Punting Saves Hurts More Than It Helps
As we sit and wait for all the big-named free agents to find themselves new homes, it’s time to start thinking about strategy for next year. There are numerous of ways to go about drafting your team and you’re going to hear plenty of do’s and don’ts from a variety of people. So allow me to chime in here first and tell you why punting saves should not be in your plans when developing a proper draft strategy. Some people see no harm in it and tell you to just bulk up elsewhere. I disagree. It’s an automatic concession of points to your competition and immediately puts you at a disadvantage.
Year in and year out, the most often punted category in fantasy baseball is saves whether it’s a roto league or head to head. The common misconception that closers are merely one-category contributors steers some to believe that they can simply go with extra starting pitchers, bulk up on wins and strikeouts and therefore don’t need to spend the extra auction dollars or mid-round draft choice on a high-level closer. But to use that as your reasoning and pass over a Heath Bell or a Mariano Rivera is, in my opinion, a mistake.
The ratio-stabilizing factor that a solid closer gives your team is a distinct advantage. Of the top 20 save leaders from 2011, 14 had an ERA below 3.00 and only two had an ERA of 4.00 or more. So by making a quick investment in a top closer like Rivera, you’re getting 60-plus innings of a 1.91 ERA which is definitely more helpful to your team than the contribution of your eighth or ninth starter, say Homer Bailey and his 132 innings with a 4.43 ERA total. If your argument is that Mo is the best closer of all-time, well, it also works if you plug in the numbers of Drew Storen, John Axford and Joel Hanrahan.
As for the increase in strikeouts, you have to ask yourself if the trade-off is really worth it. Yes, starters throw more innings and have a greater chance to accumulate more strikeouts, but when you’re talking about a back-end-of-the-rotaation starter there are usually more negatives than positives that offset the difference in K’s overall. Sure, you’ll see 20-30 more K’s on the year going with Zach Britton, but is he going to guarantee you that point in K’s that you automatically concede by having no closers in your head to head league? Are his strikeout numbers going to offset the drop in points for ERA and WHIP that you will be forced to endure by using him over a closer in your roto league? Probably not, on both counts.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that so many back end starters barely outproduce top closers in strikeouts with another boatload coming up short. Sergio Santos had 92 K’s last year, a total better than that of Jeff Francis, Jair Jurrjens and Randy Wells. Of those top 20 closers from 2011, six had 70 or more K’s while a total of 12 had 60-plus. Jason Marquis, Nick Blackburn and Tyler Chatwood all threw in excess of 130 innings on the year, none of them topped 80 strikeouts, and all of them had ERA’s sitting above 4.40.
Wins? Come on. This is FanGraphs, right? Everyone knows just how arbitrary a category like wins can be. If you don’t, then debate it in the comments section for a while or just talk to the voters for the Cy Young who gave the award to both Tim Lincecum and Felix Hernandez in recent years.
The bottom line is that by drafting decent closers, you are bolstering your pitching staff on multiple levels. With the right guys, you can worry less about your ratios while watching your saves total completely offset the potential difference in strikeouts. And if you really want to jump ahead of the game, then obviously target good strikeout pitchers for your staff. Given the number of decent hurlers out there that can maintain decent ratios while punching out 120 or more batters, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
Howard Bender has been covering fantasy sports for over 10 years on a variety of websites. In addition to his work here, you can also find him at his site, RotobuzzGuy.com, Fantasy Alarm, RotoWire and Mock Draft Central. Follow him on Twitter at @rotobuzzguy or for more direct questions or comments, email him at rotobuzzguy@gmail.com
I agree with your overall point – it is silly to ignore closers (or any single stat) altogether but I think the 2nd to last paragraph is unfair. Sure wins are extremely hard to predict and in real baseball they do not tell you much about the value of a pitcher but they are just as important as any other category when it comes to fantasy. The average pitcher (both starter and reliever) averages 1 decision per 9 innings pitched (obviously.) Starters pitch more innings and therefore will end up with more wins, which has to be considered for fantasy.
As is almost always the case for fantasy discussion, it depends on the league format. A 4×4 league it is imperative to lean towards relievers (under given IP constraints). In a 5×5 league relievers are much more expendable.
I’ve been playing fantasy baseball for 4 years now. Small sample size, but the two years I used high draft picks to grab a couple of closers, my team did much better including winning the league championship once.
If you are in a standard H2H, 5X5 league, punting any one category immediately makes the numbers game work against you. If you automatically lose one category, then you have to win 6 of the other 9 in order to win the H2H and that isn’t easy to do on a consistent basis.
Well, punting saves (or any category) as an initial strategy is a bad idea. Absolutely.
There may very well come a point during the season where injury or disappointment means that your closers simply are not up to snuff and you are not competitive in the category. Then it might be true that the cost to improve the position outweighs the benefit. This is where one should more properly consider punting saves. Selling off your mediocre closers to improve other categories, and replacing them with good ratio setup men that no one else wants, when you have determined that you can’t score points in the Saves category anyway is a fine plan.
Curious if the author (and other readers) frowns on punting ANY categories in standard 5×5 roto – and does this rationale change at all when shift to H2H? I play H2H and like punting one or even two categories. This year I had success punting Wins and Ks (almost no competition for top set-up men in 10-team league), and I’ve read about similar strategies such as the Sweeney Plan (punting HR+RBI). Has anyone heard of a statistical analysis which supports punting or not punting? So much luck involved in weekly H2H leagues I’m not sure it really matters…
I punt SB and it works for me
I think there’s a difference between punting saves and not paying for them. There are hundreds of saves every year from players who start as free agents.
definitely. In shallow-to-medium size H2H leagues that don’t use holds, punting saves in the draft is doable if you are aggressive on the waiver wire. Assuming that you used your extra picks (from punting saves) wisely enough to compete and make the playoffs, you should be able to find some closers by the end of the season to help you in the playoffs.
One more point: while I agree that replacing your closers with low-tier SP’s is not advisable, that is not what everyone does. I often go for the top non-closing relievers to help me with my ratios. They can be found much later than the closers and with my extra early picks I can bolster my offense more effectively.
Well, that may be true in a mixed league. I’m in a 5X5 AL only Roto league and quality closers are expensive. Soria went for $25, Pap $27 and Mo $32 at the last auction. What’s an owner to do?
Honestly, that sounds like a good candidate for punting saves to me. There’re only going to be 14 closers at a time, so assuming you have 10-12 teams, whoever has 2 is going to run away from everyone else. Focus your budget elsewhere, draft some cheap backup closers, and keep your ear to the ground all season long to try and find enough waiver wire saves to try and get out of last place in the category.
For those prices in a 5×5 league you should pass and use the money wisely elsewhere – you can always trade for a closer/closers later
I’m going to disagree with the other two responses. I’m in two leagues just like yours, but ours are keeper leagues, so several teams also end up with a $1 closer held over from the previous year when he wasn’t a closer. The real trick is to exploit the keeper rules to have 1, 2, or even 3 $1 closers early in the season. My best year in AL only we had that situation so we didn’t have to spend for closers, but we also won the league. I’ve been watching this closely this year, because in one league I punted, and in the other league I didn’t, but my dad did. In the league I punted saves I’ve really struggled to get out of last place in the category while watching closely for the next closer to pick up saves, I’m getting eaten alive. In the other league where I paid for saves $27 for Heath Bell I’m doing very well in the category even though Bell has been horrible. I’ve also been able to nab up some saves on the side to move up a few spots. My experience is that picking up waiver-wire saves midseason can at most move you up 3 spots in your league. If you’re a little unlucky and someone below you in the standings nabs up all the next-in line closers before you can get them, then you’re SOL. You have to pay $20+ for at least one closer or you’ll get left out to dry. Even a terrible closer carries you a long ways. The teams doing the best it seems to me are the teams that were willing to spend $15 on closers with a questionable hold on their spot at the start of the season, and have been lucky their closers held on to their jobs.
That’s my two cents anyway, you don’t need to spend $30+ for Mariano, but spend at least $20 for someone you’re pretty damn sure is going to get consistent saves. You’ll get burned if they get hurt, but that’s the risk you need to take.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but this article is basically all straw men, false dilemmas, and hindsight bias.
First, I don’t really see anyone arguing that owners should ever completely ignore saves. In H2H, I’ve seen the argument that punting saves in a given week might be wise, but only in special situations (for example, if you’re already way behind on SV but Ks are hotly contested, you might want to stream SP into all your pitching spots and bench your closers). No credible experts really advise owners to ignore saves entirely, and in fact most experts dedicate weekly columns (and sometimes entire blogs) to examining the closer market and changing situations.
Second, sure, its easy to throw out Bell and Rivera, but literally every year there’s problems with a good number of early closers drafted. What if you switched Bell and Rivera with Wilson and Feliz, or Soria and Marmol? And at the same time, every year there seems to be a Craig Kimbrel and Jordan Walden, an elite closer drafted late and a few very useful ones not drafted at all. The point isn’t that you should ignore closers, its just that paying top dollar for closers rarely yields predictable enough results to be a break even even proposition, let alone a profitable one.
Also, Homer Bailey? Really? He was drafted in maybe 35% of 12-team roto leagues, being generous. Every closer you listed was drafted in at least 90% those leagues (at least the ones that count saves). The opportunity cost of any of those closers was NOT Homer Bailey. The opportunity cost of those closers was guys like James Shields, Michael Pineda, Josh Beckett, Jeremy Hellickson, Ian Kennedy, Daniel Hudson, Annibal Sanchez, Javier Vazquez, Jhoulys Chacin, etc. Guys who ranged from studly to useful. Sure there were a couple Ricky Nolascos and Clay Buchholzes in that range, but the vast majority of SP you could have chosen over Axford, Storen, or Hanrahan were at least useful and in quite a few cases game-changing.
Even more, if you did decide to go with a closer in that range, you could have just as easily gone with Joe Nathan, Jonathan Broxton, or Matt Thornton. You can’t watch a roulette spin land on black and then wax on about how smart a bet on black would have been.
I mean, you go ahead and use Sergio Santos as an example right in the piece. This doesn’t strike you as a bit intellectually dishonest? He’s the perfect example of why investing risk in closers is a touch-and-go proposition at best. He was part of a ‘pen that featured two relievers drafted in most leagues (Thornton and Sale), neither of whom wound up carrying mixed league value, let alone closing games.
“The bottom line is that by drafting decent closers, you are bolstering your pitching staff on multiple levels.”
Yes, its good to have good closers. You need good closers to make a run in almost any league. If you had drafted Heath Bell, Jonathan Axford, Joel Hanrahan, and Craig Kimbrel, you would have looked like a genius. That doesn’t mean investing heavily in closers is wise. You could have just as easily drafted Brian Wilson, K-Rod, Matt Thornton, and Frank Francisco with similar cost and perceived risk following the draft. Then even if you had done that, but managed to snag Jordan Walden and Fernando Salas early in the year, you probably would have been okay anyway. The amount of investment you should make in the draft on RP depends entirely on how confident you are that you can beat your opponents to the wire. If you think you can be one of the first owners in your league to attack the wire when news breaks with some regularity, investing in closers isn’t that important. If you can’t, then it becomes substantially more important, but I’d still argue this is a question of diversifying risk than a question of total investment. In a league like that, using last year as an example, instead of using your late round picks on Homer Bailey (ahem) and Mitch Moreland, you could have used them on David Aardsma and Brandon League, or Brad Lidge and Ryan Madson.
truth
The best strategy? Be aware of turbulent closer situations and grab guys who take over the closer role for their team. In the best case scenario, I’d rather spend LESS money/draft picks to acquire elite closers, and focus more on grabbing guys like Alfredo Aceves, Addison Reed, Fernando Rodney, and Santiago Casilla. Volatility is a smart fantasy player’s best friend, as it provides a ton of opportunity to find cheap and quality contributors. Overall, yes, I agree that closers with good ERA/WHIP/K/9 rates are really going to bolster your staff, and this includes elite middle relievers who aren’t saving games as well.
What the article fails to mention is that you probably had to pay around $15 in auction for someone like Bell or Mo, whereas, Santos was a FA pickup, Storen probably would have gone for $3 at most, and Hanrahan exceeded his value by a mile (too lazy to look up his draft value). What happens when you pay for someone like Joakim Soria, who was perceived as a lock for solid save production and it turns out to be a horrible investment? I’m sure the number of closers who actually produce close to what their draft day value is very low.
Like Byron said, punting and not paying are different matters, but paying for a top tier closer, when the position is so volatile and when you could be spending most of that money on hitting seems like a complete waste to me. I don’t think I could justify myself spending more than $5 on a closer and that seems to be pushing it.
Generally, there is only one way to punt saves, by drafting $1 top 30 relievers who don’t have closing gigs. In this case, you are temporarily punting the category but still helping your other stats.
Last year, I drafted Hanrahan as my only closer for $7. I also selected Madson, Clippard, and Joba for $1 and selected Walden in the aux draft. Despite virtually punting saves in the draft, I was able to win the category by getting lucky with Madson and Walden and scraping saves out of variety of other bins.
I have won leagues by punting saves, and punting wins and strikeouts. It can be done, but is certainly not a slam dunk to win. But, I have finished in the top 3 using the punt wins and K’s strategy several times in 5 x 5 leagues.
I’ve won a standard 10 team 5×5 league 2 out of the last 4 years i played, and both times i won i punted saves. The 2 years i didn’t win i tried to compete in the save category. If you punt saves you only get 1 point in the save category. But i won the k’s and wins categories EASY both times. So i got 21 points in the 3 categories combined both years. Averaging 7 points on the 3 cats isn’t bad. So all i had to worry about were ERA and WHIP. Plus i could just concentrate on drafting hitters and SP’s and not waste draft picks on RP’s. I will never own a reliever again.
I think the key is this – you can punt a stat in a draft, but you probably can’t punt a stat altogether.
i understand arguments that say otherwise yet i keep finding myself thinking that closers are the best investment on the board starting around round 6 or 7 of a standard yahoo 12-team mixed redraft or similar type scenario and continuing until all closers with firm closer role security are off the board.
this is basically because all the good hitters have been drafted by then, since everybody goes so hard after hitters early nowadays (correctly).
there are still hitters yes but they tend to be wonky and let you down or not be any better than hitters you can grab off the wire.
SPs are ok and i’ll usually grab one but i find them to be even more fungible than closers in terms of value over fantasy replacement, i.e. if you know what you’re doing you can still pull good SPs in the teen rounds or off the wire.
it’s true that wilson or soria might let you down. i actually drafted both wilson and soria early last year. i killed the league anyway. they weren’t THAT bad. and you can’t draft kimbrel late when a jerk like me already drafted him in the 10th. three or four top closers make just as much of a K/ratio anchor for your staff as an ace does, plus you’re diversifying the risk of their arms falling off, plus you get saves. yes it costs some in multiple mid-round picks but whatever, i say. i think those picks are overrated.
closers with solid jobs tend to hold value better than SPs. there’s only 30 closers max in the league. people are much more picky on the trade market about how much they value particular SPs. most of the leagues i play in getting guys to give up closers in trades is like pulling teeth.
you can say scan the wire but everybody does that so much now it’s gotten pretty hard. i actually think other players (hitters, SPs) are much more of an opportunity on the wire than closers at this point.
I tend to focus on adding as many cheap closer-options as possible in the draft. A few will flame out, but I love filling out the RP & P spots with a bunch of low-ERA, low-WHIP, high-K/IP guys, who also land me near the top of saves each season. In effect, I almost punt wins (ratio-wise, closers obviously pick up very few wins, on average), but by focusing on low-cost closers (non-Rivera’s), I can spend more money on a few top-quality SPs, to further enhance the advantage in ERA, WHIP & K’s.
End result, have been using this approach for four or five seasons, over four competitive leagues, and it seems quite clear that middling closers (think Street, Bailey, Valverde) are undervalued – typically only valued for their saves, rather than their pro-rata solid impact on four of five categories.
The problem with this approach is obviously that you need 2.5 closers/relievers per SP to get to the innings limit, so it really hampers your lineup options – I rarely have more than one or two bench hitters. To try to counter this, I tend to focus on a few key hitters with solid OBP (BA not used) and run-producing numbers, and fill out the roster with decent-OBP fast guys, which is another market inefficiency…try to win steals, try to win four of five pitching categories, and post very strong OBP & runs.
I really enjoy reading the various approaches to team building. Great article!
punting this save is going to hurt me more than it hurts you
in standard roto, i agree with your premise that punting saves is a risky/foolish strategy, but i’m intrigued as to why you like storen, axford, hanny at 2012 prices?
it seems like all three were great k/ip buys last year in the 140-170 ADP/<$6 range (along with putz, kimbrel…and some other guys who didn't work out like thornton, franklin, etc). why pay a premium for that crowd this year (esp storen who seems to be always involved in trade offers) when you can just as easily go fishing for their less sexy counterparts in the same place you found them?
Punting saves in favor of extra SPs is bad for 2 reasons:
1. K rates of marginal SPs
2. IP limits
Really enjoyed the article. Would welcome more strategy stuff during the long winter! Thanks.
I’ve punted saves for the last two years, and Im a streamer (1extra starter per day). In my opinion i saved my early picks to get OFFENSE ONLY, only picking pitchers late. If you punt saves AND you stream, you guarantee winning wins and K’s, and with the great offense you have from NOT wasting your pick on a closer, you dominate 4 out of 5 offensive categories a week usually! I have won my H2H league 2 YEARS IN A ROW doing this. Plus you get mid tier starters that dont have high ERA’s, and pay attention to the matchups each day, you can succeed with this strategy.
over the past decade or so, ERAs of starting pitchers have run about only about seven percent higher than relief pitcher ERAs.” Even with superior ratios, it cannot be underestimated the difference between throwing 70 innings versus 200 innings. If your fantasy team deployed six starters who all tossed 200 innings and two relievers who threw 70 frames, you’d be left with 1,340 innings. Let’s give them a cumulative ERA of 4.00. If you then inserted a reliever with a 3.00 ERA for another 70 innings, you’d be left with a 3.95 ERA overall. If you instead inserted a starter who posted a 3.50 ERA over 200 innings, your overall ERA would then be 3.93. So although the reliever’s ERA is a full half run lower than the starter’s, the extra innings actually had more effect than the superior earned run average and lowered the team ERA.
what about not drafting closers (especially if there is a good bat you want) but picking them up mid year so that by the end of the year you have the good hitting team you drafted in addition to closers.
either way, this is why i like roto.