Initially, I was not going to include the Padres in this series about bullpens on non-contending teams. I realize that sounds ludicrous, because I don’t actually expect the Padres to hold their own against the Dodgers and Rockies. My focus on selecting teams, however, has been more about effort to contend than about the current makeup of a given roster. Still, even with their pursuit of players like Corey Kluber and Miguel Andujar and all of their emerging young talent, the team could very well be sellers at the trading deadline.

That means incumbent closer Kirby Yates could find himself pitching the latter part of the season someplace where he will have fewer opportunities for saves and fish tacos. There is a case to be made that Yates would be worth keeping around for the 2020 season when the Padres could be in a much better position to contend. However, if they wanted to trade Yates in order to fill another need or get reinforcements for the farm system, they have enough depth to provide a replacement closer and still have quality relievers for other roles.
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It’s time to start discussing pitcher rankings and fantasy managers need to know it’s a new landscape for two reasons. First, the idea of every team having one or two 200-inning starters is *over*. The top arms are putting up similar stats to the past. The change now is with the floor. It has just fallen. Starters are just not going as long and the Wins and Strikeouts they accumulate are gone. Second, many bullpens are now going to more of a committee approach where there aren’t 30 set closers but more like 20. The lack of Saves in a concentrated few closers boost their value and the overall value of every Save.

It’s time to get to the rankings. I used the 15-team Standings Gain Points (SGP) Formula from The Process to create these rankings. I used FanGraphs Depth Chart projections (stats in the table) along with three other sources (not to be named). I ranked them by the average SGP value and also included the standard deviation in all the values.

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The Royals’ closer situation is distinctly different from those of the teams already previewed in this series on bullpens for likely non-contenders. The Marlins and Diamondbacks will almost certainly be auditioning relievers for various roles — including closer — in spring training. Will Smith figures to be the Giants’ opening day closer if he sticks around, but it seem likely he will get dealt. The same goes for the Orioles and Mychal Givens, and if they don’t trade their incumbent closer this spring, it could easily happen at some point during the season.

Wily Peralta would appear to be the Royals’ equivalent of Givens. He took over as the team’s closer shortly after Kelvin Herrera was traded to the Nationals in last June, and he converted all 14 of his save chances. But whereas Givens’ most likely path to losing his job is getting traded to a team that uses him in a different role, Peralta could get ousted as closer without leaving Kansas City. While he throws hard and, at least in 2018, got a lot of weak ground ball contact, there is little else in Peralta’s skill set that suggests he can be a consistently effective closer.
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Whether you’re measuring by WAR, SIERA or saves plus holds, Will Smith and Tony Watson were the Giants’ most valuable relievers in 2018. (If we include non-qualifiers, Pablo Sandoval had the lowest SIERA, but I’m not going to dwell on this.) When you think about non-contending teams who don’t need the luxury of going into the season multiple top-flight relievers, the Giants should come to mind first. So it should hardly be surprising that Smith and Watson’s names have been popping up in trade rumors.

Several teams have contacted the Giants about both relievers, and with bigger names like Zach Britton, Andrew Miller and David Robertson recently coming off the board, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi recognizes that the duo could be a good fit for small market teams still looking for relief help. Even if the Giants dealt both Smith and Watson, they would have a plethora of lefties still in place to fill that need in their bullpen.
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Unlike the first two subjects of this series, the Marlins and Orioles, the Diamondbacks were contenders in 2018, at least until they went 8-19 in September. Now with Paul Goldschmidt and Patrick Corbin gone — and with A.J. Pollock presumably signing with another team — it’s hard to see them keeping pace with the Dodgers and Rockies.

That means the Diamondbacks could look to deal relievers at some point in 2019, making them one of those annoying teams with persistently fluid bullpen situations. Torey Lovullo has indicated that he is inclined to give Archie Bradley the first shot at being the team’s closer, though he also hinted that he may be quicker to make a change in roles if his closer struggles. Bradley had a difficult second half of 2018, compiling a 6.58 ERA and 1.54 WHIP, so even if the Diamondbacks are surprise contenders, there is no reason to think that he would be immune to losing the closer’s job if he actually won it coming out of spring training.
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Plenty of teams are likely to enter 2019 with question marks at the back end of their bullpen, but the Orioles don’t figure to be one of them. Mychal Givens waited his turn to be their closer for three years, and after inheriting the role late in 2018, he did nothing to give new manager Brandon Hyde a reason to demote him.

This is not to say that determining Givens’ value in preparation for draft day will be easy. He compiled a 2.25 ERA and an 0.63 WHIP after becoming the Orioles’ full-time closer, and he could be a valuable fantasy closer if he maintained that role for an entire season. With the Orioles poised to fall out of the AL East race quickly, he would be one of the team’s most sought-after trade targets prior to the trade deadline. Givens would be a great compliment to an incumbent closer on a contending team.
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With New Year’s Day rapidly approaching and Pitchers-and-Catchers-Report Day less than eight weeks away, plenty of closer situations are still in flux. Potential contenders like the Cardinals, Phillies and Twins have reportedly been in the closer market and look like strong candidates to add to the back ends of their bullpens. Rebuilding teams are less likely to do so. If anything, they could be sellers in the coming weeks.

So while teams that are long shots to contend in 2019 may not have their bullpens completely set just yet, they are more likely to ultimately settle their closer situations by turning to in-house options. It is premature to speculate on the value of someone like Jordan Hicks, who could inherit the Cardinals’ closer role, but could also find himself setting up for a free agent signee like Zach Britton. It is not too early, though, to start scoping out the fantasy value of potential closers for non-contenders.
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I heard in passing from a credible source:

“The effectiveness of a pitcher’s slider relies on it having the same spin as his fastball.”

I figured it would be an easy test and could help to immediately identify top-rated sliders. After looking at the data every conceivable way and came up with the following conclusion: publicly available spin information has near ZERO correlation to a slider’s effectiveness. But while rooting around, I did find two factors which do matter, fastball velocity and the difference in slider and fastball velocity.

The theory behind the quote is that a hitter has a tougher time differentiating a fastball and slider if they are spinning at the same rate. So, the closer the difference, a higher chance for a swing-and-miss.

I compared 2018 pitchers with at least 200 sliders and 200 four-seamers thrown. Then, I compared just the difference, the absolute value of the difference, square of difference. Nothing tangible. Nothing matched.

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It may seem that fastball velocity gets over utilized for explaining a pitcher performance, but I don’t think it gets used enough. As I get going full steam ahead in my off-season research, I find myself always looking to see how a pitcher’s velocity held up over the season. Instead of looking up each pitcher individually, I decided to go ahead and collect 2018 fastball velocity reading for an easy reference.

For the data, I found the pitcher’s velocity for the whole season, April to June, July to October, and just September/October. The entire data dataset can be found here.

I went through the data and found some intriguing pitchers who gained and lost a few ticks. I divided up the analysis between first versus second half and first half and September. Many of the same pitchers would have made both lists. Here is the first to second half values.

Stephen Strasburg is the most concerning name on the list with his fastball down ~2 mph. The drop occurred after he went on the DL with shoulder inflammation.

His results also took a hit with his ERA going from 3.46 to 4.20 and his K%-BB% dropping from 23% to 19%.

Strasburg is getting in the danger zone where his fastball will start losing its effectiveness if he loses any more velocity. Here are its swinging-strike rates since he joined the league at different velocities.

The fastball starts to lose its effectiveness as it dips near 93 mph.

With the velocity drop, Strasburg will still be a good pitcher because his changeup is elite and curve and slider are decent. His issue is that he’s already been cutting his fastball usage from 73% when he entered the league to 52% last season. I think the chances of him having that elite season has passed.

One major consideration will be if he can get his walks under control. In the first half, they were at 2.1 BB/9 but jumped to 3.5 BB/9 in the second half. Spring training reports are going to matter quite a bit on how he gets valued.

Corey Kluber is the name which jumps off. For pitcher going in the second round of mock drafts, an ~1.5 mph drop in his fastball throws a major red flag.

He got hit around more in the second half with his BABIP jumping from .248 to .321 while list strikeout and walk rates remained constant (22.5 K%-BB% to 22.1 K%-BB%). Kluber found a way to be effective even with the velocity loss.

My gut says something is off but I can’t find it. His steamer projection has his ERA next season back in the 3.50 range (same as 2015). so it even sees that something is not right. I’ll read some more previews as the season nears and see if I can gain a better understanding of him.

A computer program and I are back for some more abuse. After lining up the Steamer hitter projections with the Standings Gain Points (SGP) for The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational, the pitchers now take center stage. And boy can I see some conflicts to fill the comments.

The SGP formula is from the average of the 13, 15-team Roto leagues and will soon be available in The Process (looks like Monday at the latest).

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