Roto Riteup: May 4th, 2012
Today’s Roto Riteup consists of nothing but closer news.
• If you haven’t yet heard the news or read Dave Cameron’s post from last night, Mariano Rivera tore the ACL in his right knee while shagging fly balls in batting practice. Dave notes several candidates to continue to close, so I refer you over there for his insight. My two cents is that Rafael Soriano and then Dave Robertson get the first cracks at any save opportunities. Given the nature of the injury, it is safe to drop Rivera and replace him with either one of those guys, but I’d recommend going with Soriano first.
• Heath Bell was unavailable for last night’s game. Assuming that this unavailability was due to Bell pitching for three straight days and not a sign of a major change, then this isn’t a big deal. However, given Bell’s poor season to date (three blown saves, an ERA that almost touches 12.00 and almost twice as many walks as strike outs) it is prudent to take notice of any bullpen news in Miami. Rather than go with Steve Cishek as I predicted, Ozzie Guillen chose to go with Edward Mujica instead. Mujica managed to pitch around the lone base runner he allowed in his sole frame and got the save. With Guillen apparently trusting Mujica more than he trusts Cishek, I would pick up Mujicia in any league that he is available in.
• Filed under “Things That Probably Shouldn’t Surprise You At All”, Chicago Cubs manager Sale Sveum is rightfully upset over Carlos Marmol‘s struggles thus far. Of course Marmol has never been shy to surrender a walk, but his current BB/9 of 9.35 shames his poor career BB/9 of 5.94. To put his current control issues in perspective: if you took away every hit that Marmol has allowed this year, his WHIP would still above 1.00. Now, there was an Ian Stewart error in the 9th inning of last night’s game, but Marmol still failed to get a single batter out of the five that he faced. Despite the desire to rearrange his bullpen, Sveum doesn’t have very many tools to do so. The Cub that currently has the most holds this year is Rafael Dolis, he of the 2.35 career K/9 and 5.1% SwStr% career numbers. Small sample size aside, Dolis does not possess the stereotypical closer “stuff.” The most reasonable solution to me is to go with Shawn Camp in the short term and hope that Marmol can get his walks back down from the stratosphere.
• As Zach noted on the April 30th edition of Roto Riteup, Jordan Walden has lost his closing title and was replaced by Scott Downs. Now it appears as though newly acquired Ernesto Frieri could also work his way into the closing discussion. Taken at this year’s face value (with no park or league adjustment), Frieri instantly becomes the best reliever on the Angels. Furthermore, Frieri’s career strikeout rate of 11.38 combined with his low ERA and FIP, 2.33 and 3.20 respectively, lead me to believe that he could step in and close immediately. Downs hasn’t been officially relieved of closing duties just yet, but if you have a deep bench, Frieri is a strong candidate to gain some cheap saves.
For those of you who play daily fantasy games like FanGraphs: The Game, or just like to stream players, here are a couple matchups you may be able to exploit.
A Pitcher for Today: Anthony Bass (SD) vs MIA
Bass possess a 28.7% K% as a starter. That strikeout rate mixed with a home start in Petco make Bass an easy stream option for me.
A Pitcher for Tomorrow: Patrick Corbin (ARI) at NYM
Corbin whiffed six batters in his first career start and now goes against the Mets; the team with a K% of 22.0%, the highest in MLB.
A Hitter for Today: The Entire Braves Lineup at COL
The Braves will be facing Guillermo Moscoso, a man with 27.1% GB rate. He is an extreme fly ball pitcher who happens to call Coors Field home. I’m expecting a big day for the Braves offense that is in the top half of HR/FB rate and in the top third of FB%.
Cishek was unavailable due to pitching 2 innings the night prior. This was noted before the game even started (with either Webb or Mujica getting the opportunity in the 9th). Last night tells us nothing about Guillen’s preference for next-in-line behind Bell.
Agreed. Ozzie’s behavior indicates more trust for Cishek than Mujica.
Time and time again recently, as soon as bell takes the mound it is Cishek warming up as Ozzie is refusing to let Heath lose the game.
If 5/2/12 performance of Cishek didn’t remove all doubts then you probably aren’t paying attention.
I missed Cishek being unavailable. My apologies. I just plain didn’t see it.
Hemmobosscher is right, Cishek wasn’t even available!?!? This is a terrible and quite misleading artice. Furthermore, if you think the yankees “closer of the future” isn’t ready yet (although at this point, not sure you’d even know he was the closer in waiting), maybe you have been living underneath a rock?
Honestly advising your readership to pick up Soriano over Robertson is horrible, horrible advice.
Cishek unavailable last night. Lazy reporting.
Yeah, I really don’t see Soriano as the closer.
This article is full of fail advice. I hope passers by read the comments before plodding off to the waiver wire.
I’m a Rivera owner and picked up Robertson. I figure if Soriano gets the job, I don’t care, because he’s going to suck (if you’ve watched him this year, you know his command has been atrocious, and his 2.00 WHIP is not merely due to bad luck on balls in play). I dropped Hector Santiago for the same reason – even if he has the job, he’s not worth owning.
I DO have 3 other RPs, so it’s not the end of the world, though it does suck as a Yankees’ fan, of course.
Yeah I think they go with Robertson as well. He has waited in the wings and with Rivera getting injured it just is a fast track for him. I am really hoping you are right about Ernesto Frieri because he is the best pitcher in that bullpen now. Also, noted that they put Soriano out in the 8th yesterday not Robertson probably hoping that the Yankees could get a run or two and throw Robertson out in the 9th to close it.
as a scout i see robertson, cishek taking the jobs
h bell was more worrying about where to eat and how to decorate his new home in miami rather than baseball.
robertson is a stud and soriano will be taking the middle relief/setup role for now.
The readers here are pretty rbight, can you run a poll:
Who ahs more saves going forward?
Robertson v. Soriano
Cishek v. Mujica v. Bell
Russell v. Dolis v. Wood (DL) v. Camp v. Don’t bother
Thorton v. Reed v. Santiago
Capps v. Perkins v. ?
Walden v. Downs v. Frieri
Balfour v. Fuentes (I puked a little)
Even if, say, Robertson is taken in your league, a poll showing Soriano with 40% minority support might make it worthwile.
I don’t have the power to do any polls, that’d be best left to the Friday Roto Chat.
one thing which may be overlooked is the ‘new age’ tendency of managers to recognize that it’s somewhat suboptimal to have your BEST reliever be the closer, thus preventing him from pitching in the high leverage 7th/8th inning situations. I think there’s an unspoken recognition among many teams now that you’d actually rather have your 2nd best reliever as the closer, freeing up the true “relief ace” to come put out fires when needed in the late innings.
so, in that sense, letting Robertson continue in a role in which he is flourishing and using Soriano at closer makes sense. You see the same thing other places, for example Pestano vs. Perez in Cleveland, Thornton in Chicago, Mike Adams vs. anyone else in San Diego last year and now Texas, etc.
When Drew Storen went down in Washington everyone immediately assumed that it would be Tyler Clippard, but they smartly decided to leave him as the setup ace. And why not when you can get 80-90 highly leveraged innings from your best reliever instead of 50-60?
this.
As a heads up, it is official, Marmol is out as the Cubs closer: http://espn.go.com/chicago/mlb/story/_/id/7890156/carlos-marmol-chicago-cubs-closer