Archive for Closers

I’ve seen it said that bullpens win championships, but I think it’s probably just the last piece of the puzzle for a contending team. That’d be hard to tease out in the numbers, but it certainly doesn’t make sense for a team like the Astros to spend resources on their bullpen. They’ve taken it to the extreme in some cases, by trading any and every reliever that had any interest on the market.

That’s how you get an Astros bullpen that was by far the worst in the league last year. By a large margin. At 5.09, their FIP was almost a full run worse than second-worst (Cubs, 4.23). And they ‘accrued’ -5.4 wins. The other four teams with below-replacement pens lost .2 wins or less to their relievers as a group. So, yeah, it was a really bad bullpen.

Two thoughts come to mind about a bad bullpen. The first is that there’s always opportunity in situations like those. Bad teams make for sleepers, since the traditional media focuses on better teams and those players get more name recognition. So don’t ignore the team. But! Bad teams — especially those that don’t score a lot of runs and have bad bullpens around the closer — bad teams do not provide a lot of save opportunities.

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When the Angels acquired Ernesto Frieri from the Padres in May of 2012, they knew they were getting a strikeout machine, but were aware that those strikeouts came with a cost — namely, walks and lots and lots of fly balls. And at the time, he was just a middle reliever who had shown the overall skills to close, but had yet to be afforded such an opportunity. He then continued to dominate and eventually became the undisputed man at the end of the bullpen for the Halos.

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Equal parts infuriating to fantasy baseball players and exciting to forward-thinking baseball fans, this Rangers bullpen has it all. Instead of some boring free agent acquisition to fill the role, or a lucky prospect turned into dominant reliever, the Rangers have turned to a collection of quantity (all with quirks). And quantity is always the best option in the bullpen, where quality usually costs too much money. Deciding which guy saves the most games for the Rangers this year will be tough though.

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Adding Holds as a category to any fantasy league opens up a new pool of pitchers to the mix. No longer are teams focused just on just starters and closers, now middle relievers have more value. Holds are an impossible category to predict, but today I will give some ideas about guesstimating Holds and some pitchers who may accumulate them in 2014.

If a reliever comes into a game to protect a lead, gets at least one out and leaves without giving up that lead, he gets a hold.

MLB Miscellany: Rules, regulations and statistics

Two things must exist for a pitcher to a get a Hold, opportunity and talent. Starting with opportunity: Holds are just like Saves, the manager must trust the pitcher enough to put them in a Hold situation. Two types of pitchers are given Hold opportunities, stud setup men and LOOGYs. A setup man will pitch the seventh and/or eighth since their peripheral data is similar to a closer. They will throw one inning and be done. LOOGY’s will be used to get one or two tough left-handed batters out and be done.

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About 24 hours ago, plus or minus zero minutes, I posted on the topic of elite relievers and when such players should be purchased in a draft. I recommend skimming that first as some of the points are pertinent to this article.

That piece was designed to offer some general tools and thoughts for those in relatively standard leagues. However, FanGraphs offers a custom fantasy game called Ottoneu – perhaps you have heard of it. Ottoneu offers four scoring systems, two of which are scored by points. This article is about the value of elite relievers in those points formats.

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One relief pitcher trait I like to have on hand during draft season is how much of a split has a pitcher displayed over his career against right- and left-handed hitters. Most teams don’t want their closer to have a large split because with all hands on deck in the ninth, the opposing manager will use up all his available platoon options. The reason a pitcher may or may not have a split may be many, but truthfully I don’t have time to evaluate each relief pitcher in detail (and still stay married) so I use this nice little cheat sheet.

I examined which pitchers have historically small or large handedness splits and how much to take them into account when valuing the relief pitcher for a closer’s role.

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Addison Reed is fascinating, I think. He’s seen as a star closer because he came up as a rookie in 2012 and saved 29 games, then 40 more in 2013, despite playing for a Chicago team that seemed like it had a lead to hang onto about once a week. Those 69 saves are good for the ninth-most in history through a player’s age-24 season, which is both impressive and terrifying — while Craig Kimbrel is on that list, so are flameouts like Gregg Olson and Chad Cordero.

Since fantasy baseball isn’t real baseball, it’s often a simple equation of {if (saves=yes) then (pitcher=draft-him)}. Reed gets saves, so you draft him, and that’s why he’s #12 on our closer rankings. But there’s a reason he’s not in the top 10, and it’s certainly not because he has a problem missing bats, not when he’s whiffed 138 in 133.2 major league innings. It’s because for all the things Reed does very well, he hasn’t always done a particularly great job of simply preventing runs from scoring. Read the rest of this entry »

As you might have noticed, we are a few days into our offseason analysis of relievers. We’ve mostly discussed the best of the best thus far, and we’ve been sure to warn everybody that waiver wire hawks may want to allocate the $20 it takes to win a Craig Kimbrel to another position. If you’re the kind of guy who finds a Koji Uehara or Mark Melancon for free year after year, why should you pay $20 for a closer? You’ll eventually get your saves – even if you’re at the bottom of the pile in April – and the extra $20 could go into hiring 20 more home runs and RBI in the outfield or a catcher that contributes in more than one category.

Like every other position, closers also get hurt. Unlike most other positions, the guy who steps in as the next closer is sometimes as good or better than the first guy. Again, see Uehara and Melancon. So that’s the common line of thinking on elite relievers, that an active owner can find underpriced saves without taking on the injury risk of a $20 relief asset. However, there are definitely circumstances where it makes all the sense in the world to pay for 40 saves, massive strikeout totals, and drool worthy ratios.

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After taking over the closer role for an ineffective Trevor Hoffman in late May of 2010, John Axford was lights out through the 2011 season. Unfortunately for the Brew Crew, the magic couldn’t last and a severe care of gopheritis reared its ugly head the following year. Despite posting similar skills, Axford’s ERA ballooned to 4.67 as a result. But, he limped through the season and still managed to save 35 games.

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It’s probably safe to say that Kenley Jansen has finally freed himself from the shackles of setup relief duty. Since entering the league in 2010, Jansen has been comparable to the historically excellent Craig Kimbrel with one exception, the Dodgers keep blocking him at closer. In 2013, it was the recently re-signed Brandon League who stood between Jansen and fantasy reliever gold. Of course, League asploded and hemorrhaged runs all over the field, so Jansen was called back into action. He was worth over $14 according to Zach Sanders, a value that was held down by just 28 saves.

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