Mandatory Credit: John Munson/THE STAR-LEDGER via USA TODAY Sports

With the announcement of Mariano Rivera‘s impending retirement after the 2013 season, debate has begun concerning where he ranks among all-time Yankees greats.

Certainly, Rivera is a sure-fire Hall-of-Famer. He’s getting in on the first ballot, of that there is no doubt. And he is absolutely one of the greatest Yankees to ever wear pinstripes.

Five times the Yanks won world championships with Mariano Rivera on the roster, and four times, Rivera recorded the final out.

In 96 postseason games, his ERA was a sterling 0.70. Compare that to his ridiculously good 2.21 regular season ERA, and you can see why Rivera is unquestionably the greatest postseason closer in baseball history.

However, ESPN’s Buster Olney postulated an argument that, on the surface, seems like a reasonable one, but in reality, is not at all.

You could have a pretty healthy debate about whether Rivera or M.Jordan has been the best postseason performer in U.S. pro sports history.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) March 8, 2013

One can certainly make the argument that Michael Jordan is the greatest postseason performer in the history of American sports. Six NBA championships will do that for a person.

But does Rivera’s career postseason accomplishments really compare to Jordan’s? And just how valuable was Rivera to the Yankees’ postseason achievements?

First, it’s important to note the value of a closer in general. The closer is typically only brought into situations in which he has a lead entering the ninth inning, typically no greater than three runs. There are also occasions, obviously, where a pitcher would be brought into a tie game, usually at home, to get his team one final at-bat and a chance to win the game with a walk-off run.

Of course, most forward thinking baseball watchers believe it’s silly to let your best relief pitcher waste away in the bullpen in a tie game on the road, but that’s a different article entirely.

In those “save situations,” a closer is already put in a position where his chances for success is incredibly high. It is a high-leverage situation, one in which a good closer should emerge on the winning side of routinely.

According to The Hardball Times Win Probability Inquirer, if you assume the game is being played in a ballpark that is neither pitcher nor hitter-friendly (a run environment of 4.5 is being used in this example), then a closer that enters the top of the ninth inning of a home game with a one-run lead, no outs and the bases empty has an 83.7% chance of winning the game.

If the closer enters with a two-run lead, he has a 92.6% chance of winning.

And if the closer enters with a three-run lead, he has a 96.7% chance of winning.

In other words, most closers AT LEAST should be expected to win their games in more than 8 in 10 opportunities.

Of course, Rivera has been a pitcher whose true value is that he has routinely pitched more than one inning at a time in postseason play. Since he became the Yankees closer in 1997, Rivera has 42 appearances of more than one inning. In those 42 appearances, he has 31 saves and four wins.

Under our initial scenario, in games in which a closer enters the eighth inning of a tie game at home, his team has only a 50/50 shot at winning. If he enters the eighth inning (needing six outs) to protect a one-run lead, the odds increase to 78.1%. If it’s a two-run lead, it’s 86.6%, and if it’s a three-run lead, it’s 93%.

However, most multiple inning saves are close games, meaning most of them are either tie games or ones in which the margin is one or two runs.

The fact that 31 of Rivera’s 42 postseason saves were of multiple innings certainly puts him on another plane as far as closers are concerned.

Still, a large majority of the time, Rivera enters a game already in a position to succeed. In fact, the odds are drastically in his favor most of the time.

Not only that, closers are typically only involved in securing three of the necessary 27 outs a team needs to win. That’s just over 11%. In Rivera’s case, most of the time he was required to secure 4 to 6 of the 27 outs needed. That’s still a relatively low percentage of the total outs needed to win, but certainly, his degree of difficulty has historically been much higher than typical closers.

Plus, a team needs to score runs in order to win baseball games, and there is nothing Rivera can contribute to that cause, unlike Michael Jordan, who was able to contribute both offensively and defensively to his team’s victories.

And even though Rivera is undoubtedly the greatest closer who ever lived, even he was not immune to being responsible for one of the biggest blown saves in postseason history.

Despite that hiccup, there is no denying Rivera’s credentials. He deserves all the accolades thrown at him.

All except being called the greatest postseason performer in U.S. sports history.

Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

Ever since the Phillies went to their second straight World Series in 2009 and played the New York Yankees, the two teams have been linked.

That was the year the Phils became a baseball power, a big-spending, highly successful franchise that expected nothing less than a World Series appearance as well as championships until the cows came home.

And now, at the dawn of the 2013 season, the similarities between the two franchises remains as obvious as ever.

Both teams have high payrolls, yet both declined to make a big splash in free agency or the trade market this winter, something out of character for both franchises. The Phils were content to trade for Ben Revere and Michael Young and sign bullpen pieces Mike Adams, Chad Durbin and outfielder Delmon Young to cheap free agent contracts. The biggest names the Yankees signed were third baseman Kevin Youkilis and DH Travis Hafner.

Both teams are dealing with the consequences of aging players.

137 years-old. Same as healthy Yankees infield. RT @johnclarknbc10: Ryan, Young, JRoll, Chase. Oldest infield in MLB? twitter.com/johnclarknbc10…

— Ryan Lawrence (@ryanlawrence21) February 15, 2013

Both teams are dealing with lowered expectations, much of that due to the improvement of other teams in their divisions (Blue Jays and Orioles in the AL East, Nationals and Braves in the NL East).

Both teams have a cornerstone player signed to a long-term contract that both sides probably wish they had never agreed to. Obviously, Alex Rodriguez‘ deal, which has him being paid another $114 million through his 41st birthday, all while he’s due to miss half the season following hip surgery and being dogged by yet another round of PED allegations, is MUCH, MUCH worse than the four years and at least $105 million due Ryan Howard through his 37th birthday.

Both teams have had to deal with the PED issue this offseason, though. The Yanks have had the headache of the A-Rod allegations, while Carlos Ruiz, the last person anyone would suspect of doing anything illegal, is suspended for the first 25 games of the season after being caught using Adderall for a second time.

Both teams have franchise second basemen who could be free agents at the end of the year. Robinson Cano and New York have talked vaguely about a contract extension, but it seems likely Cano will test the market, where he could land a contract in the neighborhood of $150-175 million. The Phillies certainly want to wait and see if Chase Utley is going to come out of the gate healthy and productive, and if he does, re-signing him should cost much less than Cano, if both sides agree they want to lock him up for the rest of his career. Otherwise, both Utley and Cano could be on the market at the same time next year.

Both teams have a lame duck manager heading into the 2013 season. Both managers have won a title (Charlie in ’08 and Joe Girardi in ’09) and both have had to endure questions about their futures. A good season by both teams could mean both men will be in line for extensions, but with Ryne Sandberg waiting in the wings in Philly, it seems as though Joe’s job prospects with his current team are a bit better than Manuel’s.

But perhaps most importantly…

Only the Yankees and Phillies sell team-logo thongs. The more you know. fangraphs.com/blogs/index.ph…

— Craig Calcaterra (@craigcalcaterra) February 15, 2013

Clearly these two franchises are joined at the… um… well… let’s just say “hip.”

Those are some overwhelming similarities, y’all. So much so, it might even qualify as “cosmic,” or “strange as hell.”

Both franchises are still relevant, but not at the top of the heap. Both are struggling to climb that mountain once again in 2013, but face an uphill climb.

And, they both sell thongs.

The New York Yankees are not going to be able to void his contract, and he’s not going to retire. The Yankees made their bed when they signed A-Rod to his 10-year, $275 million deal, and now they must sleep in it.

And Rodriguez, who could be out until July after having surgery on his hip this off-season, isn’t going to step away from the game. Those thinking A-Rod has played his last game as a Yankee are kidding themselves.

So, just stop it already. Just stop it.

People want a Mike Schmidt moment, and they’re not going to get it.

Schmidt’s tearful goodbye to the game of baseball early in the 1989 season was highly unusual, both in its location and rapidity.

No one was expecting it. It came out of the blue. And the emotion surrounding the announcement, by a guy often criticized as being way too “Joe Cool,” caught everyone off guard.

It was one of those moments where, if you were a conscious sports fan at the time, you knew where you were when you saw it.

Schmidt and A-Rod are linked by this moment. People want to see a similar event, right now, from Rodriguez.

Here’s the only problem with that. A-Rod isn’t washed up. Schmidt was.

Schmidt has talked about why he decided to retire when he did.

Mired in a terrible slump to start the 1989 season, Schmidt, then 39 years old, had already been considering stepping away from the game. In his final one, an 8-5 loss to the Giants in San Francisco, he received his final push.

With the game tied 3-3 in the bottom of the fourth, Schmidt committed an error, letting a ground ball go right through his legs, an error that loaded the bases. The next batter, Will Clark, hit a grand slam.

That, in Schmidt’s mind, all but sealed the deal.

In a telephone interview with the Philadelphia Daily News back in 2009, Schmidt recalled his thought process…

“After the game, I walked into the clubhouse and it was like I was in a fog,” he said. “I showered real fast, paid the clubhouse guy and went out and sat on the bus all by myself for 30 or 40 minutes to contemplate my next move.”

“And that was it. I just cleaned out my locker and waited to see if I would get any phone calls,” he said.

The next part of Schmidt’s thinking, though, is what separates him from ballplayers today, who insist on taking “retirement tours,” in an effort to acquire as much public adulation as possible before stepping away.

“I think the important thing at the time of my decision is that the team – and you always want to put the team first – was not a contender. Everybody understood it was a rebuilding process. We weren’t going to win the division. Whether I was there or not, we were pretty much going to finish in the same place. Maybe it would be easier to rebuild without having to think about me. I was not going to be a big part of their future. Once I removed myself, the rebuilding process started working pretty quickly.”

There can be no question Schmidt was thinking as much of the team as himself. Otherwise, he would have announced he was retiring at the end of the season, then spent the rest of the ’89 season taking up space on a last-place club while he received all the public attention the greatest third basemen in the history of baseball was due.

Only, he didn’t do that. That hastily-called press conference in the clubhouse of the San Diego Padres, 2700 miles away from Philadelphia, was his vehicle to say goodbye.

The guy didn’t even wait for the west coast road trip to finish up to announce his retirement.

What Schmidt did was selfless and, at the same time, extremely self-aware. He knew he was done. He was cooked. It was over and he didn’t want to waste anyone’s time pretending it wasn’t.

At the time, Michael Jack was hitting .203/.297/.372 with just 6 HRs in his first 42 games. And while he wasn’t hurt, a rotator cuff issue the year before cut short his ’88 season.

Mike Schmidt was hurting the team.

Alex Rodriguez is not. At least, not yet.

Oct 18, 2012; Detroit, MI, USA; New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez before game four of the 2012 ALCS against the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park. Mandatory Credit: William Perlman/THE STAR-LEDGER via USA TODAY Sports

Even though A-Rod is no longer playing up to his contract, he’s still a somewhat productive third baseman. Last year, he posted a WAR of 2.0, hitting .272/.353/.430 with 18 HRs in 122 games.

Clearly, those are not typical A-Rod numbers, but they are still above replacement level.

There is also the money, which is a tremendous motivating factor.

At the time of his retirement, Schmidt was among the highest-paid players in baseball, but at the time, was making just $2 million a year. Collusion by baseball owners helped keep salaries down in those days, so future earnings were not much of a consideration.

Alex Rodriguez is still owed $114 million on a contract that has five years left on it. One could argue Schmidt may have thought twice about the timing of his retirement had that much money been left on the table for him.

Of course, hopefully when A-Rod truly realizes he’s not a productive player anymore, once he realizes he’s hurting the team and that he’s washed up, he’ll do what Mike Schmidt did.

One would hope he would pack it in and retire, for the good of the team.

That would be lovely.

The truth, though, is that big-time sports simply don’t work the way they did in 1989. Most athletes don’t do what Mike Schmidt did, which is what makes it all the more special.

So even though just about every Yankee fan (and probably most baseball fans) would love to see A-Rod say goodbye tomorrow, it’s not going to happen.

Get used to seeing Alex Rodriguez on a baseball field for quite some time.