Opening Day is here and the closer carousel is in full swing.

• Colin touched up on the Craig Kimbrel trade fall out last night and as expected Jason Grilli was tabbed as Kimbrel’s replacement. Grilli threw a perfect inning today with two strikeouts for his first save of the year. Grilli’s fastball topped out at 97 mph today and he was consistently hitting 95 mph which is actually better than in his heyday as the Pirates closer. The options behind Grilli aren’t too appealing so if Grilli pitches reasonably well he should have no problem holding on to the job. Strangely enough, in some sense the better Grilli pitches the worse his job security would be as he would become an intriguing trade commodity for competing teams considering the Braves have clearly played their hand on not competing this season. Either way, I would advise you to run to the waivers to put a claim on Grilli and don’t be afraid to spend a lot of your FAAB budget on him as well.

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It’s still March and the season has yet to start but that doesn’t mean the closer carousel isn’t in full swing. From here on out, as teams whittle down their major league rosters and we get more information on bullpen usage, we will be updating the BR regularly.

• Red Sox closer Koji Uehara has been on the shelf with a hamstring injury lately and it acted up again in a bullpen session Monday. While Uehara’s injury isn’t major, he’s still 39 years old without a clean medical bill. Uehara won’t be out for too long but it’s important to note Uehara said “I don’t know when I’ll be back […] It’s a day-to-day process. I have to do what I have to do to get ready.”  In Uehara’s place, expect Edward Mujica to take over the ninth with a little Junichi Tazawa thrown in. Mujica should now be owned in all leagues, even shallow ones. He can’t be relied upon for particularly strong ratio help or strikeouts, but saves are saves and Mujica will be tallying them in the first month of the season.

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It’s my favorite time of the year here at RotoGraphs, the season of bold predictions. (My least favorite time, naturally, is late September, when I have to atone for these forecasts.) As usual, the trick here is to balance imagination against reality, the impossible versus the attainable, the speculative against the demonstrable. It’s a tough task that, for me, often results in happy predictions, but then again, it’s March — ’tis the season to indulge in some fantasy baseball fantasies, right?
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This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will continue to break them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

The Blue Jays bullpen was already in a state of murkiness before the injury to Marcus Stroman cost them Aaron Sanchez earlier this month, and the team’s closer to start the season has all of six career saves to his name. Overall, Toronto’s relief corps posted the fifth-highest FIP last year, though its unheralded leader could have some sleeper potential as a late-round bargain pickup.
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In our ceaseless pursuit of Fantasy bargains, we now consider the Cincinnati Reds—or, as one of us will go to his grave calling them, the Cincinnati Redlegs. (This was actually the team’s name from 1954 through 1959, presumably in order to avoid confusion with the crosstown Cincinnati Communists of the Internationale League.)

But we divagate. The Reds in 2014 lost 38 one-run games, the most in a single season by any team in this century. Their record in such games was 22-38, which is likewise abysmal. You’d figure that such a team would have a weak bullpen, and the Reds sure did. They had the fourth worst bullpen ERA in the majors, and no other team was even close to the bullpen’s 11-31 won-lost record. You might also expect that such a team would have a weak closer, but the Reds didn’t. In fact, as you no doubt know, Aroldis Chapman is perhaps the best closer in baseball, and finished second last season in percentage of saves converted. Moreover, Jonathan Broxton, his replacement for the first month or so of the season, converted five out of his six save opportunities.

No, it was the rest of the bullpen—including Broxton, once he became the set-up guy after Chapman returned—that sank the Reds. Chapman, you see, was used almost exclusively (1) in the 9th inning with (2) either the score tied or the Reds holding a narrow lead. If the Reds, courtesy of the bullpen, couldn’t get to the 9th, Chapman wasn’t a factor. Likewise Broxton, in his capacity as closer. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of Quick Look changes for Spring Training. I am going to be doing more players, but with less information. Some pitchers I watch will only throw an inning or two. Also, some broadcasts don’t have radar readings. Finally, the camera angles are horrible to be kind.

Another change I will be implementing is grading the players on the scouting scales of 20-80. I will Kiley McDaniels scale he discussed in this article.

I will give a value for where I think the pitcher could currently fit in on the average team (CV=current value) and where they could end up (FV=future). I am sure I will disagree with some grades from others, but I am only looking at one game.

Note: If I say a pitch moves 11-5, it is from the pitcher’s perspective.

3/8/15 Padres vs Rockies (no velocities)

Tyson Ross (60+ CV/65 FV)

• He was the reason I picked this game. He has talked of the expanded the role of his change-up.
• He throws very over the top.
• His fastball was had some downward motion.
• His slider had a sharp 12-6 down breaking action.
• Now to the change. It looked to be same speed (I checked previous speeds and it was the same) and broke the direction as his slider. The break was less and not as sharp. It was basically his slider, but worse. I can see why he hasn’t used it.
• I wonder if he could add a cutter to give himself a third pitch.

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Using elite, non-closing relievers was probably the first fantasy specialty I developed. In the good ol’ days, an astute owner could gain a substantial advantage by using Sergio Romo and Mike Adams. The emergence of a thousand elite relievers has put the strategy on the map. Everybody is doing it, and the sheer quantity of substitutes strips away the advantages.

If we want to stay ahead of the competition, we have to take it another step. One of my favorite fantasy tactics is to use relievers in a SP slot. Relievers post better ratios than starters, and their wins per inning are usually comparable to waiver wire starters.

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

With Yu Darvish likely to miss the entire season, the Rangers are staring into the face of another lost season. In some ways, it’s liberating to know you won’t contend. Texas won’t have to worry about the shaky quality of the bullpen. They can give their pitchers an opportunity to prove themselves without focusing solely on runs allowed.

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

In recent seasons, the Angels have been plagued by weakness in the bullpen. Failed experiments with Jordan Walden, Scott Downs, and Ernesto Frieri paved the way for their acquisition of Huston Street last season. The bullpen looks to be a strength in 2015 – or at least it probably won’t be a weakness. In addition to solid veteran depth, there are a few high profile youngsters to track.

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Two weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of evaluating expected strikeout rate (xK%) in the context of each pitcher’s respective histories. In other words, xK% on its own can only tell you so much about a pitcher’s chance and magnitude of regression toward the mean.

And last week, I refined the expected walk rate (xBB%) metric for pitchers by adding a proxy for pitch sequencing in the form of percentage of counts that reach 3-0 (“3-0%”). This helped better explain the model’s fit with respect to the data, as pitchers who worked into more 3-0 counts tended to walk more batters. (Who knew?)

The logical next step is to combine the two aforementioned analyses: 1) comparing xBB% to BB% 2) for each pitcher over time. I’ll reiterate a couple of key points. Calculating a pitcher’s xBB% can give us a decent idea of how lucky or unlucky he may have been during a given season. Calculating his xBB% and comparing it to his actual BB% on an annual basis can give us a better idea of truly how he typically performs against his xBB% — that is, if he consistently outperforms his xBB%, perhaps the difference between his xBB% and BB% is not a matter of luck at all but a skill or characteristic not captured by the variables specified in the xBB% equation.
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