Most Valuable Closer

Edwards Kings · Post by **Edwards Kings** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 7:10 am

The contest is certainly not over yet with about 25% of the MLB season left to go, but I am intrigued by certain aspects of this game (fantasy baseball) that we can look at definitively now. Certainly many things can happen these last few weeks, yet closers 2008 value is pretty well defined and set right now. Here is what I did to satisfy my quest for useless knowledge on a Friday afternoon avoiding “real” work.

First, I looked at our 2008 ADP and took the Top 30 pitchers listed as “CL”. This list I feel is extremely valuable. I do not believe anywhere else can you find, as a group, 390 individuals who will give you a better sample and relevant range on a players worth at the beginning of the season. If you want to filter out pundit noise, homey selections, league bias, and include the most independent analysis, thoughtful reflection, and serious consideration, this is the place to go. I wanted to use this list because 65% of the saves recorded YTD were from this group and therefore these guys represent a majority of our collective hopes and dreams of doing well in this category. Of the remaining 90 players who have recorded at least one save, only nine pitchers have five or more saves. Those nine players have 82 total saves between them or less than 14% of saves recorded to date. Makes you wonder about all that FA money that went towards potential closers (especially since the leader is Torres with 23) and might just make you reconsider whether our not the old adage “you can always get saves from the FA pool” is true!

Anyway, my next step was to bump the top drafted closers stats through 8/14 up against this Top 30 list. I ranked these 30 players based on their gross stats to date (i.e. the most saves got 30 points, the lowest ERA got 30 points, etc.). I used only saves, ERA, WHIP, and strikeouts. I did not consider wins because I do not believe anyone ever picked Kevin Gregg over Mariano Rivera because they thought Gregg would get them six wins. Neither did I try to weight ERA nor WHIP based on IP. For Closers, this would be a worthless exercise because generally Closers will end up within a meager 10 or 20 IP of each other and that difference is just not valuable.

What showed up was a little interesting. First off, 27 of the Top 30 have at least double digit saves (excluding of course Borowski, Putz, and Soriano). Three pitchers not in the Top 30 Closers picked have gotten double digits already (Torres, Franklin, and Morrow). All except Soriano and Borowski have pitched at least 30 innings so far this year and not surprisingly the Top 30 pick with the most IP is Rauch with nearly 60.

Based on the raw numbers, who scored the best? Tied for sixth in K’s, second in Saves, best in WHIP and second best in ERA, the ADP consensus 14th pick (averaged the 9th round, 140th player taken), Joakim Soria is grading out to be the best overall this year. Some lucky dude or dudette got him as late as the 12th round (174th pick). A scant few points behind are Papelbon (ADP 59), Rivera (99), and Nathan (82).

Damn! Somebody just asked me to do some work. Anyway, here is the rest of my list. You have to decide if you are a winner or a loser in this sweepstakes.

Player ADP SV RK ERA RK WHIP RK SO RK RK

J. Soria 139.97 27.5 29.0 30.0 25.0 111.5

J. Papelbon 59.20 27.5 26.0 28.0 27.0 108.5

M. Rivera 98.57 22.5 28.0 29.0 28.0 107.5

J. Nathan 81.90 27.5 30.0 27.0 22.5 107.0

B. Lidge 150.37 22.5 24.0 15.0 30.0 91.5

B. Wagner 99.10 20.5 22.0 26.0 17.5 86.0

F. Rodriguez 73.60 30.0 19.0 13.0 21.0 83.0

K. Wood 266.60 15.0 20.0 24.0 22.5 81.5

J. Valverde 116.83 24.0 10.0 14.0 29.0 77.0

J. Rauch 395.27 7.0 17.0 25.0 25.0 74.0

K. Gregg 181.93 18.5 23.0 17.0 14.0 72.5

T. Saito 109.43 7.0 25.0 20.0 19.5 71.5

B. Jenks 106.80 15.0 27.0 23.0 4.0 69.0

T. Percival 198.17 20.5 14.0 22.0 9.5 66.0

B. Wilson 197.13 27.5 11.0 9.0 15.0 62.5

B. Fuentes 379.28 11.0 16.0 16.0 17.5 60.5

F. Cordero 115.00 12.5 13.0 8.0 25.0 58.5

T. Hoffman 140.33 18.5 8.0 19.0 12.5 58.0

G. Sherrill 204.50 25.0 6.0 7.0 19.5 57.5

B. Ryan 168.83 12.5 18.0 12.0 11.0 53.5

M. Capps 133.33 7.0 15.0 21.0 6.0 49.0

B. Lyon 207.17 17.0 12.0 10.0 7.5 46.5

H. Street 126.60 9.5 7.0 11.0 16.0 43.5

R. Soriano 136.17 1.0 21.0 18.0 3.0 43.0

C. Wilson 226.90 15.0 3.0 4.0 12.5 34.5

J. Putz 65.27 3.0 9.0 2.0 9.5 23.5

T. Jones 180.50 9.5 5.0 6.0 2.0 22.5

Isringhausen 156.37 5.0 4.0 5.0 7.5 21.5

E. Gagne 168.20 4.0 2.0 3.0 5.0 14.0

J. Borowski 186.10 2.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 5.0

[ August 15, 2008, 01:14 PM: Message edited by: Edwards Kings ]

bjoak · Post by **bjoak** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 8:26 am

Nice work! Of the other 9 you mentioned, I wonder how many of them were drafted.

Edwards Kings · Post by **Edwards Kings** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 4:23 am

Originally posted by bjoak:

Nice work! Of the other 9 you mentioned, I wonder how many of them were drafted. At least three. But using ADP tracks only the "top" 497, so I am not sure if some players were drafted and not represented by the ADP. I believe the nine were Torres (no), Morrow (no), Wheeler (ADP Rank #382), Marte (no), Franklin (no), Kobayashi (#426), Downs (no), Gonzalez (no), and Broxton (#227).