I can see Maddon’s point. If you know you have a 9th inning pitcher who will not ordinarily blow a lead (which is not the same as saying he is your best reliever or the one most useful in all tight situations), and you do not expect your starter to give you more than 6-7 innings on most nights, it allows the manager to maneuver the rest of his bullpen more efficiently.

Where I still do not like it though is in a sense the opposite of what I have been saying before. Generally my view is that the closer is probably the best pitcher in the bullpen and so should be used in the highest leverage situations even if they occur earlier in the game. But in the Rays case, he almost certainly is not the best pitcher there even if he can be trusted with leads in most cases.

So the other side of that is suppose you have a 1 run lead in the 9th with the opposition’s big hitters coming up, or even more important, suppose the designated closer allows 2 men on base with nobody out to start the ninth. And further suppose that there are other relievers who are pitching better than the closer has been, or are more effective against the batters due up or in this particular kind of situation. (For example, suppose Balfour is striking out better than a man/inning and there is a runner on 3rd with less than 2 outs in the 9th inning of a 1 run game).

With the designated closer it is extremely rare-for all sorts of bad reasons in my mind-for the manager to replace him. Yet it seems to me that is exactly what he ought to do, and not just in extreme situations as when the closer is clearly inept, but regularly when the situation seems to call for it, the reputation and ego and all the rest be damned. It is that unwillingness to violate the tacit understanding that the closer must be trusted to finish that I think is the problem.