Fantasy Sports: The Value of Relievers

With fantasy baseball season quickly approaching, you’ll start seeing other sites talking about the reasons you should or shouldn’t pay for saves. On the side that claims you shouldn’t pay for saves, there is the argument that closers are one-trick ponies because they only help your team in the saves category. I’m going to take two approaches to demonstrate that this isn’t true. First, I’ll look at the top closers and compare them to those that could have been found late in the draft or on the waiver wire last year. Second, I’ll take some non-closers and show how they could have helped your team in a similar way.

First approach

For the first approach, I took the first ten closers taken in one of my drafts last year and the top ten closers (by saves) that went in round 14 or later (including undrafted) in the same league. The first ten closers taken were Jonathan Papelbon, J.J. Putz, Joe Nathan, Francisco Rodriguez, Billy Wagner, Takashi Saito, Jose Valverde, Francisco Cordero, Bobby Jenks, and Mariano Rivera. The top ten closers that went either late in the draft or undrafted were Joakim Soria, Brian Wilson, Kerry Wood, George Sherrill, Kevin Gregg, Troy Percival, Salomon Torres, Brandon Lyon, C.J. Wilson, and Jon Rauch. Then I compared the averages of these two groups.

Expensive closer: 62.0 IP, 3.8 W, 34.9 SV, 67.2 K, 2.50 ERA, 1.11 WHIP

Cheap closer: 62.1 IP, 3.8 W, 30.1 SV, 57.3 K, 3.93 ERA, 1.21 WHIP

So in basically the same number of innings, the expensive closers provide 4.8 more saves, 9.9 strikeouts, a much better ERA, and a much better WHIP. To get a better idea of how much more value the expensive closer has, let’s consider an average fantasy team that has 82 W, 89 SV, 1061 K, a 3.91 ERA, and a 1.31 WHIP. Now, if you replace an average pitcher’s IP with a player from each of the groups above, here are the results:

Average team with expensive closer: 82 W, 120 SV, 1081 K, 3.85 ERA, 1.30 WHIP

Average team with cheap closer: 82 W, 115 SV, 1071 K, 3.91 ERA, 1.31 WHIP

Based on my stats, the expensive closer is worth 0.48 standings points in saves, 0.32 in strikeouts, 0.86 in ERA, and 0.77 in WHIP for a total of 2.83 points more than the cheap closer. In my rankings, a player worth 2.83 points should go in the fifth or sixth round, so this approach suggests that paying for an expensive closer is worth it.

Second approach

For the second approach, there were three non-closers that I used in several leagues last year. They were Hong-Chih Kuo, Rafael Perez, and Matt Thornton. If you were to replace an average pitcher’s IP with one of those three, here are the results:

Average team with Kuo: 82 W, 85 SV, 1096 K, 3.81 ERA, 1.29 WHIP

Average team with Perez: 82 W, 86 SV, 1089 K, 3.89 ERA, 1.30 WHIP

Average team with Thornton: 83 W, 86 SV, 1087 K, 3.85 ERA, 1.30 WHIP

For those three freely available pitchers, they were all very valuable. Kuo was worth -0.25 points in saves, 1.13 in strikeouts, 1.43 in ERA, and 1.54 in WHIP for a total of 3.85 points. (Keep in mind that these points are over the average pitcher on the roster, not over the cheap closer as in the first approach. The cheap closer above was worth 2.82 points, and the expensive closer was worth 5.65 points.) Perez was worth -0.28 points in saves, 0.90 in strikeouts, 0.29 in ERA, and 0.77 in WHIP for a total of 1.68 points. Thornton was worth 0.32 points in wins, -0.28 in saves, 0.84 points in strikeouts, 0.86 in ERA, and 0.77 in WHIP for a total of 2.51 points. This approach shows that top relievers should not be ignored in a rotisserie league just because they don’t provide saves. Even without the saves, they can cause drastic changes in your team’s strikeouts, ERA, and WHIP without hurting your wins.

Recap

Expensive closer: 5.65 points (2.83 over the cheap closer)

Hong-Chih Kuo: 3.85 points

Cheap closer: 2.82 points

Matt Thornton: 2.51 points

Rafael Perez: 1.68 points

There are two takeaways from this article. First, expensive closers are worth their high draft picks because they provide that much more value than their cheaper brethren. Second, it’s very possible for the top non-closing relievers to be as valuable as the cheap closers, but like cheap closers, you don’t have to draft them.