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Let’s talk about relief pitching. Relief pitching is worthless. There I said it. Okay so maybe I’m exaggerating just a bit, but this is basically how I treat this particular roster spot no matter how many I have to fill.
The reasoning is simple: unless you are in a holds league, the only thing stat that relievers can give you that starting pitchers cannot is saves. One category. I suppose they can help cushion your batting average and tack on a few strike outs, but your primary source of production for every other pitching category is your starters (or should be, or else your rotation needs work). Over the course of every season there are at least ten closer jobs that go up for grabs due to injury/poor performance/manager fickleness, leaving tons of saves on the waiver wire for you to snatch up, and a future star or two always emerges from this annual occurance. Andrew Bailey was last year’s example, and we already got one this season in Neftali Feliz. Do as Confuscius say: Never pay for closers.
If Arizona ever replaces Qualls, it should be with Heilman.
I’ll start with a few examples from the current closer market then hit some general stuff from there.
2 – Earned runs allowed by Aaron Heilman over his last 18 appearances, making him the leading candidate to replace the horrendous Chad Qualls in the desert. It’s less about Heilman (whose career numbers aren’t all that great) and more about Qualls, who has consistently proven he can’t get the job done, having blown four saves this season and allowed 15 runs over only 20 innings of work. Even more alarming is the 1.935 WHIP, an extremely troublesome number for a closer. Grab Heilman and hope A.J. Hinch gives him a chance at the job.
4 – Blown saves by Matt Capps in his last six outings, a popular stat going around lately, mostly because everyone saw it coming. His ERA has ballooned to 3.62 over that period, mostly due to the two home runs he allowed, as many as he had given up the rest of the season. That streak of 16 straight converted saves to start the season was too good to be true, though it will probably give him quite a leash for the time being. Tyler Clippard, he of the eight wins and 12 holds, is next in line, with Drew Storen probably not on the closer radar till next season.
3 – Clean innings for Brad Lidge since returning from the DL. You can’t ask for much more than no runs, no hits, no walks, four K’s and one save. Don’t call it the resurgence of 2008 Lidge, but for the time being you can call him the Phillies’ closer once again. Go get him if he’s still on waivers. The magical run for Jose Contreras is now over, as he’ll go back to set up duties unless (until?) Bad Brad decides to come back.
Well there’s your mini-closer report, now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Theriot needs to be more patient to be an effective top of the order hitter.
0 – Number of walks for Ryan Theriot between May 2nd and June 4th. This is ridiculous and absolutely unacceptable for a player batting first for a major league team. It is imperative for speed guys with power numbers akin to the electric bill of an Amish village to get on base. He didn’t, which translated to a dip in runs, accumulating only seven over 25 games while striking out 11 times. There is good news however, as he has walked three times in his last three games, with two coming on Monday. His line? 2/3, 2 BB, four runs, two stolen bases. Funny how that works.
2 – Runs of support or less for Ted Lilly in five of his last six starts, explaining his 1-5 record. He and Zach Greinke should start their own support group, or maybe a dating service for abused pitchers seeking new offensive relationships. Lilly himself has pitched just fine with five consecutive quality starts, and his strike outs have gradually increased since a lame one K performance against Florida May 4th. Remember, this is the guy who posted a 3.10 ERA and an impressive 1.054 WHIP last season and has a pretty solid track record of success. The strike outs will soon return to at least near his 7.65 career mark and he will be a valuable ERA/WHIP guy down the stretch.
4 – Losses in his last seven starts for Randy Wells, and unlike Lilly the problem is him, not the Cubs’ anemic offense (though he hasn’t gotten much help either; in only two of those starts has he gotten more than two runs of support). His ERA is 6.11 over this stretch, characterized by wild inconsistency: two starts of one or fewer earned runs, three starts of five or more, the worst example a six hit, five run appearance against the Cardinals in which he managed not to retire a single batter. A game I had the pleasure of attending. The move here is to bench him until he figures himself out, and depending on how your waiver wire looks, a finger near the drop button.
His numbers were bound to go back to normal sooner or later.
11 – RBIs over the past 22 games for Casey McGehee after erupting for 32 in his first 32 games. This was pretty inevitable as his pace was clearly ridiculous and he had no business being the league leader in RBIs despite batting behind Braun and Fielder, but the steep slide in batting average (.248) and BB/K ratio (4:14) is quite worrisome. This is the major problem with young players: when they slump, there’s no way to tell whether it’s just a slump or who they actually are because we have no career numbers to fall back on. Judging from the unexpected production and now suddenly alarming fall from grace, I hope you sold high on him while you had the chance.
33 – Number of games Grady Sizemore played this season before going under the knife last week, finishing with a startlingly bad 13/0/12/4/.211 line. He never found his bat and now hasn’t played over 110 games in a season since 2008. I recognize this stat isn’t very useful now that he’s gone; it’s mostly just my way of saying I told you so.
.225 – Batting average for Cameron Maybin, who figures to be the odd man out in Florida now that Mike Stanton has been called up. He will probably still get some time as Stanton is eased into a major league starting role, but as the batting average indicates he wasn’t exactly very useful before, with only five extra base hits all season. You can officially part ways and never look back.
34-23 – Best record in the National League for, everyone together now, the San Diego Padres. This despite ranking only 13th in batting average and RBIs, and 14th in home runs. Their strength has been their pitching, going top five in wins and sporting a sparkling 3.02 ERA, currently the best in the majors. Four of their starters currently have an ERA under 3.3, and I’ll analyze the player of your choice in the next article if you can name one guy in their rotation not named Matt Latos.
Of course the most important part of all this for fantasy owners is that every day the Friars remain above .500 the less likely it is they will let Adrian Gonzalez go somewhere else and hit 55 home runs. He’ll do what he always does (currently on pace for 91/37/108/.288), but everyone knows that park is preventing the former #1 pick from putting up some gaudy slugging numbers. I’d say keep praying for the hand of God to smite them but I doubt that works on these guys.
Enjoy your week, and for hopefully the last time till next season: Go Blackhawks. Just one more boys, bring it home.
Couple issues here. First, your reckless handling of your closers will be your undoing. While yes, saves is the only primary category a closer contributes too, if you can compile a roster of truly talented closers, they will help pad your ERA and WHIP as well. Think of it this way, if you have 3 closers who make (and this is an estimate) and average of 3 appearances a week that equates to 9 innings of most likely sub 1 ERA, sub 1 WHIP, between 8-12 ks, and a guaranteed win in saves for the week. I’m not saying there aren’t valuable saves on the waver wire, but matched up against serious closing talent, platoon waiver wire guys like Aaron Heilman simply can’t match up. I’m not debating that RP should taken later in drafts, because it should, but that’s not what you said.
Yes obviously a closing group with, say, Jon Broxton, Francisco Cordero, and Neftali Feliz would be amazing and give you that kind of production. What I’m saying is the draft picks/trade value used to acquire the kind of group that’s going to give you that type of production isn’t worth what you could get if you stocked up on quality starting pitching that would keep your ERA and WHIP down anyway and relied on the wire for the saves category.
Plus just because you have elite closers does not mean you’re guaranteed to win saves. Remember Broxton only had one save the entire month of April, while Matt Capps had ten. Now obviously things have reverted back to normal but I’m just saying saves (like steals) aren’t automatic and are susceptible to the whims of chance and circumstance
There are no guarantees for any sort of production, but I still maintain elite closers are elite for a reason. Over the course of a season they are simply just going to give you better production. Waiver wire guys can get you saves, but ehy will kill the rest of your stats, you can get wins on the waiver wire too, theres a reason people don’t try that strategy.
People DO do that. Its called streaming.