Archive for Closers

It’s been a pretty tough few months for Ryan Madson. First the 31-year-old right-hander reportedly had a four-year, $44 million offer pulled off the table by his former team before they went all in on Jonathan Papelbon. After weeks of sitting on the offseason sidelines, he took a one-year, $8.5 million pillow contract from the Reds with an eye on a big multi-year payday next offseason. That won’t happen now. A nagging elbow injury this spring turned out to be a torn elbow ligament, and now the former Phillie will miss the season with Tommy John surgery.

An injury of this caliber has some far-reaching fantasy implications beyond the obvious — Madson being non-rosterable — so let’s break it down…

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With it officially announced that Joakim Soria will receive Tommy John surgery, we are now focused on who ends up with more saves, Jonathan Broxton or Greg Holland. To me, Holland seems like the better bet to both get and hold onto the job for the length of the season.

For starters, Ned Yost has seen firsthand what Holland can do. He saw him net 24 shutdowns and meltdown just once, even though I doubt he uses those two statistics, he saw Holland’s dominance throughout last season. While Broxton does have the “closer experience,” he also pitched just 12.2 innings last year and recorded a 4.04 ERA the season before. His FIP of 3.01 that season was impressive, but I imagine Yost still values ERA more than any defensive independent pitching stat.

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Grant Balfour, the man with the awful baseball name and two consecutive sub 2.50 ERAs has been named the new closer in Oakland. Balfour has had stellar performances in three of the past four years and is finally being rewarded with a ninth inning gig. Oakland made the wise call here baseball wise, as Balfour is the better pitcher than Brian Fuentes and now Fuentes can become more of a situational pitcher, which will in turn make him a more valuable member of their bullpen.

Balfour did run into some good fortune last season, stranding 89% of his runners and recording a BABIP of .232, but he also had the highest HR/FB rate of his career, minimum 30 innings pitched, at 11.0%. Balfour is no guarantee for another sub 2.50 ERA, but I could certainly envision him around the 2.80-3.00 mark that he has averaged over the past four seasons.

As a strict two pitch pitcher who generates above average whiff rates with both pitches, Balfour certainly has the stuff to finish with more than a strikeout per inning pitched. Also helping in Balfour’s resurgence over the past few seasons is his walk rate, which has sat at 7.7% and 8.3% over the past two years compared to his career average of 10.9%. His lower walk rate has come with fewer strikeouts but an improved K/BB ratio, which have been his second and third highest of his career over the past two seasons.

Projection systems have his ERA in a wide range, with Bill James expecting a 2.40 and ZiPS expecting a 3.60 mark. I am a bit more bullish on Balfour than ZiPS is, but take that for what it is worth. Looking at shutdowns and meltdowns, last season Balfour finished with 32 and 6 respectively. That was good for a rate of 5.33 shutdowns per meltdown, which ranked him tenth among qualifying relievers. His consistent performances should allow him to hold down the closer spot for the entirety of the season, barring any odd setbacks or injuries.

So, with Balfour now officially being named closer, where does he rank among the herd? In the consensus reliever rankings, our team had Andrew Bailey, Brandon League, Joe Nathan, and Kyle Farnsworth ranked 16-19 when excluding projected starting pitchers. I would slot Balfour right in between League and Nathan, as League’s performance last year and lower FIP over the past two seasons gives him the slight edge over Balfour in my eyes.
Despite the middle tier ranking, Balfour is a solid closer to add to a roto roster.

If you were wise enough to speculate on Balfour eventually winning the job, then you likely got him at a very nice discount on draft day. If you are drafting in the near future, target Balfour as he is likely still a bit undervalued due to his inexperience as a closer. I do not place much value in a pitcher having closer experience, but in many cases your league mates will. Take advantage of the players in your league by looking at Balfour’s solid numbers over the past few seasons and expect quite a good year in his first attempt as a full time closer.

Over the last few days, Howard Bender, Chad Young, and Ben Duronio have been writing about three players they will each avoid this season (parts one, two, three, and four), and now I’m going to join in on the fun.

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Yesterday afternoon, Royals closer Joakim Soria left the game with a sore right elbow. But this doesn’t sound like any sore elbow as a result of just shaking off some spring training rust and he’ll be fine in a couple of days. This appears more ominous. His performance this spring certainly backs up the fact that he has been pitching injured, as he has now allowed 7 runs and 10 hits in just 3 1/3 innings. Of course, it’s a tiny sample size and typically should be ignored. But when elbow soreness is involved, we have to take that performance more seriously.

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Yesterday, I made some bold predictions for the league leaders in the five fantasy hitting categories. Today, I check in on the pitching side of the ledger with some equally crazy forecasts.

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As someone who drafted and trusted Matt Thornton last year with one of my closer spots, I made sure to pick up his handcuff after that awful first week for the White Sox’s left-handed reliever. I was extremely happy with what Santos provided the rest of the way through, specifically during the first part of his closer tenure in Chicago. Over his first 20 innings, he recorded six saves and allowed no runs.

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Eno Sarris published the staff’s reliever rankings earlier today, and now it’s my turn to dissect them. I have written a ton of articles on relievers since coming over to RotoGraphs in late January, so if you want to look at my specific feelings on certain relievers, you can just click my name over on the right hand side of the screen and see my in depth thoughts.

– The first thing I noticed on these rankings is how close John Axford and Joel Hanrahan are. I have commented on this a few times this year and see Hanrahan as an undervalued reliever, with the only slight against him being the possibility for a future trade.

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Consensus Ranks: OF, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, and RP and SP.

Tiered Ranks: C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, NL OF, AL SP, NL SP, Holds.

The main hullabaloo will probably be about the relievers-turned-starters. There’s a bit of a damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don’t thing going on. If you don’t rank the reliever/starters because they won’t be traditional relievers getting saves, then those pitchers will fall out of the player ranking universe for the most part. Most of them don’t have ‘starter’ eligibility. Add to that the difficulty of projecting a dominant reliever into a new role, and, well, you get a difficult situation. So that’s what happened with Matt Moore, Chris Sale, Daniel Bard, Neftali Feliz and Cory Luebke.

As for the traditional relievers, there’s a lot of agreement. Well, Zimmerman thinks the magic will run out for Mariano Rivera this year, Podhorzer hates Heath Bell, half of us thought J.J. Putz would stay healthy and half of us thought he’d crap out again, Zimmerman put Kenley Jansen right into the closer’s role while the rest of us were more cautious, and Carlos Marmol inspired some differing opinions.

The relievers!

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The Cardinal’s new manager, Mike Matheny, officially named Jason Motte closer a few weeks ago, but pretty much everyone expected him to land the gig even before the announcement. Motte finished last season in the role and had a solid postseason as the ninth inning man under Tony La Russa, with an 8-1 strikeout-to-walk rate and a 2.19 ERA in 12.1 October innings.

More than just being a useful closer, Motte has developed into a top notch pitcher. He has seen his K/BB rate increase in each of the past three seasons, from 2.35 to 3.00 to 3.94. It appears that he is getting more comfortable on the mound each year removed from his transition from catcher to pitcher, which is a logical reason for his continued improvement. He also ditched the curveball that he threw 11% of the time in 2009, which was a rather ineffective pitch.
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