so long Trevor Hoffman

Trevor Hoffman retired today. He is baseball's all-time saves leader with 601. That is currently 41 more than Mariano Rivera. Hoffman was a dominant closer for many years with the Padres. He lost his closer role in Milwaukee last season, but pitched well enough that he got a farewell tour of closing over the last month or so of the season and notched career save 600 to be the first pitcher to that milestone, then number 601.

I would presume Hoffman will be finding his way to Cooperstown. Will he be first ballot? I don't know. The Hall hasn't been easy on relief pitchers. Goose Gossage is in. So are Rollie Fingers and Dennis Eckersley.

But Lee Smith, who was the all-time saves leader at the time he retired, got fewer than 50% of the vote in this year's Hall of Fame balloting. John Franco, who was #4 on the career saves list and had more saves than any left-handed pitcher in history, didn't even get the 5% of the vote this year to stay on future Hall ballots. His chances are done. I'm not saying I was expecting Franco to make the Hall of Fame, but I didn't expect his chances to be totally over after the first balloting, on which he got 11 votes or something like that.

Hoffman though was so good and so consistent for so long, and he's amassed 601 saves, so I think he's going to get in. You can say what you want about the watered down saves in today's game, the lack of 2-inning saves, etc. But Hoffman still went out there and notched 601 of them. Closers get hurt or flame out frequently. The lifespan is short.

For example Eric Gagne was the best closer in baseball for about a 3 year period. He converted 80 some straight save opportunities or something like that, which is the major league record. But then he hurt his arm. He was never the same. By last year he was out of the game with just a hair over 100 career saves. Despite being the game's best closer for 3 years, that was pretty much all he did. Hoffman kept doing it for over 20 years.

I'm not sure if Hoffman will be a first ballot Hall of Famer like Mariano Rivera will be. But then Rivera will almost certainly end up with the all time saves record. He's also the all time best post-season closer in baseball, and has something like 60 post-season saves and a sub- 1.00 ERA on the game's biggest stage.

Hoffman doesn't quite have the clutch post-season reputation, but he did have a few marquee saves in the post-season and raised the bar and the standard for closers. So he will be in, if not first ballot no wore than second I'd say. And I expect he'll be wearing a Padres hat.