Strategy Session – Avoid Middle Relievers
This advice, of course, depends on the size of your league. If you’re in a 14-team NL only league, you are almost certainly going to have some middle relievers on your team. However, in most 10- or 12-team mixed leagues, you generally are best off avoiding middle relievers altogether, with two exceptions: 1) you expect that they will become closer soon, and 2) it’s late in the season and you can gain ground in ERA or WHIP. Other than that, however, middle relievers should be avoided.
Why? Because they really don’t add much to your team. If a middle reliever gets a win or save, it’s usually a fluke – it’s almost impossible to predict how many wins a guy like Rafael Betancourt will have in 2009, for example. And even the best middle relievers usually only pitch 60-70 innings. So even if you stumble onto a fantastic season by someone like Betancourt, his impact upon your team is minimal, because he’s only pitching 60-70 innings. It’s a very rare middle reliever who is worth having on your team – someone like Mariano Rivera in 1996, or Octavio Dotel in 2001 or 2002. These pitchers are few and far between, and “typical” middle relievers just don’t help you enough to justify a roster spot.
Again, it’s not that someone like Betancourt or Scot Shields isn’t a good pitcher; rather, it’s that their roster spot can be better spent on someone else. In many leagues, you can manipulate matchups so that the roster spot is occupied by a rotating assortment of waiver wire starters who have favorable matchups (in pitchers’ parks and/or against bad offenses). These pitchers may not be particularly good, but if you manipulate their matchups they can provide a heck of a lot more value than even a very good middle reliever.
As mentioned above, middle relievers are generally acceptable when you have reason to believe that they will become the closer very soon. They are also acceptable down the stretch run (generally August and September only), if your team is in the position where you stand to gain points from even a small improvement in ERA or WHIP. In this situation, the small amount of innings that a middle reliever will provide is particularly beneficial. However, in all other situations, middle relievers are almost always a waste of a roster spot.
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I don’t agree with that at all. How does a guy like Grant Balfour last year not help your team? 6 wins, 4 saves, 82K at a minimal risk? Many leagues have maximum innings pitched, so leaving a roster spot to stream pitchers with light matchups just won’t work. Come September, you might just need those extra stats that a middle reliever puts up. I’d gladly take a guy like ’08 Marmol, ’08 Balfour, or ’07 Neshek over a good paper matchup. Plus, an injury to the current closer, and any one of these guys could very easily have been next in line.
And if you knew before last season that Balfour was going to post that, you can make some money with a crystal ball. That was the point of the article, that wins and saves for MR are completely unpredictable.
Holds counts as a category in my 10 team mixed league. I was hoping to read an article that would help me to pinpoint some middle relievers with perceived value for the 2009 season, since guys like the aforementioned Betancourt ultimately became a waste of a roster spot for me last year.
That’s a great idea! Can I steal it and use it for my blog?
I’d like to read that article. What is your blog called?
I normally play in leagues which include holds, but even when I don’t, I’d much rather have a sub-2 ERA middle reliever than the garbage SP’s managers cycle through. Especially in deep leagues. Last season I took over an 11th place team in a large dynasty league and almost made the 6 team playoffs by doing what I always do.
1. Find a few quality sleeper starters (Duch, Lee, Kuroda)
2. Surround them with quality relievers (Wheeler, Buccholz, J.D. Durbin, Nathan)
My only hold overs from the previous years staff were Soria, Wood, Valverde, and Greinke.
I spent the entire year leading the league in ERA/WHIP and gained almost 40 wins over the previous managers total.
I think you mean Chad Durbin. J.D. Durbin, who nicknamed himself “The Durbinator” also pitched for the Phillies , although not in 2008.
i always confuse the Durbin’s and Vargas’
I think the author didn’t factor innings pitched limits. I’m in a couple of leagues with 1250 IP limits, 21 man rosters, with up to 5 RP’s that can be thrown each day. I’ve found that identifying a couple MR’s is very effective. In that context, throwing 60-70 innings a year is an asset as opposed to a liability. The question becomes maximizing return (k, win, saves, whip, era etc.) per inning pitched, in which case Marmol and the like were about as good as it gets.
I think the lesson learned is that “strategy” is manipulating the rules of your league as opposed to identifying a grand universal strategy.
You hit the sweet spot there KR — it is absolutely critical to screen any strategy by applying it judiciously to your league settings. A league where the max innings pitched is 1200 calls for an entirely different strategy than a league that has a max of 1500. Plus look at the categories if you are playing ROTO — do the math. Look at how many pitching slots you have — how many of them are for relievers, starters, or both. Take your league’s pitching slots and put guys from last year into those slots. Take their stats and see what you come up with. Now try upping the number of relievers in there and see what happens, etc. Jack
Would I take a SP who pitches 170 innings and gives me a 4.40 ERA and a 1.40 WHIP, or would I rather have two middle relievers who give me a combined 140 IP with a sub 3.00 ERA and 1.20 WHIP? I think it’s pretty obvious.
Roster spots are valuable. Would you rather have one 1B who hit 40 hr or two who hit 25 hr each?
Yeah, I’d have to say I totally disagree with Peter on this one. It’s much easier to find a decent combination of MR to fill out the final spots on your roster than it is to play matchups with 4th and 5th starters on lousy teams. Two top end setup guys are clearly going to dominate that strategy, imo, even if they have no hope of picking up saves.