An Alternative Way to Grade Closers

Fantasy baseball is becoming more and more sophisticated with each passing year. The days of the standard 5×5 league may be over. Some leagues have made the full transformation to 6×6 with on base percentage added to the offensive side and holds added to the pitching side. With saves and holds as categories, relief pitching has taken on extra significance. So, today we will look at the 25 closers that have the job going into spring training. The catch is that we are using four numbers most publications don’t look at. Sure, looking at saves and holds would seem to be easy enough, but that leaves out two important points. First, standard numbers like the six categories in fantasy baseball are not very portable season to season. Relief pitchers in particular see a lot of variance from season to season in those traditional numbers. The numbers we will look at have much more predictive value of the pitcher’s quality. The second reason is that saves and holds in particular are d...