[kq76]

140 characters is a reference to old twitter. I will admit, the OP/article did itself a disservice by not going with the formula for SDs right up front, like the fangraphs article I originally linked to did. I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking, "get to the point already".

You still forgot something: you can't have gotten the win. If you didn't look any of that up then bravo though. Maybe it's just that I dismissed it so long ago that I've successfully erased it from my memory since, but I couldn't remember much more than "stupid stat". Oh, and it's not if they got the "last out" under those conditions, it's if they "entered the game" under those conditions. I don't blame you for getting that wrong, maybe you did know that, but just mistyped.

I once thought SDs and MDs were complicated too, but once I read more about Win Probability Added (WPA) and got more accustomed to looking at them in OOTP (I replaced saves with them in my views), it became a lot simpler. Its biggest hurdle is definitely, "what exactly is 0.6 WPA?", but once you get a decent understanding of WPA it's not so bad. And on the plus side, it really helps you get a good grasp of which situations are high leverage and which aren't. It's like when you see those win expectancy stats on broadcasts. I understand some people don't like them, but I do like them. It's helped wrench up the tension for me. I mean, of course, most of us should be able to realize that a tie game in the 9th is of higher leverage than a tie game in the 5th, but I also know now that there isn't much reason to be worried about a 3-run lead to start the 9th while a 2-run lead to start the 9th is something to be worried about.

Sorry, I'm not sure I get the Donnie Moore reference. But if it's what I think it is ('86 ALCS'), the 9th is already a higher leverage situation and so closers do more easily get credit for SDs when performing well in those situations. It's just that SDs are not limited to closing situations, like they are with saves. Closing out games is still critically important, it's just not the only thing worth giving relievers credit for.