Monday's Forum: The great closer debate

Closers, the necessary evil. This position can screw with your draft more than any other. There is always an early closer run that forces a manager to make a decision. Stick with the plan, or get a good closer before they are all gone? As with everything, it depends on how your draft is playing out, but here are the guidelines to follow.
There are not many top-flight closers. These are the guys who have great ERA & WHIP numbers, plus get a lot of saves & K's. The strikeouts are the critical stat here though. Closers that get around 100 punch-outs are invaluable because they are like an everyday player & can pick up the slack for your starters. I would reach high for a dominant closer if he gets K's as high as the 6th or 7th round.
Know where the 1st tier stops & the 2nd tier starts. The last thing you want to do is take some ham 'n egger with a high pick. Every year there will be viable closer options on the waiver wire through the early parts of the season. This is truly a position you should wait on if you don't get the best of the best.
I prefer to load my staff with starter & only use the minimum closers weekly. This is because closers don't get you wins, innings, or strikeouts typically. I know some who try to overload on closers to win era, whip & saves but I personally don't like that strategy unless the starter you have are all studs.
Heading into this season, the top closers are Joe Nathan and Francisco Rodriguez. These guys are sure to go across the board. On the next level, you have Huston Street, Mariano Rivera, Billy Wagner, Chad Cordero, & BJ Ryan. I think there is too much risk involved in Eric Gagne & Brad Lidge. Take them if they fall to you late, but don't go high on them. My sleeper is JJ Putz. He finished strong last year & got K's like a champ. He won't get many saves with that the Mariners, but his other numbers will be very nice.

Just get Mariano Rivera and you will be fine. With closers, everyone is worried about stats: A sub-ERA compared to the walk ratio divided by the number of appearances multiplied by his WHIP when it is a full moon plus how many times some fantasy geek looked at his stats online. Just get Mariano Rivera. Get him in the 7th round. If Mariano Rivera isn't your guy, then get Joe Nathan. If you don't like Nathan, get Francisco Rodriguez. Are you starting to get the point?
With closers, you want to have at least one you don't have to worry about. Pick the guy that you like. I hate having to look at my lineup and make decisions on who I should have to play week in and week out. Just get a stud.
If those three guys aren't available, then look at who you will be happy with given their limitations. You have already missed out on Rivera, Nathan and K-Rod, so wait a while when picking your closer. Just have a list of six guys you can live with. When four of them have been drafted, pick No. 5 or No.6 on your list.

Every fantasy writer and his dog will tell you to avoid closer runs. And they will probably say it like this, like they are Mary Poppins with those stupid penguins behind her, "Don't get involved in a closer run. Don't be susceptible to peer pressure. The other owners shouldn't mess with the strategy you have prepared for yourself. I am a good writer and am giving you sound advice."

Look, I would probably pursue a relationship with Mary Poppins, but if a closer run happens, get in it and get the guy you can live with. You need one solid closer. After your selection, stay away from them. Fill out your squad while keeping an eye on the third-tier closers or closers on bad teams. Fantasy owners hate closers on bad teams. I like them. Bad teams usually play close games and you can get a save out of them from week to week. If you missed out on Rivera, Nathan or K-Rod, two saves a week will all you will really get. After that, you are nickel and diming. The first few weeks of the season, you will be searching the waiver wire for a closer that comes out of nowhere. I got lucky enough two seasons ago to get Derrick Turnbow, and he ended up being the only closer I needed. I was able to fill up my last relief pitcher spot with a starter that qualified there. I played six starters and dominated the pitching categories to my title. I will play that strategy every chance I can get. What happened to Turnbow last season? He bombed. Just get Mariano Rivera.

There was a time in my fantasy career that I absolutely had to have Billy Wagner every year, no matter what it took to get him.
But as I’ve grown as a fantasy player in the last few years, I’ve realized that there are plenty of other closers who are just as good, if not better, and they come at a much cheaper price on draft day.
That said, I do not think there is a steadfast rule as to when relievers should be drafted. For a year or two, Eric Gagne and Brad Lidge were borderline keepers, but we’ve seen how short-lived their dominance was.
While it’s definitely a no-brainer to not protect a reliever in most keeper leagues, I think your strategy, and sometimes circumstance, will dictate when one, or two, closers should be drafted.
Last year I tried something different: take two top-notch relievers (Francisco Rodriguez and Joe Nathan) kind of high, after I sewed up a few loose ends (read: other stats). I was pleased with the end result as I finished in first place during the regular season in that league.
I can’t exactly attribute their stats to locking up the top slot, but it definitely didn’t hurt. But even with the success I had, I’ve also learned that it may be a slightly flawed strategy because I could have taken similar relievers later and used those higher picks to select more bats (I definitely could have used more power last year) or taken a starter.
I tend to use three categories to initially evaluate closers: The locks (the Riveras, Hoffmans and Nathans of the league), the guys who won’t hurt you (like Bob Wickman, Chris Ray and Chad Cordero) and the guy(s) who will absolutely kill you (Armando Benitez.)
The next level of evaluation for me is save opportunities. If a team can’t be competitive, its closer has little value in fantasy baseball. See Joe Nathan during the first two months of the 2006 season.
I do think there is one golden rule when discussing closers: Don’t get sucked into a closer run during the draft.
During a closer run, turn your attention to the starting arms or bats while the other teams are fighting to draft that middle-of-the-pack closer. Think about it this way: Will a mediocre closer (like Chris Ray) really make that much of a difference at the end of the week?
More times than not you’re going to regret your decision when you realize during the season that you could have drafted another solid bat or arm to provide depth. You’ll also be frustrated when the mediocre closer you drafted loses his job.
Which then leads to my next point: Try to carry three closers, just don’t overspend to get them. The reason to carry that many closers is because I really do think that matchups do play a factor when determining the value of reliever.
And finally, when you’re looking for a closer, look for the closer who will get the save opportunities but likely won’t hurt you in your ratio categories (ERA and WHIP). Don’t over value strikeouts at this position, especially if your rotation is not built on that stat.

Once upon a time, I fell in love with a closer. His name was Eric Gagne...
The season was 2003, or maybe it was 2003, and I decided that he was the most dominant pitcher in the game. I even told a friend of mine, who owned Gagne in our keeper league, that he would be the only reliever worth keeping. Being a numbers guy, his were just making me drool.
From 2002-2004 his average season looked something like this: 82 innings, 125 Ks, 50 saves, 0.90 Whip, 1.90 ERA and a couple of losses. Numbers like that win fantasy league titles. Or so I thought.
In 2004, I found my Gagne ... his name was Brad Lidge. After earning the closers job after the all-star break, Lidge threw up some of the sickest numbers you'll ever see. He saved 29 games, struck batters out about 1.5 batters per inning, tossed 94 innings, posted a 1.90 ERA and .92 Whip and even won six games. In the postseason, he was pretty much unhittable. He struck out 20 in 12 innings, allowing one run and eight baserunners while leading the Astros to the World Series.
After a little internal debate, I decided that I had no choice but to keep Lidge. I even traded away guys like Mark Teixeira, Michael Young, Adam Dunn and Tim Hudson to make room for him. (Although I have to admit that I also kept Oliver Perez, but that's a different story).
On draft day, I figured that if I was going to make my Lidge investment pay off, I needed to get him a solid running mate and since Gagne wasn't available I took the next best thing: Francisco Rodriguez. I did that with the seventh pick of our first round (we also keep five players).
Despite outstanding 2005 seasons from both Lidge and Rodriguez, I finished last.
Was it their fault? Of course not. I made plenty of other bad decisions, like keeping Oliver Perez. While it is definitely not their fault that I had such a bad season, their dominance (both saved more than 40 games, posted sub 2.30 ERAs and 1.20 Whips and struck out nearly 200 batters between them) did nothing to save my season. Let's say I spent those two picks on similarly upward-bound hitters — Teixeira and Young, for example. Surely, last place would not have been such a concern.
The lesson here: Even the best closers are just good window dressing. Sure, they make your team look great on paper and maybe you can trade them if the hype really gets out of control, but no closer is going to have an impact on your team the way a great starter of position player will.
At their best in a head-to-head league closers get you a couple saves, help lower your ERA a few points and add a handful strikeouts. A good hitter can help you in every category. A good starter can help you in most pitching categories and a great one can win two or three almost by himself.
Here's my advice: Never take a closer earlier than the 10th round in a traditional draft and you can definitely wait until the 15th and still get quality arms; Only draft closers that strike guys out, they are less likely to slump and more likely to help in multiple categories; Try to draft closers whose managers aren't against letting them go more than one inning at a time; Don't be afraid to stash a great middle-reliever on your team just because he's not currently the closer, there's a good chance he will be.