Last night, Sergio Romo’s slider wasn’t biting just right. Maybe the release point wasn’t quite right, but whatever happened, he didn’t get a whiff on any of his ten pitches. Since he’s shown a 15+% swinging strike rate over the last couple of years, that’s at least one short of a regular appearance.

But that doesn’t mean that his arsenal didn’t predict the end of the game. In fact, his arsenal, along with those of the two other heads in the Giants’ three-headed closer monster, should help us figure out what to do with the Giants bullpen in fantasy baseball.

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•  Rafael Soriano pitched a scoreless inning in last night’s game against the Red Sox for his 31st save of the year. Soriano’s xFIP is a solid but unspectacular 3.63 due to his minuscule HR/FB ratio (2.0%),  but his 2.36 FIP illustrates that he’s still been having a solid season thus far and should continue to rack up saves pitching for the Yankees even though his ERA will creep up from its current 1.64.

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• Steve Cishek polished off save number nine on Saturday, but not before Marlins fans had to reach for the antacid. Cishek gave up three singles to turn a three-run game into one where Jordan Pacheco came to the plate as the winning run. Luckily (for Miami) Pacheco grounded out, preserving a 6-5 win. Cishek had previously been untouchable since being installed as the new Marlins closer (0.77 ERA, 13/3 K/BB in 11.2 innings since mid-July), so owners shouldn’t panic yet. Yes, Cishek does have unfavorable platoon splits and, yes, the Marlins would surely like their $27 million man (Heath Bell) to do what he’s being paid $9 million a year to do (close games) but — for the time being — the closer job is not up for debate in Miami.

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Tyler Clippard appears to be back on the wagon. After a couple bumps in the road the last few weeks, he has now turned in four consecutive saves since his last “BS” in Houston on August 6th. Tonight’s outing was a bit shakier than you’d like, as Clippard walked a pair to let Ruben Tejada come to the plate as the go-ahead run with two down in the ninth, but a harmless fly ball to left gave the Nationals another victory. There has been a lot of discussion as to whether Drew Storen could come back in and snatch the ninth inning job back for himself, but the Nationals have to be somewhat concerned with a fastball velocity that still isn’t quite to where it has been in the past. Interestingly, even with the one-plus mile per hour drop, Storen’s SwStr% is up to 11.5% (career average: 9.3%) — unfortunately (for him) his 15.9% BB% is driving a 5.21 xFIP. Storen needs to throw more strikes before he’s a legitimate option to finish games again, so Clippard’s owners should be a bit more relaxed than they might have been a couple weeks ago.

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• Hiroki Kuroda threw a shutout tonight for the Yankees, so there was no save situation but that doesn’t mean the Yankees won’t find their way into every news item as Mariano Rivera continued his rehab, throwing his first long-toss session. The Yankees maintain that Mo won’t pitch in 2011, but for those in deep keeper leagues his progress is nice to see and expect the Sandman to be closing games for the Yankees in 2013.

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Let’s kick off the week with two Athletics, one current and one former…

Grant Balfour | RP | Athletics | Owned: 42% Yahoo!

With Ryan Cook having allowed six runs in his last four appearances and nine runs in his last nine appearances, A’s manager Bob Melvin gave the ninth inning reigns over Balfour against the White Sox this weekend. He closed out Saturday’s win without a problem, though Melvin has yet to make any sort of definitive statement about his closer for the short or long-term. When in doubt, I always lean towards the veteran in the short-term.

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• The merry-go-round in the Milwaukee bullpen continues. One night after Jim Henderson allowed Houston to walk off with a win, the Brew Crew came upon a save opportunity and turned to someone other than Henderson, John Axford, and Francisco Rodriguez. Yup, Ron Roenicke turned to righty Kameron Loe to finish off the hapless Astros. Loe’s ninth wasn’t completely clean — he allowed a hit, committed his own error, and threw a wild pitch — but the end result was a scoreless performance. Loe has a pedestrian (for a reliever) 17.9% K%, but his stinginess with providing free passes (6.6% BB%) has helped guide him to an unspectacular, but solid, 3.54 xFIP in 2012. With Axford, Rodriguez, and (AAA) Henderson’s BB% all above 11%, Loe’s strike-throwing ways might be welcome relief at the back end of a messy bullpen. Loe is probably worth a pickup, especially for vultures, but the situation remains so murky and fluid that it’s a bullpen you’ll generally want to stay away from it if you can help it. It’s likely we haven’t seen the last shuffling of deck chairs on this sinking ship before the season ends.

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• It finally happened. Bob Melvin has (temporarily, at least) removed Ryan Cook from the closer role. Since July 19th, Cook has given up runs in six of his eight appearances leading to a bloated 10.13 ERA over that time frame. Cook’s 4.24 xFIP remains well above his 2.76 ERA and his BB% rate remains one of the worst among qualified relievers. Melvin has left the door open for Cook to regain his job in the ninth if he can make it through a couple clean innings first, but for the time being Grant Balfour (who wrapped up Saturday’s 9-7 win) will get save opportunities. Balfour’s 4.16 xFIP is nearly as uninspiring as Cook’s but he holds a 0.63 ERA since the beginning of June with a solid 15/4 K/BB in 14.1 innings. Sean Doolittle, while a lefty who has hit a bump or two in the road recently, has a 2.43 xFIP and a 5.6 K/BB and also may be a dark horse candidate for saves in the interim but probably would require continued slips by both Cook and Balfour.

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On Wednesday afternoon, the Brewers and Reds played a matinee in Milwaukee. Thanks to run-scoring eighth-inning hits by Carlos Gomez & Ryan Braun, the Brewers entered the bottom of the ninth with a narrow 3-2 lead. Yet when they trotted out to finish off their victory, it wasn’t behind regular closer John Axford, who’d finished ninth in the Cy Young Award voting in 2011, or even backup closer Francisco Rodriguez, still the record-holder for most saves in a season. It was 29-year-old Jim Henderson, a veteran of ten minor-league seasons (and former Expos draftee!) who’d been called up to make his major league debut less than two weeks earlier, on July 26.

Henderson retired three of the four hitters he saw with two strikeouts, his second save in as many games, and all of a sudden the struggling Milwaukee bullpen has an interesting new contender for saves, an idea almost unthinkable at the beginning of the season. Of course, no one would have expected a bullpen led by Axford & Rodriguez to be quite this bad, but the numbers don’t lie:

Milwaukee bullpen (stats entering Wednesday)
ERA: 4.90, worst in MLB
BB/9: 4.25, 29^th in MLB
AVG: .271, 29^th in MLB
WHIP: 1.55, worst in MLB
LOB%: 68.1, 29^th in MLB
LD%: 23.8, worst in MLB
HR/FB%: 13.1, 27^th in MLB
BS: 21, 29^th in MLB

Some of those statistics are admittedly imperfect and there are others that show the Brewer relief corps in a better light, but it’s hard to look at that list and not think this is one of the worst-performing groups in the game. It’s a team effort that’s not entirely on Axford (4.23 FIP/5.21 ERA) and Rodriguez (4.48 FIP/5.48 ERA), but they’re clearly the worst offenders among those with any real playing time. Rodriguez in particular has been brutal since July 1 (9.23 ERA), and each has been shuffled in and out of high-leverage roles this year as Ron Roenicke struggles to find some sort of success at the back end of his staff.

Now, when Henderson received his first save opportunity on Monday, it could be chalked up to a simple matter of availability, since Axford & Rodriguez had each thrown 24 or more pitches on Sunday. What made yesterday’s save chance so interesting is that Rodriguez was never used and that Axford came in with the Brewers down 2-1 in the eighth, not exactly the usage one would expect for a closer. Though Roenicke has declined to make anything official, the struggles of his two incumbents and the way in which he used Henderson on Wednesday may indicate a willingness to play the hot hand.

So who is Jim Henderson, anyway? Like Axford, he’s a Canadian finally making his debut in his late 20s after years toiling in the minors; also like Axford, he’s always had a powerful arm but struggled with both control and harnessing secondary pitches. In 48 Triple-A innings this year, he struck out 10.5 per 9 while also walking 4.1 per nine, though he’s managed to get off to a sparkling 10/1 K/BB start in the bigs, averaging over 95 miles per hour on his fastball.

As we say often, closers are made, not born, and simply getting the opportunity to be on the mound in the ninth can transform an uninspiring fantasy option into a valuable one, simply because of that one stat. It’s premature to expect that Henderson has suddenly leaped over Axford to become the primary Milwaukee closer, yet with Axford struggling and Rodriguez all but unusable right now, it’s easy to see Henderson becoming a cheap short-term source of saves if you’re in need. The Brewers have Thursday off before heading into Houston to start a series with the atrociously bad Astros, a set in which they’re all but guaranteed to have a lead heading into the late innings at least once. If and when that happens, it’ll be tremendously interesting to see who Roenicke sends out in the ninth.

With the real trade deadline passing and the likelihood of closers changing roles for any other reason than poor performance or injury at its season-long low point, looking ahead to the future for dynasty and keeper leagues is an overlooked focus point as the season ends. Some leagues still have not hit their trade deadline, so looking to acquire or hold onto certain players who are currently competing for roles next year has its advantages.

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