Help Needed: 2015 & 2016 Closer Roles

While Saves matter little in real baseball, they’re a still a common category in Roto leagues. Owners have taken several draft day approaches to acquiring Saves. Some owners get at least two elite guys. Others scrape the bottom of the barrel. A few ignore them completely on draft day and get Saves off the waiver wire. Or the owners just ignore the category. The reason to ignore Saves on draft day is the highly perceived closer turnover rate. But what is the rate? That is what I want to answer over the next couple weeks as I collect and verify information on previous preseason closer expectations and how the expectations worked out.

The main roadblock from getting the analysis done is good information. At my advanced age, my memory isn’t great, so I will ask for some help from our readers. I have gone through the player updates from RotoWire (available on each of FanGraphs player pages) to see how long each preseason closer last in the role. Can you please check my work to see if I am right, especially where I have question marks?

Once the data has been verified correct, I will go back and crunch the numbers for some historical numbers.

Today, I will need your help in verifying the preseason closer roles from 2015 and 2016. First, here are the terms I used and their meanings.

• One guy – The team announced the closer at the start of spring training.
• Another guy – Someone besides the initially announced closer got the job.
• Competition – The team didn’t announce a set closer and had several players vying for the job.
• Replacement coming – The team’s expected closer was hurt or suspended but was expected to take the job over later.
• Replaced returned – Expected closer returned to the role after being out.
• EOS – End of season
• Traded away – The team traded away the closer
• Traded for – The team trade for a new closer
• Poor performance – The pitcher performed so bad they lost their role.
• Injury – Lost role because of injury

And the data.

Again, please let me know in the comments how any of the information the following trades is wrong. Hopefully, in a few days, I will be able to knock out the preliminary 2013 and 2014 data and early next week I can start rolling out some conclusions.

Thanks to Jared Cross for the historic Steamer projections