LOS ANGELES -- Kirby Yates is an undersized, undrafted reliever who spent his first four seasons bouncing between five different organizations.
Perhaps that's why his historic greatness has been so overlooked this season. Perhaps it was the persistent trade rumors during the season’s first half. But make no mistake about it, Yates has been historically great in 2019.
With his scoreless ninth inning on Friday night, Yates dropped his ERA to an even 1.00. In an organization that has produced two Hall of Fame closers and is known for a host of dominant relievers, that's the lowest ERA in franchise history.
But relief ERA can be a tricky number to analyze. It doesn't always tell the story of how well a pitcher pitched. Maybe he put some runners on base and was fortunate to escape a few jams. Maybe he allowed inherited runners from a previous pitcher to score. Maybe he got a little lucky in a sample size of innings that’s well below a starter’s workload.
Not Yates. Not this season.
"You could look at any number," said fellow Padres reliever Craig Stammen, "And you'd say, 'Man, he's having a great season.'"
Perhaps the best indication of Yates' greatness this year is the intersection of his ERA and his FIP.
FIP -- or fielding independent pitching -- is a number set to the scale of ERA. But it's designed to remove mitigating factors. FIP accounts for walks, strikeouts and home runs, and it assigns league-average results to balls in play.
One of the most important benefits of FIP is that it’s designed to show us when a pitcher has been truly dominant, and when he might be getting some good luck on balls in play.
Yates' FIP is 1.06. Like his ERA, it leads the Majors.
In baseball history, no pitcher has thrown at least 40 innings while recording a FIP and ERA both below 1. That might seem like an obscure threshold to hit. But if Yates can do so, it's hard to envision a better barometer of an historically great season.
He'd be allowing less than one earned run every nine innings. And the underlying numbers would assert that, yes, he’s legitimately been that good.
For reference, here's a look at the 20 best seasons in baseball history, according to ERA + FIP.
The first three seasons are regarded as three of the greatest relief seasons of all-time. Eric Gagne took home the Cy Young Award in 2003. Dennis Eckersley and Craig Kimbrel finished fifth in their respective years. In a different era, maybe we'd be discussing Yates as a Cy Young Award candidate.
“He’s been as good as he could possibly be,” said Padres manager Andy Green. “… It’s not a season yet. There’s still two months left. But I’ve had Cy Young teammates in the past, and his dominance is right up there at their level.”
"To this point, it's one of the best seasons I've ever seen pitched," Stammen added.
Yates is doing it with a devastating fastball/splitter combo that makes him virtually untouchable. When he developed that splitter during the 2017 season, he began his evolution toward one of the sport's best relievers.
He's taken that evolution a step further this season. Yates' success earned him his first All-Star appearance last month. He leads the Majors with 32 saves.
After this season, Yates has another year remaining on his contract. As the Padres fell out of contention last month, there was plenty of speculation as to whether Yates would be dealt. The front office explored that option (and the Dodgers were among the interested parties).
Ultimately, San Diego elected to hold on to Yates, and the two sides will likely pursue an extension instead. The Padres view themselves as nothing short of a playoff contender in 2020. Having Yates on board undoubtedly takes them closer to that goal.
"We just kept the best reliever in baseball," catcher Austin Hedges said of the decision. "We kept not only the best reliever in baseball, but one of the best teammates I've ever had and a leader in this clubhouse. It would've been devastating to lose him, and I know everybody's ecstatic to have that guy here."
With numbers like those, it's easy to see why.