Under the Over-Under

Suppose you think a team is going to improve significantly from last year’s performance. You’re not sure exactly how they’re going to do it, but you’re reasonably confident that they will. If you happen to live in the enlightened state of Nevada or are acquainted with a sports accountant, you can bet the team’s over-under. Is there any way to translate that belief into the acquisition of an undervalued player on draft day?

In forecasting team outcomes, we always like to look at a team’s record in 1-run games in the preceding season. The Elias Sports Bureau long ago discovered that (to simplify but not distort their insight) teams that perform poorly in 1-run games in Season 1 and then have a good record in the spring training games of Season 2 significantly outperform almost everyone’s expectations during Season 2 itself. The teams with the worst 1-run records in the majors last season were the Astros (17-28) and the Reds (22-38). Is there any reason—right now, before any spring training games have been played-to think they’ll do better in 2015? Yes, we think.

Let’s take the Astros first, because the fix for their apparent problem is simpler. A team that loses a lot of 1-run games, you might speculate, probably blows a lot of late-inning leads. And so it proved with the 2014 Astros. They were tied for the major league lead in blown saves, and their save percentage of 54.39% was better only than Colorado’s. They also had the worst bullpen ERA in baseball. Chad Qualls, who was their closer in 2014, wasn’t horrible, but also, quite clearly, wasn’t the answer. So during the winter, the Astros—who, in the three years since their top-down front-office housecleaning, have gone from one of the most benighted teams in MLB to one of the most enlightened—went out and got two good relief pitchers, Luke Gregerson and Pat Neshek.

So the question for Fantasyland, with its overemphasis on saves, is: who’s going to close? The consensus seems to be that it’s Gregerson (NFBC Average Draft Position 248), beating out Qualls (ADP 380) and Neshek (433). There’s lots to like about Gregerson, including his three-year, $18.5M contract with a $3M saves-related incentive. There are some red flags, though. As noted by Alan Harrison in his 2/13/15 Fangraphs review of the ‘Stros bullpen, Gregerson’s velocity and swinging strike rates have declined over the last three years, and he’s converted only 19 of 51 save chances during his career. Indeed, he led the AL in blown saves last year.

Our theory, though, has always been that there’s no such thing as a “closer mentality”: if a guy can handle the pressure of protecting a 1-run lead in the 7th or 8th inning, he can do it in the 9th. And Gregerson’s other 2014 numbers, unlike those of the Astros’ bullpen, are just fine. His 1.1 WHIP and 82.4% LOB Rate are excellent, his 15.5% strikeout/walk rate is good, he posted career lows in ERA (2.12) and walk rate (1.9 per nine innings), and his opponents’ OPS was just .604, which in fact has been about Gregerson’s career average. Moreover, he’s a ground ball pitcher in a ballpark that’s home run friendly. And Gregerson’s “Arsenal Score” in Daniel Schwartz’s Ultimate Bullpen Guide (Fangraphs 2/2/15) puts him ahead of both Qualls and Neshek.

Qualls’s career save rate (70 for 120) is likewise nothing special. More importantly, his LOB percentage was a mediocre 73.2%, he can’t get lefthanded hitters out, he had a terrible second half last season, and, perhaps most importantly, he represents the ancien regime and its failed bullpen. We suspect new manager A.J. Hinch will want to go with his own guy.

OK. But might Neshek be that guy? As Harrison points out, his 2014 numbers were amazing. But Neshek turns 35 this year; he’s going to have trouble staying at last year’s level. And indeed, his second half last year, while still good, was a decline from his lights-out first half. Plus, he’s a flyball pitcher in a ballpark that’s a lot less forgiving of the breed than Busch Stadium is.

So we think Gregerson will come out of spring training with the closer’s job, and will pitch well enough to keep it. By our count, he’s the 30th-ranked reliever in NFBC ADP, and we expect him to outperform some of the guys ahead of him: Nathan, Mejia, McGee, Reed, Perkins, maybe a few others. In the 15th round or later, or for less than $10, we love him.

And, if you’ll forgive us for driving off the narrow sabermetric road into the impressionistic brambles alongside, we want to make clear that it’s not just that the Astros have upgraded their closer. We think the Astros as a team are candidates for that alchemical transformation that 1-run losers sometimes undergo. We’re not the only ones who think approximately the same thing, but converting that insight into Fantasy bargains is tough. We mentioned Jon Singleton last time; the other guy we see who might yield dividends is Jed Lowrie (NFBC ADP 316, the number 20 shortstop), who’s one Oakland Coliseum season removed from double-digit home runs. Yes, he turns 31 this season, and if his decline last season is real, it may be time to roll the credits. But we’ll take him for $1, and if someone else says $1, we’re probably saying $2.

Coming next time: a consideration of the Reds, who were the upside-down Astros. They had a truly epochal 2014 season, losing more 1-run games than any other team in this century, even as they deployed a virtually infallible closer.