This is our last position in the ADP previews, though I’m breaking it up into two parts (top 20 here and then the rest). Relief is especially interesting on the fantasy landscape because fantasy managers have such varied approaches. Some swear by locking up a superstar in the early rounds.

Hell, some swear by double-tapping studs if they have a pick on one of the ends, especially in a format like the NFBC that bars trading. Others gladly draft the crusty, unspectacular guys who just rack up saves regardless of their skills and ratios. Then there’s the group that refuses to expend many resources on closers and focus either bottom of the barrel, closers-in-waiting, or in most cases both.

I lean toward the high end. I have no issues spending an early pick on a superstar closer because of how much they can help in strikeouts and even the ratios. Nabbing someone who can pop a triple-digit strikeout total allows you some leeway on your starters, too. Like I said earlier, today we’ll focus on the first 20 closers (and some of their handcuffs) and then I’ll dive in on the low-end closers and hidden gems to cap off the series.

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Strange things happen in holds leagues. The extra pressure to roster relievers often leads to inefficiencies on offense. Meanwhile, the bar is set very high for pitching rates since many owners try to start three closers and three setup men. In my experience, chasing both reliever categories usually comes at the cost of mediocre offensive performance. Today, let’s discuss my latest scheme for having my cake and eating it too (ooh, more cake!)

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When you watch football, it’s very clear by body type, what position a player likely plays. Are you 6’5 and 320lbs? That’s more than likely a lineman. 5’9 and 210 lbs? Chances are, you’re a running back. Baseball is a lot different – Marcus Stroman (5’8, 180lbs) and Chris Young (6’10, 255lbs) play the exact same position. Chris Sale (6’6, 180lbs) and Bartolo Colon (5’11, 285 lbs (sure… I believe you)) also play the same position. There aren’t too many times on the gridiron where a 100lb weight difference will line up against each other!

The point I’m trying to make, is with such huge variances in body shapes and sizes, there are many different ways to skin a cat. Marco Estrada (of 89 mph fastball fame) was massively more successful than Joe Kelly (punching a fastball in the high 90s, and over 100 mph). Pitchers of all shapes and sizes (of body and fastball) find ways to succeed. The question is – when you don’t have the clearly obvious advantage of that big fastball, how do you get major league hitters out?

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Over the course of the last few weeks of the regular season last year, I had explored different ethical and strategic questions posed to me via email and social media. It was a fun series to write and while some definitely did not like me or my advice, others loved it. So, I am hoping to make this a reoccurring series that will pop up periodically throughout 2017. Feel free to send me more questions at JustinMasonFantasy@gmail.com or on twitter @JustinMasonFWFB and when I have enough, I will do another installment. Thanks for playing along! Read the rest of this entry »

The Twins bullpen was screwed basically from the get-go in 2016. What was lined up to be a decent back-end trio of Glen Perkins, Kevin Jepsen and Trevor May wound up completely crumbling. Perkins shredded his shoulder and needed surgery, Jepsen completely fell apart and May had issues staying healthy all season.

That opened a spot for Brandon Kintzler, who filled in solidly as a groundball wizard, picking up 17 saves from mid-June on by boring 93 mph fastballs into the swings of hitters, as he induced a 61.9 percent groundball rate to help offseason just a so-so whiff rate (5.8 K/9). Basically, Kintzler did all that could be asked and then some from a guy who was had on a minor-league deal, including also not walking anyone as he still worked on a fairly thin margin late in games.

Kintzler is back in the fold for his final year of team control in 2017, but he wasn’t exactly invincible. He allowed opposing batters to hit .276/.308/.397, which is about as unsightly a line as one can put up as a groundballer who managed a solid ERA and fairly good peripheral statistics. The 32-year-old righty might start the season as the closer, but it’s fairly clear he’s not the best option, and could be better suited putting out fires earlier in the game, like inducing double plays in the sixth inning when a starter gets into hot water, and the like. Read the rest of this entry »

There are plenty of ways to characterize David Phelps‘ success in 2016. Among pitchers who threw at least 80 innings, he posted the 5th-best ERA (2.28), 6th-best xFIP (3.15) and 7th-best FIP (2.80). That’s a big deal, although it’s a decidedly smaller deal considering the bulk of Phelps’ innings came from the bullpen.

The reason for Phelps’ success — the cause to the effect, that is — is fairly obvious:

Phelps added more than 3 mph to his four-seamer and sinker as well as a tick or two to each of his off-speed pitches.* In an August edition of his NERD game scores, Carson Cistulli quipped, “As with most other pitchers, Phelps at 94-95 [mph] is markedly different than Phelps at 91.” Indeed, Cistulli. Phelps looked like a changed man.

It’s easy to attribute his sudden late-career success to his almost-full-time move to the bullpen. It’s how the narrative typically plays out: a pitcher’s velocity plays up better in short spurts. It’s why we expect failed starters can become elite relievers. It’s a cognitive bias, but it’s a bias we have because it tends to be true. This shorthanded logic, however, undersells Phelps’ gains both under the hood and on the mound.

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Britton ranked third on Rotographs’ End-of-Season rankings among closers.

I can’t help myself; I’m like most other saber-inclined baseball people — I love strikeouts. I mean, I love a lot of things about pitching. I love that guys can seemingly come out of nowhere and be studs, like Corey Kluber, Dallas Keuchel or countless others.

As a person who has spent most of their life watching the Minnesota Twins, I can also appreciate guys who don’t walk anyone. Year after year while I watched the club as a fan in my teens, the Twins led or were near the top of the league in fewest walks allowed. Not walking batters isn’t always necessary, but if you’re going to have guys with a paucity of strikeouts — like non-Johan Santana starters in those days — keeping the bases clean is key.

I also really like grounders. The holy trinity of pitching for me — and probably for everyone else — is strikeout and walk rates married with groundball rates. It’s very, very rare to find a pitcher who is solid across all three aspects who isn’t a wonderful pitcher. Each of these things in isolation can lead to a tremendous pitcher, provided he checks off other necessary boxes further down the list.

But when you find someone who checks off all three boxes — oh boy. Read the rest of this entry »

Entering 2016, Liam Hendriks was one of my favorite relief sleepers. In fact, I fantasized in my Bold Predictions piece that he’d enter 2017 as an elite closer. And while the results are laughable in hindsight, you can understand why I was bullish on him.

Coming off an outstanding 2015 in Toronto, Hendriks entered a remade Oakland bullpen headlined by a formerly dominant but unequivocally injury prone Sean Doolittle. His other competition included renowned ball four-enthusiast, John Axford, rookie Ryan Dull, and a resurgent but Medicare-eligible Ryan Madson. All possessed as many risks as virtues and it seemed, given the lingering questions surrounding them, that Liam Hendriks’ big fastball, elite command, and strong ground ball rate should have put him towards the top of the queue once the inevitable arm injury befell Doolittle. So what happened?

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Last week I posted the year to year correlations for xStats and their standard variants, and it came up with a few interesting results.  The xStats variants were much more consistent year to year, for better or worse, and in general they were better at predicting future performance. Not by much in some cases, but hey, every bit helps, right?  It made me curious how it may translate to groups of players with smaller sample sizes, so this week I’ve taken these stats to relief pitchers, with those year on year correlations in mind.  Yes, it is frustrating that we only have two seasons to look at, but this is the best we have at the moment so let’s see where it gets us.

As you might remember, vertical launch angle was very consistent (.75) between 2015 and 2016 for all pitchers, and as it turns out this holds true for every innings limit you can imagine.  Whether you want to talk about guys with 30 innings, 200 innings, or anything in between.  Vertical angle appears to stabilize fairly quickly.  So, that begs the question, how does vertical launch angle change batter performance?  Hopefully this chart will answer your questions.

Between roughly 10 degrees and about 35 degrees batted balls have high value, with batting average peaking around 13 degrees, slugging around 25 degrees, and home runs around 27 degrees.  So, if we know vertical launch angle is stable between seasons, and batted balls between 10 and 35 degrees are bad (for the pitcher), then perhaps aiming for pitchers who have average launch angles outside of that zone would be ideal. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though relief pitching dominated the narrative of both the 2015 and 2016 postseasons, and even though Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen made his contract look looked relatively tame inside of two weeks, I still couldn’t believe that Mark Melancon got a four-year, $62 million contract. Prior to that deal, the two biggest reliever contracts were four years and $50 million for Jonathan Papelbon and five years for $47 million for B.J. Ryan, two contracts their respective teams no doubt came to regret.

Melancon himself has been healthy and productive in his four seasons with the Pirates. He has thrown at least 71 innings every season with ERAs between 1.39 and 2.23 each year. However, he has achieved that success because of beneficial contextual factors and excellent command—he has walked between 1.0 and 1.6 batters per season in those four seasons—with good but not exceptional strikeout ability. He struck out 8.2 batters per nine in 2016 and has done the same for his career. That is only the 60th best rate among the 85 relievers who threw 60 or more innings last season, and Melancon’s 91.8 mph fastball does not hint at any untapped strikeout potential. Chapman and Jansen each struck out more than 13 batters per nine in 2016.

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