Off Season Blogging Part 1: the trend in RP-slotting

Miss me yet? I’m not sure when this blog will end up being published, but I’m starting it in mid-October, 2016. This post is going to be part of a series of off season blogs geared towards figuring out what to do in this upcoming fantasy season.

The first blog is about the Relief Pitcher slot, and no, I didn’t say closers. A trend started emerging in this past season, and it became even more prevalent in this post-season. The old-fashioned closer role is evolving. Managers are finally beginning to listen to advanced statistical analytics that say: the toughest three outs in the game aren’t the last 3 outs, the toughest 3 outs are the ones against the toughest hitters…whenever that happens.

Exhibits A and B: Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances have been top 10 relief pitchers the last 2 years, despite never being the ‘closer’ heading into opening day with a healthy option in front of them. What we’re to find here is an elite relief pitcher without necessarily being a closer. These players can be identified through finding an elite strikeout rate and nearly unhittable WHIP. These fantasy stats show a pitcher that keeps the ball out of play and when bat contact does occur, it is likely going to be away from the barrel. Miller and Betances finished 2016 K rates of 14.89 and 15.53 Ks per 9 innings with a WHIP of 0.69 and 1.12 respectively (Betances had a pretty poor finish to the season).

Why does this matter? It is my projection that the ‘closer’ is going to become ancient history. Not next year, but soon. Major league ball clubs are learning that they need to start using their best reliever in the highest late game leverage situation. If the best reliever (i.e. the closer) enters the game too early to record the save, well that decreases his fantasy value because he won’t earn that one stat category we own closers for, the Save. The next thing to consider is league context. Our league is not a standard, 10 team, 10 category league which is what rankings sets are driven by. What this means is you have to cater our rules to find player value. There will be more on this later this offseason, but the rule pertinent to this blog is clearly, the Save category. The Save category is one of 14 categories with which we compete. That means that category we chase every March and over-draft relief pitchers for is really only as important as the one we all ignore, Stolen Bases. There is a rub, of course. Closers, as mentioned earlier, are almost always the best relief pitchers on their team, so in our league they help eat up the 20 innings pitched minimum while keeping Earned Runs, Earned Runs Average (ERA), and Walks plus Hits per Innings Pitched (WHIP) low. Therefore, they are more than just one category suppliers in our league.

The next aspect to this discussion is how many closers actually provided value in this league format? For the sake of argument here I will call these relief pitchers, elite. I will set somewhat arbitrary boundaries for elite as having a k rate greater than 11 Ks/9, an ERA below 3.00, and because Fangraphs doesn’t track WHIP, we’ll call a walk rate below 4 walks/9 elite. Here were the ‘elite’ relief pitchers in 2016:

Name*	IP	K/9	BB/9	ERA
Edwin Diaz	51.2	15.33	2.61	2.79
Andrew Miller	74.1	14.89	1.09	1.45
Aroldis Chapman	58	13.97	2.79	1.55
Kenley Jansen	68.2	13.63	1.44	1.83
Shawn Kelley	58	12.41	1.71	2.64
Tyler Thornburg	67	12.09	3.36	2.15
Seung Hwan Oh	79.2	11.64	2.03	1.92
Cody Allen	68	11.51	3.57	2.51
Hector Neris	80.1	11.43	3.36	2.58
Alex Colome	56.2	11.28	2.38	1.91
Brad Hand	89.1	11.18	3.63	2.92

*note Betances even missed this list with his 3.08 ERA and Mr. Cy Young contender Zach Britton only had a 9.94 K/9 which was good for 43^rd best RP (minimum 50 IP)

What does this show? Well most closers aren’t very good relative to the upper echelon of relief pitchers here. Based on opening day projected ‘closers,’ there are only 7 elite ones (bolded). The rest, well you’re just filling that 1/14^th category with sloppy saves.

What do we do with this information? This is where it comes down to team philosophy. To draft any of these 7 guys (assuming none of them get kept), it will at least cost you a top 10 round pick, and given our leagues history, probably a top 6 or 7 round pick. Michael tried this year to fill his relief pitcher spots with ‘elite’ non-closing relief pitchers such as the above tabled Hector Neris, but the constant allure of the shiny new closer was often too much to pass up. The problem then arose with said new shiny new closer that most new-closers are not able to handle the 9^th inning role. Most new-closers’ ERA balloons with outings that ruin a fantasy week in our league. The counter evidence to this was Dean this year. Dean was able to snag a few of these shiny new-closers off the free agent wire over the course of the summer…and then none of them blew up. This really helped Dean make his run up the standings to claim the number one overall seed in the playoffs. His luck ran out though in the championship round and fell victim to the closer-blow-up that so many of us experienced all summer.

Maintaining a strategy of rostering elite relief pitching is a winning strategy in Floored, but as with any other position, finding that player that is going to put up that elite year is what the fun is all about.