Bobby Parnell secured his fourth save of the year as the Mets clipped the Cardinals 4-3 in Saint Louis. Parnell surrendered just one hit — a single to Matt Adams — in the bottom of the ninth frame, and struck out one to seal the victory for the Metropolitans. Parnell is now 4-of-6 on the season in save opportunities with a 1.04 ERA (1.86 FIP) and a 0.73 WHIP. However, owners should monitor his K% — which is up to 26% this season from 21% in ‘12 — despite missing fewer bats (8.4% SwStr% in ‘13, down from 10.1% in ‘12). The foreseeable future seems to favor those with shares of Parnell, considering the (unfortunate) news that Frank Francisco felt soreness in his surgically repaired elbow just as he was meant to return from the disabled list.

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Mariano Rivera notched his 13th save on the season and the 621st of his career this afternoon as the Yankees clipped the Rockies, 3-1. The future Hall-of-Famer got two quick outs off the bats of Wilin Rosario and Nolan Arenado before plunking the third batter he faced, Jordan Pacheco. But the potential tying run, Josh Rutledge, grounded out to Jayson Nix to seal Colorado’s fate. The closer’s age and last year’s injury are clearly not a factor. Mariano is Mariano. Arguably (hardly) the best closer ever.

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Rafael Soriano untucked his shirt for the ninth time in ten chances this evening, and he did so facing some of the heaviest hitters — and most prolific whiffers — in the league today. The 33-year-old faced just one over the minimum — yielding a two-out single to Evan Gattis — en route to his 141st career save. Soriano induced consecutive groundouts to Justin Upton and Freddie Freeman, then got Dan Uggla to fly out to right-center with Gattis on first to end the game. Surprisingly, Soriano failed to record a strikeout against the Braves — who entered today with 255 strikeouts as a team, second most in the majors — causing his K% on the year to dip to 24%. And although Soriano may not be receiving the same attention as he did when pitching in the Big Apple, he’s quietly putting together another fine season, and continues to be a top ten closing option. Maybe all that Strasburg, Harper, Zimmermann talk is overshadowing him?

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• The Kyle Farnsworth show is ready to return to Tampa Bay, but not in the role he expected to serve entering Spring Training. Farnsworth, who has been sidelined since the end of the Spring with a strained right elbow, will join Jake McGee and Pine Tar Joel Peralta as “the eighth-inning set-up men” for Fernando Rodney. Rodney, one of the great stories of the first-half, has been nothing shy of spectacular while manning the ninth for the Rays. The righty is 21-for-22 in save opportunities with career bests in ERA (1.07), WHIP (0.77) and BB/9 (1.34).
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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.

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The Pittsburgh Pirates had a rather nice problem on their hands headed into Spring training as both Joel Hanrahan and Evan Meek had spectacular 2010 campaigns and both arguably deserved the right to close out games. This battle presented fantasy managers with the proverbial high risk/low cost option for late-round-save-sniping and in many leagues, both players were drafted as the situation played out. Although Hanrahan was a disaster in Spring with an ERA near seven and giving up several gopher balls, he no doubt bought Meek a steak dinner when Clint Hurdle handed him closer duties. What has happened since has been a pretty fantastic season for Joel Hanrahan.

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When I first sat down to write this week’s column, I was all set to spend my time bashing Adam Dunn.  You know, talk about how I built up the rest of my infield with the first two picks, grabbed King Felix in the third round and then, when all the other first base mashers were off the board, swoop in and steal Dunn and his 40 bombs in the fourth.  It was the “perfect” strategy right up until the part where Dunn decided he couldn’t hit anymore.  But then, as I was wrapping up my introduction, I got a text that changed my whole plan.  You know the text I’m talking about — the one from that guy in my primary league. Read the rest of this entry »

To close out our series of looks at the values of players in ottoneu Pick Six, we look today at pitchers.  As before, the numbers below are based on weighted averages of THT’s Oliver and BPro’s PECOTA (more weight to Oliver b/c it includes this season’s data).  The numbers are FP (FanGraphs Points per IP), though keep in mind that for starters this number is divided by four to keep starters from being the only thing that matters in pick six.

Starting Pitchers

Elite Five (they cost a fortune, but they’re worth it)

Tim Lincecum, 5.33 FP/IP, $48
Josh Johnson, 5.21 FP/IP, $38
Felix Hernandez, 5.04 FP/IP, $49
Cliff Lee, 5.04 FP/IP, $43
Roy Halladay, 5.01 FP/IP, $52

Johnson’s injury risk has kept his value down in traditional ottoneu, but when he’s healthy (currently has shoulder ouchie), he’s the best value of this group.  But you can’t go wrong here: more than any other pitchers in baseball, these guys should give you lots of productive innings per start.

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Yesterday, we took a look at the guys that might replace Trevor Hoffman if he goes down with injury. Today, it’s time to look at another old dude poorly plying his trade at the back end of a bullpen – Octavio Dotel.

Dotel was a medium-priced low-risk signing that they could move out of the closer’s role without too much backlash, but the Bucs could also gain from pumping his value up and trading him to a contender, so they may give him some leash yet. He’s still doing his high-walk, high-strikeout thing, and is obviously suffering from his .456 BABIP-induced bad luck. His xFIP of 4.49 does not induce a ton of confidence on the other hand. His walks have been trending north for a while now, and he’s giving up over two home runs per nine right now. He could lose the role.

As with yesterday, we’ll run a few stats out for each contender. It seems that gmLI is a decent proxy for “Manager’s Confidence,” as it measures the leverage index of the situation at the point of the game when the pitcher enters. A higher gmLI means that the manager is consistently putting a player into the game in tough situations. As Brian Joura pointed out in the upcoming podcast, that could just be a relic of a manager’s static bullpen roles (he always pitches a certain guy in the 7th, and there have just happened to be a ton of high-leverage situations in the 7th this year), but a check of the leaderboard shows some of the better non-closer pitchers rank highly in gmLI. Also, we used holds plus saves over holds plus saves plus blown saves because a blown hold results in a blown save and that stat seems to better represent the save % for a pitcher who has been both a closer and a setup man.

Evan Meek 0.64 ERA, 2.85 xFIP, 4.23 career xFIP, 4/6 career holds+saves / opps, 0.69 2010 gmLI
DJ Carrasco 5.00 ERA, 3.31 xFIP, 4.47 career xFIP, 19/27 career holds+saves / opps, 0.87 2010 gmLI
Joel Hanrahan 9.95 ERA, 4.05 xFIP, 4.36 career xFIP, 28/37 career holds+saves / opps, 0.82 2010 gmLI
Javier Lopez 3.38 ERA, 6.52 xFIP, 4.51 career xFIP, 67/74 career holds+saves / opps, 0.95 2010 gmLI
Jack Taschner 4.91 ERA, 3.24 xFIP, 5.01 career xFIP, 33/42 career holds+saves / opps, 0.29 2010 gmLI
Brendan Donnelly 7.00 ERA, 6.19 xFIP, 4.07 career xFIP, 106/116 career holds+saves / opps, 1.37 2010 gmLI

Um, yeah, that’s a pretty terrible bullpen. And a terrible team that can barely get a high leverage situation to their relievers at all. Looks like the manager likes Donnelly’s experience, but he’s not providing results, and his career xFIP is not that much better than the obvious front-runner, Evan Meek. Lopez just has too poor a split vs righties to use as a closer (5.03 xFIP, 3.95 K/9 vs righties), and everyone else is scuffling. Taschner might be considered competition for Meek if only his gmLI was any higher. Looks like he’s got mop-up duty right now. Hanrahan is the only one that has been a closer, but he wasn’t especially good at it and almost has a double-digit ERA right now.

Meek was pretty good last year and cut his walk rate in half so far this year. He’s the best Dotel insurance and a sure-fire pickup in deeper leagues right now.