Archive for Closers

The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 1270 – Closer Preview

3/10/24

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Notable Transactions/News/Rumors

  • Noelvi Marte suspended 80 games
    • How does this affect the rest of the Reds

 

Closer Preview

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Approximately 59 minutes of joyous analysis.


Beat the Shift Podcast – Relief Pitcher Preview Episode – w/ Greg Jewett

The Relief Pitcher episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Greg Jewett

Strategy Section

  • General closer player pool observations
  • What price points should you purchase closers at?
    • General strategy
  • Is purchasing closers through FAAB a good investment?
  • What skills or information should you look at to speculate on closers in waiting?
  • Stay away from closers on bad teams?
  • When is it worthwhile to roster a closer handcuff?
  • Should you worry that a closer will be traded mid-season (enough to affect a buying/rostering decision)?

Closer Situations

  • Discussion of all 30 MLB team closer situations

Read the rest of this entry »


2023 End Of Season Closer Report

When analyzing closers and the Saves they produce, this season’s results were mixed. Some trends continued (e.g. lots of pitchers getting Saves) and some bucked recent trends (e.g. more keeping the role for the full season). To start with, here are the initial (i.e. drafted) closers and how long they kept their job. Read the rest of this entry »


Help Needed: 2023 Initial Closer Roles

Every season, I try to determine how much closer turnover there is from the last drafts to the season’s end. For example, here is last season’s report.

I decided to verify the beginning of the season section before every manager disappears. For most of the selections, I used our Opening Weekend Bullpen Report. Here are the values I think are right but I don’t feel good about the ones in Yellow. Could people spend a minute looking over the Yellows and verify the names on their favorite team(s)? Thanks.

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Ottoneu Relief Pitcher Drip: Sorting Out the Post-Trade Deadline Bullpens

With the MLB trade deadline behind us and the dust still settling, it can be a bit tricky to sort out all the implications for every player moved in a trade this week. It becomes all the more difficult for relievers — both where they fit in the bullpen hierarchy on their new team and how their old team will handle the pecking order. This edition of the Ottonue Relief Pitcher Drip will be devoted to figuring some of those situations while also recommending some under-rostered pitchers who might find themselves in high leverage roles now.

Under-Rostered Relievers
Player Team Role FIP gmLI gmLI (2wks) gmLI Δ Pts/IP Roster%
Carlos Hernández KCR CL 2.96 1.10 2.11 1.01 6.78 64.4%
Gregory Santos CHW CL 2.42 1.13 1.53 0.40 6.17 57.1%
Justin Topa SEA SU8 2.94 1.22 1.11 -0.11 7.05 27.9%
Joe Kelly LAD MID 3.27 1.65 1.92 0.27 6.84 21.2%
JoJo Romero STL SU7 3.09 1.42 2.16 0.74 6.30 2.9%

The White Sox were one of the most aggressive sellers this season, trading away six members of their pitching staff including nearly every reliever who had earned high leverage work this year. Gone are Kendall Graveman, Reynaldo López, Keynan Middleton, and Joe Kelly. That means Gregory Santos is the most likely candidate to pick up save opportunities with Aaron Bummer a possibility as well. I covered Santos the last time this column ran in mid-July and his outlook hasn’t changed much since then. He’s still striking out a decent number of batters and his walk rate is still a pristine 5.0%.

The Royals shipped their closer Scott Barlow off to San Diego at the deadline which means Carlos Hernández will likely step in to handle the ninth inning duties. A failed starter with a hard, riding fastball and a nasty slider, he’s managed to hone the command issues that plagued him in longer outings. He’s cut his walk rate more than four points to just 7.4% this year while also pushing his strikeout rate north of 30%. That’s a definite recipe for success. Beyond Hernández, there really isn’t anyone else in Kansas City’s bullpen worth targeting.

In one of the bigger surprises this week, the Mariners traded their closer Paul Sewald to the Diamondbacks. Seattle already had their closer of the future Andrés Muñoz working the eighth inning ahead of Sewald which makes him the obvious candidate to work the ninth inning now. Matt Brash is almost universally rostered in Ottoneu thanks to his outrageous stuff so the overlooked high leverage reliever in Seattle’s bullpen is almost certainly Justin Topa. He had struggled with a laundry list of injuries with the Brewers, accumulating just 17 appearances across his first three seasons in the big leagues. Finally healthy, he’s been a solid option in high leverage situations for the M’s this year. His sinker-slider combo doesn’t produce a ton of strikeouts but he limits walks and keeps the ball on the ground which is a profile that plays well in Ottoneu.

Joe Kelly isn’t gaining an opportunity to earn more high leverage work because relievers ahead of him on the depth chart were traded away. Instead, he was the guy traded away. He’s joining a Dodgers bullpen that’s had plenty of issues finding consistent performers this year. It isn’t immediately clear where he lands in the pecking order since he’s only appeared in a single game for Los Angeles, coming in during the sixth inning after Caleb Ferguson ran into trouble. His brand of effective wildness is well known by now, though his strikeout rate is now at a career-high 32.3%.

The Cardinals were the other big sellers at the deadline, trading away two relievers from their bullpen. With Ryan Helsley sidelined indefinitely and Jordan Hicks now in Toronto, the obvious choice to work the ninth inning should have been Giovanny Gallegos. Instead, the man who received the first save opportunity on Sunday was JoJo Romero who also worked the ninth inning in a non-save situation yesterday. This is a situation that definitely bears monitoring. Gallegos has been receiving high leverage work in the Cardinals bullpen for four years now so it’s possible they’re trying out different options in the ninth inning to evaluate what they have to work with moving forward. Romero was a highly regarded prospect in the Phillies organization at one point. Both his slider and changeup have whiff rates over 40%, giving him two plus weapons in his arsenal.


Beat the Shift Podcast – Bullpen Episode w/ Greg Jewett

The Bullpen Update episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Greg Jewett

Strategy Section

  • Optimal pre-season closer draft strategy
  • Mid-season / second chance closer draft strategy
  • The value of middle relievers on your roster
  • The effect of the new MLB rules on pitchers
  • Rostering closer “handcuffs”
  • Looking at prior short term bullpen usage

Closer Situations

  • Closers likely to be traded & fantasy impact
  • Relivers coming back from injury
  • Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
  • Specific Team Situations
    • PHI
    • LAD
    • TB
    • COL
    • STL
    • MIN
    • SEA
    • MIA

Read the rest of this entry »


Beat the Shift Podcast – Changes Episode w/ Joe Sheehan

The Changes episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Joe Sheehan

MLB Rule Changes

  • Which rule has had the most effect thus far?
  • Which new rule are we least happy about?
  • How has the ball changed this year?

Strategy Section

  • Which is more important – knowing the players, or knowing how to value the players?
    • Pre-season vs. in-season
  • FAAB
    • Should the prices you pay in FAAB be driven by obtaning a good return on investment, or is it more market driven?
    • Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
    • Rob Silver’s comments on FAAB
      • Will Tanner Bibee be worth his FAAB bids?
      • How much should one pay for a projected SP60 in FAAB?
      • How much should one pay for a projected top 50 player n FAAB?
      • How much should one pay for a projected top 100 player n FAAB?

Read the rest of this entry »


Reynaldo López Earned a Save

Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports

Here’s a list of relief pitchers, provided by Roster Resource, who could potentially earn saves and fill the closer role for the White Sox in 2023:

Reynaldo López
Kendall Graveman
Aaron Bummer
Joe Kelly
Jake Diekman

Which did you take for your fantasy team? López and Graveman are the relievers on this list who currently have the black border around their names that signifies shared closer duties on the Bullpen Report (now streaming). Those who chose Reynaldo López were victory-dancing all around the living room on opening day as the 29-year-old Southside reliever recorded his first career save. It wasn’t a dominant performance by any stretch as the big righty gave up a monster home run, but to be fair, it was a Yordan Alvarez home run:

At the end of last season, I wrote about López’s incredibly low FIP and argued that it was unsustainably low due to an unrealistic HR/FB rate. His 2022 HR/9 in 63.1 innings of relief was 0.1, he only gave up one homerun all season. In his first appearance as a reliever in 2023, López made me seem like a smart guy. So that’s it, right? López is the same reliever he was last year, except now he’ll be eaten up by the regression monster. Not so fast. Check out his increased velocity so far in 2023:

Reynaldo Lopez FA/SL Velo Chart

That much of a velocity increase really stands out and it comes on top of the increased velocity he displayed last year as he transitioned more into a full-time reliever. López has always been a hard thrower relying on his fastball and while he throws a curveball and a changeup, it’s the changeup that has been his best secondary offering. He has never really leaned on the pitch too heavily, throwing it 3.7% of the time in 2022, but the pitch earned a 15.2% swinging-strike rate (PitcherList) last season. That’s better than the league average swinging-strike rate on changeups among relievers, 13.9%. Even it has seen increased velocity so far in 2023:

Reynaldo Lopez CH Velo Chart

The last time I wrote about López I noted the increased velocity on each of these pitches and how that led to increased whiff rates. Now, López has added even more velocity and a big question is, can he continue to add velocity without sacrificing control? His strikeout rates have been on the rise and so has his command (K/BB), but how will the added velo and increased appearances in high-leverage situations affect his ability to command the strike zone?

Reynaldo Lopez K/BB and K/9 Chart

He was put to an early test on Sunday (4/2) afternoon when he entered the bottom of the ninth with a five-run lead and things got shaky. After walking the lead-off man, César Salazar, López threw a wild one that let him take second:

After another walk to Jeremy Peña, López got Alex Bregman swinging on a 100 mph fastball:

Even though López got out number two on a Kyle Tucker fly ball, he gave up two rbi singles thereafter, balked a runner over to the third base, and made his manager bite his nails. Things finally came to a close with another fly ball, this time without leaving the infield. So, while increased velocity is great, López’s command doesn’t look locked in just yet and he has a history of high walk rates. In 2020, his BB% crept up to 12.4% in his 26.1 innings as a starter. The 2022 league average BB% among starters was 7.5%. That seems to always be the “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” for López; good, hard stuff, but touchy control. But, Reynaldo López is no longer a starter. Now, he has the freedom to focus his efforts on short, high-leverage stints, letting his velocity and stuff challenge hitters. For those of you who have fully converted to the ways of Stuff+, here are López’s early 2023 numbers:

stf+ FA – 148
stf+ SL – 133
stf+ CH – 108

While I don’t really know what those numbers mean after two full innings, they are all pretty high. I assume that’s good. As with all things, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I’m rooting for López and if he’s available in any of my leagues, I’m adding him. White Sox manager Pedro Grifol has been impressed with Reynaldo López calling him a “special talent”, but he hasn’t named any reliever as the team’s closer in Liam Hendrik’s absence and that will likely be the case all season. Reynaldo López’s potential has always been there and if fantasy managers have the roster spot available and can keep close tabs on him, I believe he has a lot of strikeout and save/hold/win upside for 2023.


Beat the Shift Podcast – 2023 Draft Recap Episode w/ Steve Cozzolino

The 2023 Draft Recap episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Steve Cozzolino

The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (TGFBI)

LABR Mixed Auction

  • Ariel’s LABR Draft Board
  • Altering strategy based on knowing how the other competitors draft
  • General auction strategy for a 12 team mixed league
  • Shohei Ohtani at $26 as Ariel’s most expensive player
  • Saves strategy in a 12 team mixed league
  • How to pull off obtaining so many value bargains in an auction

Read the rest of this entry »


Beat the Shift Podcast – Relief Pitcher Episode w/ Greg Jewett

The Relief Pitcher episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Greg Jewett

Strategy Section

  • General closer landscape
  • Optimal closer strategy last year
  • Is a closer who gets a half a year’s worth of saves a successful draft pick?
    • Closers who are traded mid-season
  • General closer draft strategy
    • Is drafting a 2nd round closer cost prohibitive for the rest of your roster?
  • What is the best way to throw a cheap closer dart?
  • Is it worth buying split closer situations?
  • Is it worth skipping out on reliable closers and acquiring saves in-season via FAAB?
  • Should we purchase middle relievers in drafts?

Read the rest of this entry »