It will get lost in all the hoopla around Garcia and Altuve - but Ryan Pressly - twice! - worked his way out of a 2-on/0-out situation to a) preserve two-run deficit so Altuve could be the hero; b) save the game facing Texas' 1-2-3 hitters. Ryan Pressly is the greatest closer in Astros history. He is straight ****ing nails and I love that guy.
I mean, its the exact same discussion as Bagwell/Altuve. Billy Wagner, by some margin, is the greatest closer in Astros history. But if you need a closer in October, Pressly has that honor without competition. The only person worth mentioning besides him is Brad Lidge, who was actually stupidly dominant before Pujols broke him.
Yep! All of this - though Lidge's run wasn't terribly long. But I've (finally!) conceded Altuve > Bagwell, so it's time to go through the Astros' history and start making some declarations!
For the regular season, the standard was the Lidge - Dotel - Wagner group. Last year;s Group as a whole (6 or 7 relievers) was probably better statistically. Even so, I never had as much confidence they could do the job at the time as the former group. It's really a poor comparison since we rarely ever went into the post season healthy or faced pitchers who aren't in the HOF.
Wagner, Lidge and Dave Smith were probably statistically better yet had so few chances to prove it the post season. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s the Stros had some of the best pitching staffs in the league the only problem Was the team would run into arguably the greatest pitching staff on the Braves.
Of the three Lidge was my favorite by far. Pressly gets out of a lot of tough spots but they are often tough spots of his own making. Most times when he gets up to pitch you couldn't drive a toothpick up my ass with a sledge hammer.
Pressly may get the job done but man he causes a lot of stress and cuss words with just about every at bat.
That "standard" only existed for one year (2003)... and they didn't even make the playoffs. Wagner was the Astros full time closer for 5 years (excluding 2000 where he was pitching hurt and had surgery). While that was the best they'd had in franchise history to that point, and was a formative time for many fans here (when this BBS... and the internet... went into existence), it really wasn't that long of a tenure given the current golden era's run. And his October wasn't great... and we can't simply blame it on facing HOF pitchers like Biggio/Bagwell.
Rivera had his fair share of those and nobody will ever question his importance to the Yankees dynasty (was probably the most important player). For these runs to exist/persist, you gotta have guys who can handle the worst of the worst pressure. While Pressly likely had more dominant stuff in 2018/2019 (minus the injuries), he's been as good as any closer in the game since he took over this role, and even better in the post-season.
ESPN says 14 saves and 0 blown saves in postseason. I think your scenario gets marked a blown save right? https://www.espn.com/mlb/player/stats/_/id/33072/ryan-pressly
Perhaps Pressly's worse games stick out, but he's been awesome in Houston. Career ERA -- WHIP , regular / playoffs: 2.67 / 2.22 ---- 0.963 / 1.030
Yep. Memories get mixed up lately and I don't really care to research the particulars of my memories anymore. I guess that was wither regular season or another reliever. https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/HOU/HOU202306140.shtml
This is likely true of any closer that you watch on a team you care about. Pressly as an Astro has a lower WHIP than either Wager or Lidge did, and lower than Mariano Rivera did over his Yankee career as well.
Not sure what story his stats tell, he was the closer around the time I started paying attention to the Astros way back when. Today, a seemingly mostly forgotten time.
