More on Fewest Saves

Expanding the lowest save percentage to include those with between 500 and 600 career games pitched in relief (GPIR), we find two active guys with miniscule save percentages!

Rheal Cormier, 575 GPIR, 2 saves, 0.35 %
Ray King, 543GPIR, 2 S, 0.37 %

Both these guys are lefties who usually are brought in to face only one or sometimes two batters, and so rarely finish games. Others of note:

Felix Heredia, 509, 6, 1.18 %
Tony Fossas, 567, 7, 1.23 %
Dennis Cook, 594, 9, 1.5 %
Russ Springer, 528 (thru 6/26/07), 8, 1.5 %

One guy with just under 500 GPIR:

Jason Grimsley, 480, 4, 0.83 %

And another Jason with a HIGH percentage just under 500 GPIR:

Jason Isringhausen, 485, 263, 54.2 %


Most of the highest and lowest percentage guys are from recent years. It would seem that, whereas pitching staffs used to spread the saves around a bit more (quality guys like Rollie Fingers and Goose Gossage only had saves in 37.6 % and 32.1 % of appearances, respectively), they now specialize to such an extent that one guy often has 95+ % of a team's saves in any given year. So if guys go their whole career without ever being the main closer, the saves are few and far between, instead of still collecting around 5 or so a year as in earlier years (1960s-80s).