Fantasy Impact: Savvy Vets Punting Saves

Perhaps nothing in fantasy baseball produces more debate, frustration and obssessive-compulsive behavior than how to manage relief pitchers(RP), specifically, a certain type of RP, closers.

Here's the setup: Many fantasy leagues are scored on points accumulated in 10 basic categories, 5 offensive and 5 pitching(5X5). The offensive categories are generally Runs, HR's, RBI's, SB's and Batting Average. The pitching categories are Wins, Saves, K's, ERA, WHIP(Walks plus Hits/IP). If you look at those categories carefully, one is not like the others. Closers accumulate about 90% of all the Saves in baseball, but do not pitch enough innings to make a major impact on K's, W's, ERA and WHIP. In fact, you don't want closers to get W's because, well, closers are supposed to get Saves! There is no other category where each MLB team has one player whose job is to score in one category, but multiple openings on a fantasy team. But wait, you say, if there are 30 MLB teams and 10 or 12 fantasy teams in your league, there should be plenty of closers to go around, right? The problem is that there are usually multiple slots for RP's on each fantasy team, but the only scoring category you want from a closer is Saves. Yes, RP's can help you with W's, K's, ERA and WHIP, but given a choice between a good SP and a good RP, the SP will give you a lot more innings of good pitching than the RP, so to have an impact, you really want to fill any available RP slots with closers.

In my fantasy league, there are 10 teams with 3 RP positions and 2 P positions that can swing either way. Potentially, you can keep 5 closers active on your roster at all times. Since there are only 30 closers in MLB at any given time, filling those 5 slots with all closers can be a cutthroat competition. If you can accumulate 5 or more closers on your team, some other team is going to have less than 3. If 2 or 3 teams horde closers, then the remaining teams are going to be bidding on a rapidly shrinking pool of closers. In the draft, this leads to overdrafting, and after the season starts, it leads to gross overpayments in trades. It also leads to entire weekly columns on fantasy websites devoted to nothing but speculation about what closers might be in danger of losing their jobs, getting injured or traded, and to what pitchers might be in line to take over if a team decides to change closers.

This year, my team, the Savvy Vets got stuck out of position on draft day after my buddy, the Windrookie, started a run by drafting two closers back to back at the second turn of a snake draft. Whether this was an overdraft is debatable, but it started a frenzy of other owners drafting closer, sometimes ridiculously high. I decided I had to jump in. I grabbed Jose Valverde and Frank Francisco on my next two picks. Later I managed to pick up Jason Frasor who had been named closer for Toronto, but that was it. I was always beaten to the punch by someone else before I could take the next available closer at a reasonable draft slot. Still, I had 3 decent closers which made me competitive at the position, and there is always a chance of picking up more as the season goes along.

Alas! We are only half way through the second week of the season. Frank Francisco and Jason Frasor have already been replaced rendering them virtually useless on my roster and leaving me with only one viable closer. I can't compete with teams with even 2 good closers let alone 5! So, I made one of the more momentous decisions a fantasy owner can make, punt the category! When you punt a category, you concede that you will not win said category, ever, all season, in order to give yourself a theoretically better chance of winning the other 4 pitching categories. It's a risky strategy. When you punt one category, you have to win at least 3 of the remaining 4 pitching categories to split. If you win 5 of the remaining 9 total categories all you get is a tie for the head-to-head. You have to win 6 of the remaining 9 categories to win the H2H outright.

So what moves did I make for Savvy Vets in "punting" the Saves category? I dropped Frank Francisco and Jason Frasor while picking up Justin Masterson of Cleveland and Colby Lewis of Texas. Both are young pitchers who are being widely talked about as "sleepers" and have put up good numbers with plenty of K's in their starts so far this season. I have also put Jose Valverde on the Trading Block hoping another owner who isn't punting Saves will overpay to add another closer to his roster. I have made a trade offer to another owner, Valverde for Scott Kazmir of the Angels. We'll see if that produces anything.

In a related development, I accepted a trade this morning offered by another owner. I give Prince Fielder and receive Kendry Morales, Scott Baker and Kevin Millwood. I will drop Colby Rasmus and Masterson to make room on the roster for the 3 players I receive. Baker often gets off to slow starts but pitches consistently well as the season goes along and is a reliable source of W's and quality starts helping to pile up K's without ruining your ERA and WHIP categories. Millwood has had an up and down career but put up a sub 4 ERA with Texas last year. He should be able to do at least that well with Baltimore. Meanwhile Kendry Morales is only a slight downgrade from Prince Fielder on offense, and may well put up a better Batting Average. I also dropped Drew Stubbs who is off to a slow start and is losing playing time to Chris Dickerson with Cincinnati. I picked up Jose Guillen who seems to be recovered from a bout with Deep Vein Thrombosis and is as productive as any hitter in baseball when healthy. He's off to a great start with KC.

Here's how the roster will shake out:

C Brian McCann
1B Kendry Morales
2B Ben Zobrist
3B Jorge Cantu
SS Stephen Drew
IF Todd Helton
OF Justin Upton
OF BJ Upton
OF Jose Guillen
UT Hunter Pence
UT Conor Jackson
SP CC Sabathia
SP Tommy Hanson
SP Matt Cain
SP Jonathan Sanchez
RP Francisco Liriano(duel eligibility)
RP Colby Lewis(duel eligibility)
RP Jaime Garcia(eligible as a RP, but functioning as a starter with St Louis)
BN Kevin Millwood
BN Scott Baker
BN Brad Penny
BN Mat Latos
BN Ben Sheets

I have also offered Matt Cain in trade for Torii Hunter who is on another owners trading block. I would drop Pence, Jackson or Guillen to make room for Hunter, then find a FA pitcher to add or I might go with one offensive player on my bench.

What do you think? Any suggestions?