947, ranked by pWins over positional average. The numbers here reflect a player's total pWins across all positions; players are included in this table if the majority of their wins were accumulated as a pitcher.

	Player	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

		Top 25 Pitchers since 1947 (ranked by career pWOPA)
1	Roger Clemens	316.9	228.6	131.3	94.6
2	Greg Maddux	327.2	271.7	115.0	77.9
3	Warren Spahn	342.7	287.4	111.3	72.8
4	Randy 'Big Unit' Johnson	279.8	221.0	102.9	69.8
5	Tom Seaver	306.9	258.2	98.6	65.1
6	Pedro J. Martinez	192.4	137.8	84.7	62.6
7	Jim Palmer	241.5	186.1	88.7	61.9
8	Mariano Rivera	125.9	61.1	79.0	61.4
9	Bob Gibson	262.4	218.4	87.4	58.7
10	Juan Marichal	230.8	188.0	81.7	56.7
11	Whitey Ford	209.4	164.7	78.0	54.9
12	Clayton Kershaw	155.9	114.3	69.8	52.8
13	Mike Mussina	223.1	174.0	80.1	52.7
14	John Smoltz	238.8	201.8	78.3	49.6
15	Steve Carlton	335.6	305.9	86.9	49.2
16	J. Kevin Brown	204.2	164.5	72.3	48.2
17	Tom Glavine	277.8	249.8	78.6	45.8
18	Curt Schilling	205.8	172.8	69.2	44.5
19	Fergie Jenkins	285.0	252.3	77.4	44.4
20	Roy Halladay	170.9	133.2	64.0	43.4
21	Justin Verlander	189.9	151.6	65.9	42.2
22	Dennis Eckersley	215.6	175.2	69.8	41.9
23	Bob Lemon	191.8	159.3	63.0	41.3
24	Andy Pettitte	210.6	175.1	67.4	41.1
25	Max Scherzer	154.6	121.6	59.1	41.0

Article last updated: August 19, 2019

All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.

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