Introducing Hot Seat: Closers on the Way Out

In-season Saves hunting is a long standing fantasy baseball tradition. It can lead to the promised land (Felipe Rivero) or to hours of frustration (the Nationals). To help with finding volatile closer situations, I created a metric to help find relievers on the ‘Hot Seat’. While it is far from perfect, it does show some promise in finding struggling relievers.

First off, this Hot Seat metric is not close to being a replacement for our Bullpen Report. It doesn’t take into account different levels of team fickleness, injuries, velocity drops, setup options, and many other contextual contributions. It just looks back at pitcher performance. It might not even show any relievers who are really struggling but it may give a desperate owner a list of closers who may be on the outs after a couple more Blown Saves.

The basic calculation behind the Hot Seat is to take bad and good events and weigh the most recent events more. For the possible bad events, I have considered including:

• Hits
• Runs
• Home Runs
• Walks
• Losses
• Blown Saves

And for the good events (Holds are currently not an option but looking to find a way to add them):

• Saves

For the current Hot Seat values, the inputs are only Home Runs, Walks, Blown Saves, Losses, and Saves. I’ve tried several combinations and these factors seem to be the best ones.

I’m having the hardest time figuring out how to weigh the most recent events. I am basing the weighting from the current date. A pitcher may have a handful of bad appearances but if they haven’t thrown for a while, the impact of those subpar appearances will lessen. I’m not sure how to handle this dilemma.

I’m not going to give out the exact equation yet as it is still in tinkering mode. I’ve set the Hot Seat value for a closer on the outs at 100 or more. For reference, here are the current standings.

Justin Wilson easily takes the top spot after a horrible week with a loss last night, and a loss on the 13th and no Saves this month. And Kenley takes the last spot because he’s a stud.

Besides the current closers, I went back and look at the Hot Seat value when Edwin Diaz, Tony Watson, and Francisco Rodriguez lost their closing roles. Here’s a link to today’s full list and on the days when those three lost their jobs. I had to add more than just the closers because our database doesn’t keep track of previous roles, just the current ones. For the depth value, a value of ‘1’ is the closer, ‘2’ is the first setup man, and so on.

The Hot Seat values were at the time they lost their role:

• Francisco Rodriguez: 108
• Tony Watson: 142
• Edwin Diaz: 117

Now, not every pitcher with a Hot Seat value over 100 gets replaced but it does provide direction to target your resources.

That’s it for now. Is there anything that seems wrong or off? I’ve adjusted the values several times while writing this article so the metric is fluid for now. I would like to tighten it up quickly. Also, let me know of any date you would like to see a pitcher list on to see if the metric picked up a struggling closer.