The New York Yankees remain alive in the MLB playoffs and will begin the ALDS on Saturday against the Tampa Bay Rays.
There’s at least one thing that the Yanks don’t have, something that no team in the league has, that the Yankees could once claim to have: the greatest closer of all time.
Mariano Rivera is retired now, just a fan of the game rather than the guy coming out of the bullpen to slam the door shut.
Occasionally, though, Rivera stats will make their way onto social media and start trending. They’ll remind baseball fans just how good Rivera once was.
It’s worth appreciating, even now, because the postseason is the time of year when managers get super aggressive with their relief pitchers.
With other guys, it doesn’t always work.
With Rivera, it nearly always did.
Mariano Rivera Trending Record
One particular record of Rivera’s was shared recently on X (formerly Twitter) and proves just how remarkable he was in the postseason during a dominant era of Yankees baseball.
The stat was for “most postseason saves getting more than 3 outs.”
Rivera had 31 of them.
The next-closest pitcher had seven — that being Goose Gossage.
Four different guys had six such saves: Rollie Fingers, Dennis Eckersley, Kenley Jansen and Aroldis Chapman.
If you add up those five guys, they add up to the same amount of multi-inning saves that Rivera had all by himself.
Most Postseason Saves Getting More Than 3 Outs:
31 Mariano Rivera š²
30
29
28
27
26
25
24
23
22
21
20
19
18
17
16
15
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7 Rich Gossage
6 Rollie Fingers, Dennis Eckersley, Kenley Jansen, Aroldis Chapman
5 Tug McGraw, Jason Motte pic.twitter.com/LI7Ms0KSbJā Codify (@CodifyBaseball) October 1, 2026
That way of sharing it that Codify Baseball used in that post really drives the point home.
How would anyone catch Rivera in this? It’s a bit of a niche stat, but it’s also about reliability and dominance. The Yankees could turn to ‘Mo’ and he would slam the door shut, no matter how early they had to bring him into the ballgame.
How It Applies This Season
One example stands out above the rest already this season.
In Game 1 of the NL Wild Card Series between the Phillies and Braves, Philadelphia manager Don Mattingly brought his closer Jhoan Duran in to begin the seventh inning.
That did coincide with the top of Atlanta’s order, so Mattingly may not have planned on a three-inning save, but that’s certainly one possibility it set up for.
Duran never got to pitch the ninth, though. In the eighth, he gave up a go-ahead three-run homer to Austin Riley, and the Phillies went from leading to a loss. They dropped Game 3 two days later to be eliminated.
It just proved that not all relievers are capable of such multi-inning reliability as the kind Rivera brought to the table.
Rivera failed occasionally, yes, with nothing more painful than Game 7 of the 2001 World Series.
But the Yankees also won championships that they wouldn’t have won without Rivera. He was, and remains, one of one.
Yankees’ Mariano Rivera Playoff Record Looks Unbreakable