One of the best closers in baseball at the moment is Bryan Baker of the Tampa Bay Rays. He’s converted 25 consecutive save chances and enters Wednesday with a 1.44 ERA this season.

Never heard of him? That’s not surprising given how little national attention the Rays get. And it’s not like Baker had previously done anything noteworthy before this year. He had been a middle reliever for the past five seasons, totaled 4 saves, and never finished a full season with an ERA below 3.49.

Baker changed his approach in 2026. He’s throwing 44% changeups, well more than the 28% of last season or the 14-17% he threw in the seasons before that. He’s also almost completely abandoned a slider that he threw almost 40% of the time to right-handed hitters last season, instead becoming almost exclusively a two-pitch pitcher to them (a 97 MPH four-seam and changeup, with the occasional slider).

While that adjustment gets a large chunk of the credit for turning Baker into a dominant closer, there’s something else to consider.

The Rays have 9 Defensive Runs Saved on the 102 batted balls hit against him this season.

I want to be careful not to hype this too much, but 9 Runs Saved (9.2 to be exact, but we round down) on 102 batted balls is an unusual season total. Drew Rasmussen has three times as many batted balls against him and has gotten 10 Runs Saved of defensive support. There’s one other pitcher with a comparable high-Runs Saved, low-Balls in Play combination to Baker, Clayton Beeter of the Nationals.

But we’re focusing on Baker because he’s on one of the best teams in baseball and he’s pitching more meaningful innings than Beeter is these days. Heck, he’s allowed as many runs all season as the Rays have saved for him.

Here’s one play that likely saved a run (and the game), Victor Mesa Jr. making a sprinting catch in the right field corner to deny a potential extra-base hit with the tying run on first base on July 30. That play was worth 0.7 Runs Saved, the most for any play against Baker this season.

Here’s another literal run saver, a game-ending leaping catch by Junior Caminero the day before the previous one was cited.

This one didn’t directly save a run but it did prevent a bases-loaded situation for the Red Sox in the ninth inning

The Rays have been among the leaders in the defensive positioning component of Runs Saved and Baker has experienced some of that too, like on this game-ending (fairly routine) catch by Cedric Mullins against Aaron Judge deep in left center.

Mullins was able to run the ball down because he was positioned straightaway, which gave him a chance to reach the ball.

And here’s a more mundane example of that, with the Rays shifting second baseman Richie Palacios almost behind second base so that he could make this game-ending play against Jo Adell.

Baker is one of a decent number of examples that show how an ERA estimator, even one as simple as FIP, is a better indicator of pitching performance. Baker’s performance is much more in line with a pitcher who has an ERA of 2.65 (his FIP). But this is what the Rays do. They find ways to maximize value with the players they have in different ways and they usually get pretty good results.