Archive for the ‘Saves’ Category

Late-Round Closing Possibilities

3 Comments
February 21st, 2011 by
Categories: Saves, Sleepers

Since the projections here typically don’t attempt to project saves (or, like Marcel, do a poor job of it by giving Rafael Soriano 25 saves), I have found myself coming up with some numbers on my own in order to provide fantasy value. That’s pretty easy for 20 or so teams, where the closer is pretty well locked in, but there’s always a few teams where projecting saves is a mess.

While I was working on some comments regarding the messy closing situations, I noticed Yahoo’s Andy Behrens recently did a run-through of ninth-inning possibilities. It’s a good read, and I by-and-large agree with his assessments. I will add these musings on the worst of the situations (where the biggest potential bargains can be found):

Atlanta Braves
Early indicators are that RHP Craig Kimbrel and LHP Jonny Venters will be sharing duties, letting the Braves play the R/L matchups. Venters did great last year in the bullpen, so CAIRO has him projected very highly. Kimbrel also projects to be very good, and as the RHP part of the committee he should be the primary beneficiary of saves. I think Kimbrel has a great shot of being a steal this year and being an elite closing option in 2012.

Baltimore Orioles
Another duo is available in Baltimore, where the closing duties should fall to either Kevin Gregg or Koji Uehara. I’m not crazy about either one: I think Gregg will get the first shot, but I think Uehara is the better pitcher. I’d rather have either of the Atlanta boys rather than take a chance on these two. I don’t see much upside in this situation to compensate for the risk.

Tampa Bay Rays
If you want to see a mess at closer, check out Tampa Bay. There is no one that shows up on MockDraftCentral’s ADP report for the top 400 players. I have no faith in Kyle Farnsworth and his hard, straight fastball. Jake McGee and the currently-injured J.P. Howell are lefties that sometimes get mentioned as options. However, I’m currently liking Joel Peralta as a sneaky guy to win the job and notch 20-30 saves. He had a really good season last year in Washington, and he wouldn’t be the first journeyman to figure things out in his 30′s and put together a few solid seasons.

Toronto Blue Jays
Toronto has filled their bullpen with one-time closers Frank Francisco, Octavio Dotel, Jon Rauch, and Jason Frasor. I think most people have settled on Francisco as the best bet for saves, although MDC still has Dotel slightly above him. Frank is also a great guy to target in Yahoo drafts where he is currently buried in the rankings.

I’ll throw one other name out that looks like a great draft-day bargain: Matt Thornton. I’ve got Thornton ranked in the Papelbon-Feliz range of very-good but not quite elite. I’ve been expecting the White Sox to bring someone else in, but it’s looking more and more like Thornton’s the guy. And if he is, then I have faith that he will be very good.

Projecting 2010 Saves

14 Comments
January 18th, 2010 by
Categories: Projections, Saves

With Jose Valverde signing with the Tigers and Octavio Dotel apparently heading to Pittsburgh, the closer situation for most teams has been settled.

You may have noticed, however, that one of the most glaring difficulties with using computer-generated projections (CAIRO, CHONE, etc.) for fantasy baseball is the lack of saves in these projections. Recognizing that saves are much more tied to a player’s situation than to his skills, most computerized projections make no attempt to quantify the number of saves for each player.

While that represents the reality of projecting, it obviously won’t work for fantasy, which allocates 20% of the pitching points based on saves. But what can be done to fix this?

I was hoping that the FanGraphs Fan Projections would be helpful for this, but there are still lots of pitchers (Joe Nathan, for one) who don’t have enough projections to show up. As it is, there’s at least enough data to pick an appropriate scale — about 40 saves for the top closers and 15-20 for the marginal ones.

So I have attempted to come up with my own save projections. I started off with a list sorted by the number of saves from the past two years, averaged with a 2:1 weighting. From there, I tweaked the rankings to account for changes in situations and a rough estimate of skill. The results are four basic tiers of closers:

40 Saves
Joe Nathan (47 S in 2009, 39 S in 2008)
Mariano Rivera (44, 39)

35 Saves
Jonathan Papelbon (38, 41)
Francisco Rodriguez (35, 62)
Brian Wilson (38, 41)
Francisco Cordero (39, 34)
Joakim Soria (30, 42)
Heath Bell (42, 0)

Papelbon and K-Rod are near the 40 save tier, but I think they’re just a shade below the top two. Bell and Soria both require some bonus credit to get ranked this highly, compensating for Soria’s missed time in 2009 and Bell’s single year track record.

30 Saves
Trevor Hoffman (37, 30)
Jose Valverde (25, 44)
Jonathan Broxton (36, 14)
David Aardsma (38, 0)

At this level, everyone has question marks. We’ve got injuries (Valverde, Francisco, Qualls), age-concerns (Hoffman), and one-year samples (Broxton, Aardsma) clouding the situation. These guys are still pretty solid, though.

25 Saves
Brian Fuentes (48, 30)
Brad Lidge (31, 41)
Ryan Franklin (38, 17)
Bobby Jenks (29, 30)
Huston Street (35, 18)
Matt Capps (27, 21)
Rafael Soriano (27, 3)
Chad Qualls (24, 9)
Frank Francisco (25, 5)
Billy Wagner (0, 27)

Despite leading the league in saves in 2009, Fuentes was a little rocky and now has Fernando Rodney on his team. Lidge’s totals look good, but I’m also a bit concerned with his late-season breakdown. Capps and Soriano have some question marks for injuries. Basically, this is the tier where I’m not surprised if anyone loses the closer’s gig by the All-Star break.

20 Saves
Kerry Wood (20, 34)
Andrew Bailey (26, 0)
Brandon Lyon (3, 26)
Mike Gonzalez (10, 14)

15 Saves
Leo Nunez (26, 0)
Carlos Marmol (15, 7)
Scott Downs (9, 5)
Jason Frasor (11, 0)
Octavio Dotel (0, 1)

The 15-20 range are all really speculative; I expect a good number of these guys to lose the closing job by midseason. Scott Downs and Jason Frasor seem like the best candidates in Toronto, but I can’t find any information about who is more likely to get saves.

These are back-of-the-envelope calculations — not exactly mathematically rigorous but certainly better than 0′s for everyone. I’m also not watching these players nearly as close as the fans of their teams are, and so I’m hardly an expert on their situations and skills.

I’ve gone ahead and added them to the Price Guide as the default save projections for CHONE, CAIRO, and the composite projections. I’d still encourage you to edit the projections how you see fit, but I think this at least starts things off looking more reasonable.

However, I’d really like some help in refining these numbers. Anybody have any suggestions for improving these tiers?