I love it when what appears to be "common knowledge" gets challenged. Steve Caimano does that with the "closers don’t have the same intensity in non-save situations" claim:

Nationally televised game against the Yankees. The Mets led 4-0 going into the ninth and Willie Randolph decided to make sure nothing strange was going to happen, so he brought in his newly acquired toy, Billy Wagner. The next fifteen minutes or so must have played out in front of Willie like a car accident. The squeal of the tires (Giambi, single), the crunch of metal (ARod, walk), the shattering of glass (Cano, RBI single), a moment of eerie silence (Cairo, fly out) and then the repeated blaring of the oncoming sirens (Cabrera, walk – Stinnett, walk and run – Williams, HBP and run). He pulled Wagner from the game, but that didn’t stop the ensuing groundout from scoring the tying run in a game the Mets would go on to lose 5-4. Wagner’s line? 1/3 IP, 2 H, 3 BB, HBP, 4 ER.

Anybody who watched that game would undoubtedly agree with Rob that closers just don’t pitch with the same intensity when they enter in non-save situations, and as a result they don’t pitch as well. The problem is that one well chronicled national television meltdown does not a point prove. In fact, it’s exactly the kind of anecdotal evidence that allows the observer to assume that a piece of “conventional wisdom” must be true without bothering to actually check the facts. Fortunately, I’m just the kind of guy who likes to test the “conventional wisdom”.

Here is Billy Wagner’s career pitching statistics broken down into save and non-save situations:

	Innings	ERA	K/9	WHIP
Save	438.2	2.36	11.97	1.00
Non-Save	344.1	2.38	11.59	1.01

Well would you look at that? It turns out that over his career Billy Wagner is EXACTLY the same pitcher regardless of what the game situation is when he enters. […] Maybe the reason Billy Wagner is a great closer is simply that he’s very good at hurling a baseball at frightening speeds toward home plate

You have to love this stuff. Caimano goes on and presents the numbers of some other big name closers, too, so check out the whole article.

Link: Is There Really A “Closer’s Mentality”?